Lessons on being an adult

Learning what it means to be an adult

Yesterday morning my youngest son was filling out yet another form for his new job when he said, “I want all this annoying stuff to be done, so I can just enjoy life.”

I thought about that for a moment and told him that that is what life is all about.  “Life is a balance of mostly good stuff, we hope, but the annoying stuff has a place too and figuring out how to deal with it is part of being an adult.”

“Hhmmphh,” he muttered.

“You’ve just had a run of the good stuff: graduating from college, passing your board certification, getting the job you wanted.  You’ve got a great girlfriend and just bought a car.  But along with all of that, come the bills, the minutiae of filling out forms, getting insurance, dealing with bureaucratic incompetency.  You’ll get the hang of it – you have to be patient.”

I’m not sure he was convinced, but it quieted him down.

Last night when he came home from work there were two pieces of mail waiting for him:  one in the “enjoy life” category and the other in the “super annoying” category.  One was to tell him he had made a mistake on his tax return and was owed money – “Yes!”  The other was a traffic ticket, caught on camera, complete with a video link to watch the offense – “Make the annoying stuff stop, please!”

Oh well… he’ll learn.  We’ve all been there.