Grown Up
I hate being a grown up. Being a grown up sucks giant perspiring arse balls. When I was a child I thought being a grown up would be farking marvellous, mostly cos you could go to bed late and eat chocolate WHENEVER YOU WANTED TO. That is what constituted being a grown up, for me.
But no. When you’re a kid, NO ONE tells you what it’s ACTUALLY LIKE being a grown up. You don’t get lessons in school in Grown Upness. No special TV programmes or educational videos to watch. Not even a farking pamphlet. They just blithely let you grow up, with no bloody warning at all, and then BAM – you’re grown up, and floundering, and all the older grown ups are laughing bitterly as they watch you become as disillusioned and as twisted as they were.
So what’s the deal with being a grown up?
You have to pay for stuff – if I’d known that, I’d have got a proper job AGES ago. When I was little, I thought that anyone could get books published, you had to just write the damn things. And erm, draw the pictures. So I’d construct my own ‘books’ – inevitably but thrillingly titled ‘The Adventures Of… [something or other]‘ and then INSIST that my mum send it off to be published at once. I suspect she just chucked ‘em in the bin. They were pretty shit, to be honest. Which is why I probably should have been a doctor, or done some law, or summat. Then I’d have had some money to, like, PAY for things, like rent and food, and rum.
You can eat chocolate whenever you want to – yeah but you also have to EXERCISE because NO ONE tells you that eating chocolate, or cake, or biscuits, or sweets, will ACTUALLY bring you a LIFETIME OF MISERY as all the good stuff just makes you fat and unwieldy, and rots away yer insides. Eating a chocolate bar means you have to do at least fifty push ups and a cycle ride straight away afterwards to cancel out the calories. Eating a doughnut means you have to do two hundred star jumps and swim the Channel, if you want to retain your lithe frame. See? Hard farking work. It’s like we have a little bit of joy, but it comes with a price. Bastards.
You have to drive cars - I don’t even drive, and I know I have to drive cars. Driving is stupidly essential cos they put all the good stuff just a little bit out of reach, like the nearest Lidl, or the countryside. I can’t face getting on a bus with other stupid non-driving people and entertaining a recalcitrant Moo until we reach somewhere vaguely interesting and then having to come all the way back cos the buses only run twice a day or summat. If I could drive, I’d be in the car ALL THE TIME, just going places and not worrying about timetables and fares. Unfortunately, I never bothered learning to drive, mainly cos NO ONE TOLD ME that it would be STUPID if I couldn’t drive when I was grown up.
You can drink alcohol – which is GREAT but as I get older, drinking alcohol is becoming a bit less manageable. D’you know what I mean? Remember when you were a student and you could go out drinking vodka shots all night and then still arrive for a 9am lecture with your faculties intact and nary a wibble to your jaunty strut? Yeah? Well those days are over, my friend. Now, you can have ONE SMALL GLASS of wine of an evening, and that is sufficient to ensure that you will be horrendously hungover for the ENTIRE NEXT DAY. Drinking alcohol now you’re a grown up is such a farking chore.
Spots – you still get spots. Even though I exited my teenage years MILLENNIA ago. Farking SPOTS.
You can stay up late and watch whatever you want on TV – excuse me a moment… MAHAHAHAHAHAHA. See this cruelty? You thought the grown ups had all the fun once you went to bed, as a child? WHATEVS. Fark knows what they did. You try this shit now and you’re SCREWED, cos there’s NOTHING ON TV. Not now, not ever. It’s all BALLS. I don’t know why we EVER thought it was brilliant to stay up late. I get antsy if I’m awake past 9pm now. Early bedtimes are the best. Fact.
Right now I can’t think of ANYTHING great about being a grown up. So enlighten me, please. Or just tell me what you thought would be fab about being a grown up, but actually turned out to be shite.
Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow. Hmph.
Er, no one has mentioned sex.
No one is having sex. That’s why.
Not just me then?
Nope.
O dear lord, and I just celebrated my 18th birthday! TURN BACK TIME! NOW!
I’m learning how to drive a car, which will be useful, I guess. I can still eat chocolate without the psuh ups. Actually, I don’t think I’m that grown up already. But I fear the day I will be.
You are so YOUNG. Hold on to your youth with both hands. Being old sucks.
i totally sympathise with the car thing. i wish i had learned to drive when i had a job, now its a challenge just to even be acknowledged for applying for a job and it gets me down not being able to drive the kids somewhere. hate buses, they smell, sometimes they drive straight past or wont let me on because theres no room for a buggy. some people have the bloody cheek to not even move out of the buggy spot
Oh I ALWAYS get people to move out of the buggy space, I just give ‘em a glare and say uber-politely ‘excuse me please’ and then attack their ankles with the buggy wheel if they don’t move
i like attacking ankles, the buggy is my weapon but ill need a new weapon soon cos oscar is growing fast!
I didn’t feel truly grown up until both my parents had died. Then it just felt lonely, and who was I going to talk to about problems?
I had been quite independent, and not needed to do that for a while, but they were my safety net. Now I am at the stage where my children are becoming independent and grown up. I know that they don’t want to talk to me about things, but equally they know I am there if they need me and their dad. I just hope we are there for them for longer than my parents and my husband’s parents were there for them.
This morning you were running round the woods pretending to be a Gruffalo – I don’t think you are yet fully grown!
Erm, that was YOU actually!
Once you’re an adult, you can have kids
ANOTHER thing we’re tricked into doing
But when there’s something good on telly you usually have to go bed because it’s work / something important the next day. I love love love driving! Its takes 2.5 hours for the bus to get from Manchesyer to our town so glad I learnt a long time ago. Never too late to learn! My little cousin once asked me what I wanted to be when i grew up…. I sulkily mumbled “I’m already grown up”.
I would learn to drive but a) it costs money and I don’t have any, and b) I’m actually scared a little bit of driving. I have tried and I screamed a lot. A LOT. And I only moved about three feet in the car. Prob best just getting the bus.
This should be on the school curriculum for 14-16yr olds!!!
Although, even with 3 kids of my own, I still live close enough to my mam that I’ll never fully grow up mwhahaha xx
LOL yeah me too. I love being near my mum
x
I’ve found the secret – never grow up. Inside me lurks the mind of a nine year old, where farts are still funny…
OMFG farting is SO funny. Does that make me 9 as well?
Major bonus of being a grown up is that I can talk to girls now. Only took 20 years.
BTW – driving sucks hairy arseballs. Hate it.
Yeah but you can DRIVE places. Ah who am I kidding, I bet I’d hate it too.
The best part about being a grown up, for me at least, is not having to ask permission to do stuff. I still remember the exact moment I realized that. I was eighteen and at a nightclub and I was thinking to myself the whole time, my dad is going to be pissed when he finds out I was…wait. I’m eighteen, I live on my own, I don’t have to tell him anything. YES!
Worst part is the whole being responsible thing. Just once I want to blow off something because I just don’t feel like doing it but alas, when you’re the grown up you can’t do that. Grrr.
Yeah that’s true I s’pose. I can sit here in my pants and go on the internet all night and it’s no one’s business. And again, yeah, you’re right – responsibility is a bastard.
I have got other clothes on, by the way.
Being a grown up is ok if you don’t care that the constant crisp and chocolate eating makes you fat and spotty. Its also ok if you don’t mind wandering around in a perpetual zombie like state because you stayed up half the night watching half a shite programme and rewinding it eight thousand times because you fell asleep. And it’s best of all if you don’t mind having to think of three meals a day, every flipping day to feed the children for the rest of you flipping life.
I do however drive, and wouldn’t change that for all the rum in Jamaica…
Can you be my chauffeur?