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How I REALLY Became an Adult

How I REALLY Became an Adult

Last updated on: September 18, 2010 at 10:34 am by John Shore

How I REALLY Became an Adult 2010-09-18T10:34:18-08:00 John Shore

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Oh, look. Weather.

Yesterday I tweeted (okay, no grown person should ever have to use the phrase “I tweeted”) this: “No summer in San Diego this year. Already much colder than usual. Anticipating snowmen and dissociative disorder.”

Ah, Tweeting. It’s like the … hyper-nervous twitch of writing.

It should be called twitching.

What was I talking about before my twitchy-tweetery brain kicked in?

Oh right. The weather.

As a kid I knew I had a very great deal to learn about the myriad weirdo ways of adults. But of all the things about adults that for the life of me I simply could not fathom—the way they dressed, how they could stand to watch televised news without croaking from boredom, why they so rarely laughed, etc.—the thing I most couldn’t understand was how they could possibly spend so much of their time talking about the freakin’ weather.

Weather! You look outside (or—heaven forfend if you’re an adult—actually go outside)—and there it is. The weather. That’s it. That’s the weather. It’s over. You’ve seen it. What in the name of stale Cracker Jacks was there left to talk about?

At first, I thought adults were being majorly humorous when they talked with each other about the weather. I thought they were being funny about trying to be as boring as humans could possibly be.

One of them would sort of gaze around at the sky, and then say, “Seems to me it’s been getting a little cooler in the morning lately.”

And I’d just about fall to the floor laughing. “That guy’s nailing it,” I’d think. “You can’t get any more boring than that! Perfect!” Just cracked me up.

Then the other guy (ignoring me, as adults always seemed to, thank God) would go, “It has been getting cooler in the mornings. Do you know I heard it might rain sometime next week?”

And I’d be all “Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing me!” And I’d think those were two of the funniest people on earth.

As time went by, though, I began to understand that when adults talked with each other about the weather, they were being the opposite of funny. They were actually and truly talking about the weather.

As I grew older I came to understand much of the adult world: how to drive a car, why you had to have and keep a job, why getting an envelope in the mail with your name on it isn’t necessarily the most exciting development in the world. But the last thing about the adult world to make sense to me—the mystery that (as it turns out) lasted the longest—was how adults could so consistently consider the weather a topic worthy of conversation. All the other mysteries about adult life eventually settled into answers. But, weirdly, that one never did.

Until yesterday, that is.

It’s a whole new world for me now. For verily did I, about the weather, make a Tweet.

****

Come, let us bore ourselves together. Join my fan page.

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