Permission and Poodles

Being an adult is weird. As a kid, I did, indeed, have to ask my mom's permission to do the big stuff--go out of town with a friend and her family, go to Tallahassee on a date, but more often, I didn't have to ask permission to, well, anything else. I didn't have to tell my mom if I was going over to my friend Liz's after work, if I was going to eat dinner at the neighbors, or if I wanted to cut off all my hair and wear red lipstick at the age of 14. As long as I eventually came home at least once a day, my mom was satisfied.

Now, before everyone thinks my mom is an uninvolved crazy lady, I have to say that I grew up on plantation land, with several other families, as my friends and I would run around the woods and dirt roads until we have to, inevitably and expectedly, go to our respective homes. And, yes, occasionally our shenanigans spread beyond the Georgia clay roads, and when I stared taking an interest in the neighborhood boys, so came the red lips. (Note: red lips do not, indeed, make a chubby girls with glasses and a headgear more appealing.)

But now that I am an adult--well, now that I am financially independent--it feels icky. Being "an adult" is not something you grant to yourself. Being an adult has more to do with others giving you the authority that is given to other adults. I find myself sitting, intently trying to conjure up some gleam of a lost memory from when I was a kid. I find myself standing in the shower, forgetting about the shampoo afro I've been sudsing up, as I make failed attempts to piece together sequences of times and spaces from when I was little.

I never wanted to grow up. I was never one of those kids that always wished of being an adult. I liked my mom doing my laundry, cleaning my room, and making my meals. When I came to college, my mom and I had our worst fight ever--a fight about why I, as I explained to her, was not moving out. I remember being so mad at her when I had to live by myself. I didn't call her for three days.

I suppose the icky-ness of adulthood, for me, is that I do not know what being an adult means. It doesn't mean "permission" to do whatever, since for me permission is, often, something asked for out of politeness--in which case, permission is superseded by action, meaning we know what is right and wrong in most cases.

My mom always talked to me like I was an adult--she knew I knew better when I screwed up, so there was no lesson to learn, just me experiencing the repercussions for whatever I did. (Example: I shaved the neighbors poodle because I wanted to see if I could be a dog groomer. When the stylistically mutilated dog returned home, the neighbors called my mom. Since I did not dispose of the evidence--the large cotton-ball puffs of hair--in the bathroom's trash can, my mom knew I was to blame. So, I have to walk to the neighbors and handed over a couple months of yard work allowance. I didn't learn a lesson, really, because I knew, before shaving the dog, that I shouldn't do it; I should ask for permission. But I was positive I could make the dog look better than it did. Somehow I've managed to mangle permission, disillusion, and arrogance. Ha!)