Well, it’s been an interesting weekend. On Saturday, Cindy and I planned on going to dinner and catching a movie at the Varsity Theatre. I met her around 6:15, and everything went well – dinner tasted good and the movie was enjoyable – until we got back to my car and the doors wouldn’t unlock. I sighed, thinking the battery in my remote opener must have died, and unlocked the doors manually. We got in and I turned the key in the ignition… and nothing happened. A dead battery, I thought to myself, and I got out of Elliott and noticed his headlights were dimly lit. That’s odd… I know I turned them off before going to meet Cindy… I got back inside and double checked, and sure enough, my headlights were turned off. This worried me a little.
I called Tyler and Grace, and they came out to give me a jump. Of course, none of us had ever actually jumped a car, so it took us a while to set up. After charging Elliott, nothing happened. Nothing! I called my dad and he told me to take the battery out of my car and get a new one. Laughing, I asked him how he expected any of us to do that, with no knowledge of the process nor any tools to accomplish it.
We ended up calling campus security, who came out and tried to jump start me again. Once again, it failed. However, this time, Elliott’s headlights came back on and his windshield wipers turned on. Both of these were turned off, so I got a little more worried. My poor Elliott was terribly sick! I’d have to have him towed! Expenses started lining up in my mind, and I just wanted to go home and sleep.
Being an “adult” is often not very fun. If I’ve learned one thing about it since moving out on my own, it’s that adults don’t actually know much about life. They just go out and live it, and flounder around like middle schoolers trying to act cool and collected. The difference is that as an adult, you’re expected to figure things out for yourself. I have to say, I’m darned glad I’m not a parent, because if I had someone relying on me to support him or her not just financially and emotionally, but also knowledgeably, I’d fail miserably.
“’There are three thousand four hundred and twelve books here,’ Gordy said. ‘I know that because I counted them.’
‘Okay, now you’re officially a freak,’ I said.
‘Yes, it’s a small library. It’s a tiny one. But if you read one of these books a day, it would still take you almost ten years to finish.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.’”
- excerpt from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
It’s easy as an adult to look around and feel sorry for yourself, to put off paying your bills because you don’t have the energy or the funds, to go out and buy artery-clogging fast food instead of taking the time to cook a meal for yourself. But these things are neither responsible nor do they instill happiness in one’s life. Most people don’t know what they’re doing most of the time, and a lot of people are unhappy with their lives. Are these two ideas connected? Maybe. I don’t know.
