Early Onset Adulthood

You know, I always somehow expect that there will be some kind of magical age where I will be a grown up, where I will wake up of a morning and think grown up type things, like, what do grown ups think about? Insurance, the colour beige? I dunno. But apparently twenty eight is not that age, as I woke up this morning and experienced my usual sequence of thoughts: "I don't want to go to school today -- you don't have to, idiot, you haven't been in school for years -- oh, great. Hey, is Doctor Who on tonight?" So, still not an adult, good to know.

Proper birthday celebrations are on hold because Tequila Boy's dad has had a heart attack (they say he'll be fine) but the Mr. and Mrs. Tequila Boy and my favourite people in the world and partying without them seems wrong. We met on the first day of university as we were all wandering around the campus looking for something to drink. Tequila Boy and I met in the long queue to get our student IDs, and afterwards our eyes met over our IDs while we where experiencing the thought of a thousand first year students: "If this is really what I look like then I can kiss goodbye to anyone ever having sex with me."

"Pint?" he said.

"I should bloody well think so," I said, so beginning a decade long friendship.

We met the future Mrs. Tequila Boy many hours later when Tequila Boy fell down a flight of stairs in the student bar -- something that had little or nothing to do with my pushing him -- and landed on her. See, it all worked out for the best.

Anyway. Birthday. I had a shift in the little shop this morning, and the other volunteers said that I should have asked to swap shifts if it was my birthday, but I don't think they know how much I appreciate the little shop. Like, people ask me if I wouldn't mind sweeping the stock room and I say "I'd be delighted, nothing would please me more," and people look at me strangely because I appear to be sincere. Then I nipped back to look in on my gran, apparently the house does not catch fire if I leave for a few hours, who knew?

Then presents were given. My sister gave me series 3 of Being Human DVD, thus making it worth my while to have sent her an e-mail saying: "It's my birthday next week, please get me the third series of Being Human on DVD." My mother gave me an easter egg that she'd bought when it was half price that she swears that she would have given me anyway, she'd just wrapped it up for a lark because it's my birthday. I expect my dad to turn up later and make awkward smalltalk and try to give me a cheque while not making it obvious that's he's trying to give me cheque, this is a procedure that normally takes several hours and a number of pints.

So as I had a free afternoon I spent much of it browsing in a bookshop, I managed to refrain from buying anything on the grounds that I have endless books, to the point where whenever I finish one I actually briefly fall into freefall panic about what I'm going to read next, still, it was lovely. Then Mrs. Tequila Boy came out to have a glass bottle of wine with me. You know, for reasons that I'm sure a trained psychologist could make much of, my closest friends have always been boys, and I have had much practice at drinking boy drinks, beer and whisky etc., with boys. It's easy, you have one drink, someone asks you if you'd like another, and then many hours later you find yourself going: "--Wednesday? It was Monday when I went out, what happened to Tuesday--?" It's direct. Much in the way that a kick in the head is direct. But wine, it's the only thing I've ever drank where the hangover kicks in before you've stopped drinking.

Still, maybe it's early onset adulthood?