The First One

I’m finally at the point in my life in which I feel like I’m old enough to be at the Adult Table this Thanksgiving. This is a pretty big deal – all my life I’ve been the baby of the family and felt like the baby. 

My sister, cousins and I spent years at the lower table with its plastic silverware and pre-cut turkey strips. And one by one, they each graduated to the Table of Mysteries, leaving me alone with my thoughts and a wine glass filled with milk. One at a time, we lost one of our own to the mystical world of adult words. And now, I can feel it - it’s my turn.

I used to be the fun one people came to play hide and seek with when they became bored of their adult conversations about corn futures and hedge funds. My only responsibility included caring for thirty-five cents to buy milk at lunch. Yet, I was always curious as to what I was missing. What were the mysterious Adult Table conversation words that emerged through the Mario Bros theme song? FICA, lo-cal, escrow, stock options? What was going on over there?

I wish they had told me how uninteresting FICA was earlier on. Unfortunately, far too late, I realized that the adult world and all of its adult words are completely boring. I’m job-hunting, networking, worrying about the economic crisis, and trying to finish my insane course schedule while waitressing to pay bills before my head goes kaboom. I’m an adult, using (mostly) adult words. Therefore, by my Thanksgiving table logic, I’m boring.

So, I am taking this opportunity to start a blog. I will do it to protect my sanity from my recent revelation, the Adult Table and the real world of responsibility. The cardinal rules we learned in kindergarten about sharing fingerpaint seem murky when the world turns upside down at the quarterlife crisis, and the only way to keep my head, I’ve found, is to narrarate my findings. Wish me luck.

 Best,
Laura Wolf