The 37 Steps to Becoming an Adult

One of the perks of being a high school teacher is the opportunity to interact with students as they are undergoing dramatic changes in their awareness of what it means to be a functioning member of society. While at younger ages, they are learning vital lessons such as "no, don't kick the bouncy ball at Suzy" and "Yes, you must share the colored pencils with Mark", in high school, students realize that there is more to the world than the playground that surrounds them. With that added world comes added skills that need to be learned. As you learn more and more, the definition of what it means to be an adult changes.

There are numerous books and resources out there on what it means to be an adult. There are legal definitions, and those get murky too. A google search for "steps to being an adult" comes up with lists with 5, 9, 10 and 468 steps. I say that there is one true definitive step.

Despite what Napoleon Dynamite would have you believe, one of the steps of being an adult is not being able to bake a cake.

While cake baking is a good skill to have, it won't necessarily win the ladies over, and doesn't make you an adult.

In considering what it takes to be an adult, some lists would include being 18, having a driver's license, voting, moving out of your parents' place, having a kid, paying bills, and others.

In place of that list, I offer one thing that you need to do to be considered an adult: own furniture.

It doesn't matter where the furniture is from- it can be from your neighbor's garage sale, a high end retailer of fancy futons, or from a swedish superstore. 

As mentioned in the previous post, my roommate moved out, and he owned all the furniture. This meant that if I didn't want to sit on the floor while I watched the warriors games, I had to do some shopping.

Owning furniture gives the implication of possessing other qualities, possessions, and characteristics that can deem one to be an adult. These include, but are not limited to the list outlined below:

1) Having your own space. This allows some privacy. As a kid, you never knew when your parents would swoop in, demand that you clean your room and take out the trash. With your own space, you can have it be as messy or as clean as you want. And furnish it how you want.

2) Having a job. If you can afford to have your own space and possess furniture, then you probably have a job.

3) Having close friends.

While you could call upon professional movers to carry all of your stuff, your friends will work for less than what you would pay a mover. I called upon three of my friends to lift a heavy couch 15 feet of the ground onto my porch to fit it into my apartment because it wasn't going to fit through the front door. It took us three hours to move it from San Francisco to Oakland. As my friend put it after I thanked him for his help, "we did epic shit. I should be thanking you."  I am very grateful to have friends like this. 

So while you may be 18, have voted, had an alcoholic beverage, you've done nothing until you have owned a coffee table.

After a few trips around the bay area to various stores, and buying items off of craigslist, my apartment now looks like this:

And that is Mr. John Savage to you.

On a side note, if you know anyone that needs a roommate, send them my way.