As my social media cohort was preparing it’s post-holiday back to work hustle, there was much bemoaning the required wearing of garments that were not pajamas. This was often punctuated by a wail against “adulting.”

adulting (v): to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups.–Urban Dictionary

To be or not to be, an adult. Hmmm. When did being an adult become a verb about acting in the manner of an adult?

Is this part of the ever expanding adolescence wherein adolescence is the time between childhood and adulthood? Does it not end? Or is the current fashion for folks to just play like they are adults without accepting that they, indeed, have crossed that threshold.

I remember when I knew I was an adult. It was the day me and my friend went into Brookstone. We sat on the massage chairs then gravitated to the air hockey table. The table was powered up. There were pucks and strikers. We looked at each other and grabbed the strikers and went about playing air hockey in the store. We were quite raucous. The puck went airborne, flying across the store.

Nobody stopped us. We kept playing. I kept waiting. But nobody stopped us, because maybe we might buy that $800 table. Because we were adults.

No way were we going to buy that thing. I loved being an adult. Not acting like one, though.

I’m keeping adult as a noun. Perhaps, though, there are other worlds that I would be happy to verb.