got rice, bitch?

I sometimes get the sneaking suspicion that I will never be a grownup. I never really feel confident, or comfortable, in my adult-type activities. Paying bills feels like playing 'house.' I find myself on the verge of giggling during job interviews. I hand my driver's license to the grocery store clerk and feel as if I'm getting away with something when they let me buy beer. Dress shoes hurt my feet. Phone and insurance companies confound me; my current thesis concerning them is that such institutions exist in order to relieve you of money, large sums thereof, mostly at random (having this happen to you is just part and parcel of the Grownup Game...sort of like drawing a penalty card in Monopoly). The purpose and modus operandi of the DMV is similarly inexplicable. Politics seems to me like a farce, and the people who have anything emotionally invested in either the Democratic or Republican party are equivalent, in my mind, to partisans of American Idol participants. My past and future reside in strings of numbers kept in computer systems of dubious security and nebulous location. I have just created an IRA account, but I do not even have the foggiest notion of how the stock market works.

Because I am a clever lass, I can survive in this world; I cannot synthesize or understand it. I wish that I did not have to. I had rather hoped that adulthood would consist of quests and adventures, perils surmounted and companions rescued, civilizations founded and monuments rebuilt. The actual, mundane activities which accompany adult existence in the 21st century are more reminiscent of a surreal maze created by evil magicians.