For almost as long as I can remember, I've had this innate
fear of growing up. And no, I don't mean getting taller BUT if I could
have attained Shaquille O'Neal heights, just imagine what I could have
accomplished. No shelf would have ever been too high to reach the cookie
jar. Need a tall light bulb changed, I'm your man. I bet I could
even clean the gutters without the need of a ladder. I'm actually referring
to a fear of becoming a real adult.
Probably because as we all know, adulting is hard (in addition to not
being a real word). I'm biologically an
adult but sometimes feel as if I'm stuck in a loop of perpetual adolescence (as
are many other guys my age).
It's actually reached the point in time where it's invading
my dreams. Everyone remembers that dream
from their schooling days. The one where
you get to your class and it's test day.
Lo and behold, you neglected to prepare in the slightest and are
completely guaranteed to fail. To top it
all off, you also forgot your pants.
Believe it or not, I was still having this reoccurring nightmare within
the past year (It's now completely obvious to me just how much Mr. Gilbert
scarred me for life in college).
Now that I'm actually a parent, the dream has changed again;
it's morphed into something else. It's a
normal day. Ellie and I go to the
grocery store to pick up a few things.
The most important thing on the list however is milk. I push my cart up to the dairy section, park
it, and open the freezer door to reach in for my gallon of milk. I grab nothing but air. Stooping down to look, I see that the only
gallon of milk remaining is at the back of the freezer out of arms reach. With no other alternative, I basically thrust
myself into the freezer until I finally lay fingertips of my prize of bovine
goodness. With our shopping trip done,
(dream) Ellie and I head to the register.
It's there that I run into more problems. I hand the cashier my credit card to pay, she
swipes it and nothing happens. She then
tries again, again, and again. Nothing
happens. Finally, she calls the credit
card company. All while this is happening,
seventeen people are in line behind me, angrily waiting on the guy in his
pajama pants to check out. That's right,
pajama pants randomly appeared on me in this dream. Finally the transaction is completed, but
panic sets in. The baby is gone! I desperately look around for her only to
find that I put her on the conveyor belt with the rest of my groceries. She was scanned and bagged, a'la Maggie
Simpson but ultimately fine.
So why do I tell you this?
I think there's some significance here.
I've been doing this stay-at-home dad thing for four months and had big
plans for when it began. I was
committing to stay with Ellie for a year and use that time to figure out what
to do with the rest of my life. Now, I'm
basically in the same place that I started.
I don't really know what's next for me.
I have used the time to figure out what things interest me and what
things don't but find myself continually hampered by three questions. What if I don't succeed? What if I get embarrassed? What if I'm one of those people that's not
good at anything? The truth is that I
find myself at a crossroads right now. I
can take a risk and put myself in a position to succeed or fail. Or I can just admit failure upfront and never
even try to do something new. Which
would you do?
I think that ultimately adulting boils down to admitting that we are all in over our heads and we just need to make it up as we go. If that's the case, then I should have no problems right? Right? Isn't anyone going to reassure me now? LOL. #DaddyWrite
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