“Welcome to adulthood!”I told my 19-year-old daughter yesterday as she waited in line in a bank with a migraine. She had just told me, “I can’t believe how stressful it is,” referring to what it takes to rent a great apartment in a hurry in concert with two other roommates and all the paperwork required (six applications — one for each roommate and their parents).
We had been frenetically racing through phone calls, banks, websites and the like to figure out how to get cash to her for an application fee for an apartment while coordinating with her friends, all their parents, the rental office of the apartment, and a 9 a.m. next day deadline. It took hours, many phone calls, dozens of texts, some scanning of documents, faxing, and money moving magic (after discovering there is truly no way for me to wire her money without driving 40 miles first).
I wish I could say something more hopeful, but the truth is that adulthood contains many such moments of overly-complex, rushed tedious tasks that will throw your plans and your life into a tizzy if not done now and right. One of my friends puzzles over why the top soil ordered didn’t arrive. Another struggles through the sudden loss of vehicle in a city hundreds of miles from home.
Yet another has to spend an hour on the phone to get removed from a monthly charge for skin products she never intended to buy. Let’s face it: this part of adulthood sucks. There’s phone calls that require 20 minutes of pushing various buttons to get to a human who then says she’s sorry, but she can’t solve the problem you’re having. There’s important papers that don’t arrive on time. There’s disappearing bills that resurface with verve. And there’s a whole lot of long-winded wrangling to be done on tedium.
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