YoungArts

 People seem to think it’s weird that I’m still hanging around here. “When are you leaving?” they keep asking, my parents’ friends, my old teachers, my younger sister, as she enters my room to take dimensions of her future mega-closet. I guess this is just the latest of the string of questions that inevitably accompany any major rite of passage. I managed to pass off the first ten years worth to my parents (“Is that a boy or a girl?”), and the last of them will probably go to my children (“Cedar or oak?”) but for the next few decades, I’ve resigned myself to having to answer the myriad cocktail-party questions. “Where are you working?” “Still living with your parents?” “How are you still single?!”

I leave for college on the 28^th of August, which feels alternatively like five minutes and five million years away. As I write this, it is in fact in eight days, which is weird to wrap my head around, and also sort of meaningless because when I get there, the clocks will invariably be set back to day one. This is a major rite of passage we’re talking about, after all.  All of my friends are freaking out to some degree or another. Everybody I know is riotously excited about going to his or her respective school, but it’s still scary. Starting fresh, after all, brings up it’s own string of questions, from the frighteningly ontological to the paint-dryingly mundane. “Where’s the Laundromat?” “It’s due tomorrow?” “WILL YOU PLEASE BE MY FRIEND?”

Everybody is finding their own way of dealing with their anxiety, but my strategy has turned out to be shopping. It’s great, because it lets me hold on to the hope that total comfort and confidence is merely one purchase away! I KNOW that I’ll feel ready for college after I’ve gotten some new socks, or some new shampoo, or a set of pencils with Jack Sparrow on them. What kind of an irresponsible student goes up to school without a blue wig for costume parties, anyway? A dumb one, that’s what kind.

The up and up has been that my stuff doesn’t fit in my suitcase, my parents are forbidding me to spend any more money, and the blue wig turned out to be too flammable to safely keep in my dorm room anyway. The only solution left for me seems to be emotional maturity, which is obviously way less fun than retail therapy, but what can a budding adult do? I’ve registered to vote, and I’ve gotten my driver’s license, and I’m practicing tying my own shoelaces and eating solid foods. The next great phase of my life is barely a week away. It’s time to start finding some answers.

Blog By: Phoebe Nir: 2010 YoungArts Winner in Writing/Short Story and

Presidential Scholars in the Arts.