Being a Grownup: Not Always Worth the Hype

I have tried, on several occasions, to get this idea across to my eldest granddaughter. But her nine-year-old (ten in two days) self can't wrap her head around it. Like most kids her age, she's in a big hurry to grow up. Sometimes she points out my physical flaws -- to be helpful, I think. And I tell her that everything she sees on my will one day happen to her. On the day of my mom's funeral, I told her I had to shave because I hadn't since I'd been there (at that point, about three weeks). Seriously, what was the point; it was about 0 degrees outside and I was wearing a lot more clothes than I'm accustomed to. Anyway, she said, "Man, I know! Look at your arms!" Okay, I was talking about my legs. What can I say? I'm Italian. But I've never shaved my arms, and they're really not as bad as she made it sound. She will have it worse than I do in that regard; I am Irish and Italian, while she is Irish, Italian, and Greek. That's a lot of "hairitage".

But I digress. Back to being a grownup . . . I have been sick all day with what I guess is the flu. I had an eight-hour shift of scoring, and less than two hours in, I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it. So I kept setting one- o two-hour goals. If I can make it to noon, I can stop. If I can make it to two, I can stop. Each time one of my goals came along, I would tell myself I could do one more hour. At the end of my second (and last) break, it was 3:30. I really wanted to stop, but I told myself I'd be a big wussy-girl if I didn't make it through the last hour and a half. Not wanting to be a big wussy-girl, I completed my shift. What's weird is that I cared more about bailing on my employer than I did about my pay. It's big-volume essay time, and the company is swamped. I thought about what would happen if even a fourth of scorers cut their shifts short, and I decided I wasn't going to be one of them. (I do have to admit here that while everyone in the scoring pool is getting shifts now, I'm sure that in leaner times, scheduling is based at least somewhat on performance. So it wasn't an entirely altruistic act to finish my shift.)

Now I can take my sick, sneezing, coughing, fevered self over to the sofa and rest for the evening. I'll be back at it tomorrow morning, and of course I had to write my blog post first, but for now I have nothing to do except kick back and try to get well. Overall, I'm quite pleased with myself for sticking it out. Being a grownup isn't always fun, but it does have certain rewards.