Return to Sender: Growing Pains

Dear Everyone (again):

Graduation is ten days away, and suddenly it’s hit me: I graduate from Penn and I am, in many senses of the word, a grownup. I’m the oldest child in my family, and growing up, I was often referred to as the “little grownup,” but now I’m a big (well, 5’2”) grownup. Things that have led me to this conclusion:

• I’ve already hit the eighteen (now I’m a legal adult and I can buy cigarettes and porn and get conscripted into the army if they reinstate the draft and start looking toward women) and twenty-one (now I can drink legally what I’ve been drinking illegally for years) marks. The only milestone I’ve got left is twenty-five (now I can rent a car).
• That’s actually a lie, because most car rental companies will allow me to rent a car if I pay a nominal under-twenty-five fee. Plus there’s always Philly Car Share. Or U-Haul.
• The few things I can’t actually do at my age all involve holding political office. And since you couldn’t pay me enough to do that, I’m pretty much done with the special birthdays.
• I’ve been paying my own bills, one way or another, for the last four years. And I’m about to start paying student loans, which are the new black of mortgage payments. (In my hometown, you could literally buy a three bedroom house for less than what I owe to Penn.)
• When I’m out with my young cousins, I’m often mistaken for the mother. Which isn’t a sign of being a grownup, so much as it’s a sign of being old enough to have children – but in my formative years, I was taught that the two go hand-in-hand.

But here’s the thing. I think I’m going to run away to Never-Never Land. Or Toys ’R’ Us. Because I do not want to, am not ready to, grow up. Being a grownup snuck up on me – it just happened. Nobody asked me. I can tell I’m in denial about the whole process because two weeks ago, I took a much-needed one a.m. break from writing my thesis and turned on the television. Two hours later, I not only thought that National Lampoon’s Van Wilder was the greatest movie ever made (I even thought Tara Reid was good in it), I thought that movie had been made for me. It spoke to me. I was tired, but dead sober, and I was certain that it was my purpose in life to figure out how to stay at Penn another three years, student loans be damned. Never mind that Van Wilder eventually saw the folly of his ways and graduated – I just wanted the life in the first half of the movie, a sort of campus equivalent of Cheers, a school where everybody knows your name – and where the booze and sex are consistent and available.

Unfortunately, a quick glimpse at my transcript told me what I feared: I’d already met the graduation requirements. A year ago. Even if I failed every class for the semester (which would have been nearly impossible, given my class schedule), I’d still have to walk with the other Penn English majors and have someone who is supposed to be important but who I’ve never seen or heard of hand me my diploma. I would not be Penn’s female Van Wilder. Which, in retrospect, is probably for the best, since I don’t really drink beer, a fact that keeps me out of the competition for who can do the best keg stand.

And so, come hell or high water, I’m graduating. And I will instantly go from “full-time student” to “unemployed grownup.” It’s going to be official. To the rest of the world – and to the IRS – I am supposed to do for myself. But I don’t want to, and I’m not prepared to. I’m just hoping Tinkerbell comes to save me before May 15.

Seaver family portrait courtesy of the TV Acres Growing Pains site.