17 Answers To The Question “When Are You Going To Grow Up?”

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1. “As soon as someone starts paying me to do so, because as of right now people don’t seem terribly interested in paying me for much of anything.”

2. “Whenever an evening out is financially feasible enough for me on a regular basis that I don’t spend at least half the evening pregaming with friends at the apartment so as to limit our consumption of 10-dollar cocktails once at the bar. (Even though, sike, we always end up wasting money on alcohol when we’re under that hypnotic Pitbull music and strobe lighting.)”

3. “When spending an entire Sunday afternoon curled up in a ball with my laptop under several blankets, escaping only to go purchase the largest box of Chicken McNuggets available and promptly return, stops being my favorite leisure time activity.”

4. “When something starts hurting enough that all I can hear is a repeated ‘Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.’ in my head and I finally force myself to go to the doctor for a much-delayed checkup.”

5. “As soon as things stop being so dream-crushingly expensive.”

6. “Whenever my friends decide to do it first, but I feel it’s safe to say we’re not in danger of that happening any time soon. I don’t know if you’ve met them, but at least three still occasionally make bowls out of tin foil when in a pinch, so I feel pretty good about myself in comparison.”

7. “At the magical moment when kale and flax seed oil stop tasting like decay, and I actually enjoy eating all of the myriad super-healthy foods that I know is the secret key to having perfect skin, silky hair, and limitless energy.”

8. “When I am able to navigate a grocery store with a sense of direction and purpose, and am not constantly distracted by the trans-fat laden monstrosities that seem to be calling my name from every direction, a siren song of Funyuns and Swiss Cake Rolls.”

9. “When I stop looking up at the tabs I have open to realize that three of them are Tumblr, one of them is Facebook, and one of them is a form I’m supposed to fill out that I have had open and untouched for about four days.”

10. “As soon as flossing seems like a reasonable activity to voluntarily engage in with regularity.”

11. “Whenever many of the authority figures in my life stop identifying “growing up” by standards that are either logistically not possible for me or don’t interest me at all, such as buying a house, working an office job, or getting married.”

12. “When this question stops being super disingenuous and condescending.”

13. When the idea of committing myself to things — whether a job or a city or another human being — for my entire life stops seeming extremely scary and an odd thing for someone my age to do. When the adorability of the place settings on Pinterest outweigh my fundamental skepticism of marriage as an institution.”

14. “As soon as I start to identify more with the grown-ups in the cereal commercial, as opposed to their carefree, skateboarding children. Which I hope will never happen.”

15. “Whenever people at the bank stop treating me with a palpable air of ‘You’re not quite a full person yet, but maybe someday! Keep trying.'”

16. “Whenever songs such as ‘Tootsie Roll’ and ‘Come On Ride The Train’ stop having such a profound effect over me, a fugue state akin to being under a witch’s spell that makes me flail around like a dying trout in-between bleats of ‘OH MY GOD THIS SONG!'”

17. “When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then I will grow up, and not before.”

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