Oh NO

I used to think that owning an umbrella meant I was a grown-up.

In my defense, it was an extremely rad umbrella: an impressively spring-loaded implement in a mature, steely-gray.  I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a whole essay about it (for fun, by the way, just on my computer one day. Aside from being stupid, I was also a mega-dork. Not like now, when I write in a BLOG which is so very very different from an essay in a Word Doc.). I loved this umbrella so much, that I had a recurring nightmare that it would be taken from me at an airport security gate, robbing me of my very obvious super-adulthood.

Eventually, I realized that when you eat all of your meals in a cafeteria - and two-thirds of said meals consist of cereal and soft-serve ice cream - you are not an adult. But the foolishness did not end there.

I then moved on to thinking that cleaning your own bathroom (occasionally) marked the true gateway to adulthood. I laughed at my former, umbrella-revering self as I swept the tiles of the sorority house bathroom. Of course, that was also the period of my life when I thought that building wizard staffs from cans of cheap beer and then puking into bushes was a great way to spend my Saturday nights. This made me a TOTALLY FUN (well, until the puking) person, but maybe not a particularly grown-up-type person.

Now, though, I think I have cracked the true code of adulthood: I have run out of things to be angry about. The magic of youth, wherein I could rattle off 300 word tirades about a new HORRIBLY STUPID THING THAT SHOULD NEVER EXIST each week, has scattered like a pile of glitter confetti in a windstorm (or some other sad simile...). I have left that magical land behind and zoomed straight to old-crotchety-person-who-complains-about-the-same-thing-over-and-over-again-hood.

And you, dear reader, are left saying, "Yes, Great Auntie Thelaurenbell, we know the New York Times is full of idiots - you told us that 800 times!" and "People are annoying! Especially when they are doing crazy math and somehow 4 of them manage to take up 10 subway seats! Yes! Is it time for your nap?" 

So here's the thing: how to reclaim that halcyon era when, every time I left my house, a new thing so enraged me that I had to scream it to the Internets? Is there a magical fountain of youth anger out there somewhere? Do I just have to start leaving my house more? Or (NO!) reading the Times again (I tried this morning - all I could get out of it was, "The French don't keep statistics on race? Umm...what? That seems silly." Silly! That's the best I could do!)?

This is what it means to be old. The sitcoms tell me that, usually, when people get old and boring, they lose interest in sex and going out to dinner, thus leading to hilarious, half-hour-long standoffs with their significant others. For me, the issue is far more personal, and more grave. Dinner? Sex? PSHAW - where is my righteous indignation?

I stopped caring about real-life, so now I have to care about blog life again

Hey! Remember that time I had a blog? And it was so funny and witty and everyone loved it and read it every day? That was fun!

But then I discovered the sordid pleasures of TV and yoga and eating dinner while sitting -- with people! -- instead of hunched over at my desk (I guess technically still sitting), and the whole enterprise went to HELL. I apologize.

Now, though, I have a dog -- a furry poop machine of my very own -- and I cannot be bothered with "people" or "exercising" or "actually putting on clothes before walking into broad daylight."

Today, which was only day three of the Great Puppy Experiment, I left my apartment at 6:30 in the morning wearing flipflops, my boyfriend's old basketball shorts and a tank top that was not built to withstand the harsh rays of the sun. I actually spoke with another human being looking that, while holding a massive handful of steaming dog poo. No, no, I haven't lost all shame -- it has been ripped from me like the arm of a medieval torture victim (you know, when they do that thing with the horses running in different directions? no?), and I will never get it back.

That's okay, though. If there's one thing I have learned from perusing the World Wide Web, it's that shame can only hold you back. Now that I no longer care about real-life, I can focus all my efforts on the secret, sexy life of Internet superstarletawesomeperson thelaurenbell. You're welcome.