The Great Swindle

I've already talked about getting older. This is different. Sort of. But yesterday at work, I had a moment where I felt like I have pulled the wool over the collective eyes of the world. An epiphany, if you will. I've tricked people into believing I'm someone else. Someone...responsible. An adult.

You see, despite my argument that video games have become the pastime of grownups, I still don't feel like one. I'm the same goofy kid that attempted to steal a trash can from the local mall. That's right, a trash can! We'll talk about that some other time. Maybe.

But my point is, I still laugh at farts. C'mon, they're funny! I still laugh at jokes concerning most bodily functions and, hell I'll say it, body parts. If someone says something that is completely innocuous but can be turned into a double entendre, I do it in a heartbeat. The other night at dinner, my former roommate's fiance said, in front of him and me, that she didn't like sucking. I'll leave it to you to imagine what our reactions were. I find it difficult to take anything seriously. I'm one of the most sarcastic people you'll ever meet. If someone leaves me an opportunity to turn something they said into an insult against them, I usually do it without thinking. Seriously, it's gotten me in trouble at times. I'm a kid.

So, all of this and I've somehow managed to con people into thinking that I am some responsible citizen who can be trusted with all kinds of stuff. I stood up from my desk at work yesterday and looked around the office and realized that I don't just have a job, I have what's turning into a career. I've been there for two and a half years. In that time, I've received one promotion and I'll hopefully be getting another one in the next year or two. I get paid a decent amount of money to do what I do. Not great money, but decent enough for a guy without a college degree. Not only that, but they've given me pretty high access to information that is sensitive. Social Security Numbers and income levels and all that. If I were a dishonest individual, I could do some bad things. Hell, a few months ago a bank decided to give me $100,000 to buy a house! Me! That's a lot of money.

So I'm slowly being surrounded by all this evidence that I'm becoming a responsible adult and I can't help but feel like I've fooled everyone. It's surreal, in a way.

Will this feeling ever go away? I suppose that it does for some people. Maybe most people. But it's hard to imagine not ever feeling like this. If I do ever get married, I can see myself still feeling this way about everything but then just adding the question, How did I ever trick this poor woman into believing that I'm marriage material? I can see myself with a kid and thinking, Who decided that it would be a good idea to let me be involved in the raising of a human life?

And I can for damn sure see myself at 70 years old, laughing uncontrollably at my own farts. Which, at that age, will probably be just as uncontrollable as the laughing.