Missing Adult

I used to watch a lot of TV. I grew up with every television family—the Cosbys, the Keatons, even the Bradys. I guess I was about 13 when “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place” started airing back to back. The Melrose Place dwellers were whiney, sexy and disturbed, and living in a lame apartment complex; but they were adults, and that was cool. I knew when I saw Heather Locklear/Amanda stab the steps up to her apartment in her heels and little, tiny, really just very short skirt, that I would be like her when I grew up. I knew that when I was 25, I would be thin as a stick with blond hair and a sexy face; I would slap the advertising world around with my sassy body and bold statements. I’d be in love with my self-asserting and self-serving bad self. Who would have time to be anything but bitchy when she was making her way to the top of the corporate sky-scraper? (I was going to live in New York, not Los Angeles.)

Twenty-five. I would be a few years out of college and, naturally a just-about-top exec at an advertising company. (As and aside, I don’t really know where this obsession with advertising came from—I guess I really liked Absolut Vodka ads.) I would be stylish, smart and sexy, and swinging with the dope crowd, er, hangin’ with the cool peeps or whatever. I wouldn’t even have time for them really; my career would have to come first. And my quick-thinking and staying on my toes all day would do wonders for my calves—I would never have to go to the gym.

Well... and really take some time with that well. Drawl it out—a cross between a squealing pig and a Texan saying howdy to a lady. Well... guess how old I am now. I’m not going to say it, because you already know. You also know that I am not taking a thirty minute break from my oh-so-busy schedule to jot down some thoughts about my beginnings in the advertising world. I can say though, that I have not felt the need to go to the gym in months. I have grown quite accustomed to my bread loaf belly. However, my hair is still brown and most discouraging of all, I find it annoyingly difficult to be bitchy to people and not feel Toddler Guilt tugging at my arm afterwards. I feel like many things at 25—a loser, a princess, an oaf, a child (Toddler Guilt and I often have play-dates together), an idiot, a fool, a cynic, but I rarely, if ever, feel like an adult.

I must take a moment to make a confession which may actually be an indication of my wisdom. (Dare I presume I may hold one or two characteristics deemed adult in nature?) I am uncertain to whether this act, or any act, of confession is wise, but I am most certain, or at least hopeful, that this particular confession has potential to cause someone to believe in the Tinkerbell bits of wisdom I possess. Here goes... I’m really twenty-four as I write this. My Birthday isn’t for another three weeks. Please forgive me for misleading you, but this might not be last time I do so. Now the wisdom bit—you see, unlike when I was 13 and thought that one day I would magically become the incarnate of Heather Locklear the day I reached twenty-five, at present day, I feel so confident in the inaccuracy of said juvenile assumption that I write this three weeks prior to my actual 25th Birthday (whatever this may be—an admittance of failure, an exploration of my early obsession with Heather Locklear and Absolut Vodka ads, or a whiney note about my chubby thighs and lackadaisical fashion sense). At the risk of having to run a huge correction beside this piece due to the surprising call from the President of whatever agency handles the Abolut account, I will now continue.

If you might permit one more diversion—I have shared the beginning of this piece with a friend, myself finding it rather amusing, to receive nothing but silence at the reading of my precious paragraphs. I reread several phrases, telling my friend that they were funny, “I mean c’mon, that’s funny!” But he persistently disagreed. He cooed some compliments to which I paid no mind. After multiple failed attempts to prove the hilarity of my words, I stormed off to my bed and hid under the floral coverings. I threw some insults at my friend, whom I informed had little to no sense of what humor was, clearly. He didn’t seem all too affected which, to me, only proved his ignorance—he couldn’t even properly defend himself. I told him to leave me; I needed to cry for a while. I never did cry, eventually fell asleep, and no doubt had horribly, gruesomely cumbersome nightmares about betrayal and self-doubt. I woke up in a fog and begged my mind to permit thoughts of my overwhelming wit and humor as I stumbled to get ready for work. My mind decided to be cruel as well.

I began to suspect a conspiracy.

Today, things are a little less nasty and I only lightly sprinkled—dusted even—my friend with biting sarcasm. Without any clear understanding of how you may be reacting to this piece, I will write on leaving one last complaint in the jar: at least earlier, I could write under the illusion that I was being amusing. Now, my ego having suffered a blow, my comedic house of cards ravaged by a rotten smelling wind, I’m unsure how to continue.

I have confessed to you my true age, as well as, what some might see as my failure to attain my blond ambition. But have I told to what I’m doing now, or how I really feel about not having transformed into Heather Locklear? I feel relieved really. I find most advertisements cause me to feel nauseated due to their saturated stupidity. Imagine the horror on the collective face of the Absolut execs when instead of pitching a brilliant ad campaign, I pitch my masticated and half-digested chef salad (some vegetarian variation, with tofu and kidney beans) on the large oak round table in the meeting room. My past obsession with Absolut ads has been replaced several times by volleyball, knitting, French, guitar, drumming to name a couple more than a few. Of course, all of those obsessions have gone the way of the Absolut ads which I so meticulously collected as an early teen—they are all straining their way to biodegrading in a land fill somewhere.

I have thrown away my adolescent ambitions of Amanda style bitch-hood. As an older and (as concluded earlier) wiser woman in her twenties teetering on the edge of adulthood, I have chosen a much more appropriate idol. Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City” has much more depth. You must agree. So, when I turn thirty-five, I will be an established writer with a column of my own and receive several hefty advances for the witty novels I’ll write. From past experience, I know now not to expect to shrink five inches or to spontaneously acquire such an outrageous shoe collection, but I feel it perfectly reasonable to expect an Upper East Side apartment and a string of sexy man-friends to pop up on the horizon.

Part of me, perhaps my kidneys and the muscles in my left leg, feels as though I should turn my back on Carrie, write her character off of my life, and out of this story. Do I want you to believe that I have changed since I was thirteen years-old? Grown up even? Or do I want you to see that I am still holding on to some perky and trim and, most importantly, fictitious illusion of self? Since there is no need for a vote here, I say leave her in. Unfortunately for you, (or, are you feeling content with the shakes of my magic wand?) what I say goes around here. So, Carrie and her prancing and bouncing about New York (money worries, be damned in this hip fantasy) stay nestled in the forward part of my mind. That is the part that focuses on what is to be, mind you.

So everyone, place your bets and we shall see how well this new fantasy chapter of my life pans out. Currently, I have a Phoenix-studio-apartment, unpublished, awkward, sunflower-searching-for-sun life. I’ll get back to you in ten years (and three weeks).

Abigail Rothberg