Image from someecards.com
Last week, I finally started to feel like a grown up. And it wasn’t because I’d moved out of home (9 months ago), it wasn’t because I started nine to five life (13 months ago) and it wasn’t because I’d finally figured out how to wear bronzer without looking like an orang-utan (2 weeks ago. Shh.). No, last week the big event that woke me up to being an actual functioning adult was this: my Nectar card arrived.
Ok, let me preface this post by saying that this blog has not been sponsored by Sainsbury’s, or the Nectar card people (though guys, do feel free to throw some dollah or some free brioche my way). Nope, I’m writing it because getting my Nectar card genuinely made me realise I am actually an adult. A useful(ish) member of society. A real, working person. An grown up, capable of earning her own moolah, running a business, and (one day, hopefully) making other mini adults.
Woah*. Woah. It only seems like yesterday that I was playing Stingray in a muddy backgarden** , when my biggest fear about growing up was that I wouldn’t know how to pay bills. I guess I never quite envisaged the having-a-job bit of adult life, but still. Now I pay about ten different bills every month. By direct debit. On time.
I suppose being an adult has been creeping up on me for a little while now. Everything I’ve done up till now has just felt like the next natural step. There was never a moment where I lept off the barge labelled ‘childhood’ and landed on the iceflow of ‘young adulthood’. I don’t know what I was expecting. We’re not the sort of culture that parties at your first period, so there’s never been an opportune moment to say oh hai, you’re an adult now.
So yes, the Nectar card. As someone that now shops at Sainsbury’s, I get asked on a weekly basis if I have a Nectar card. I have always said no, and waved it off casually. A couple of weeks ago, the same happened but I suddenly thought, NO. I don’t have a Nectar card, but I could have one. And I asked the man how to get one. It had never occurred to me that I could actually have my own, probably because none of my family has ever had one. And it was this moment that made me realise, WOAH. I am totes my own person. I am totes an adult with her own independent means and financials. I am totes capable of having my own Nectar card without first asking for the advice or permission of an elder. YE GADS, I am going to take this Nectar card and I am going to RULE THE WORLD.
Ok. Perhaps a slight exaggeration. I mean I coped just fine with my Boots card, obtained aged 14 (thank you Boots, for keeping me in Lancôme). I have coped just fine with debit cards, credit cards, railcards, library cards, that little card that tells me my NI number. But I think the Nectar card, being brand new Fryer territory, had just eluded me. Shrouded in mystery, it remained something I’d never really considered getting. And yet now, as a normal (!) functioning human, I have claimed my right to go where no Fryer has ever gone before.
So I’m finally starting to realise that I’m an adult now. An adult that enjoys Disney movies and owns High School Musical socks, but an adult nonetheless. And it’s kind of marvellous. I’m not ready to have a house and 2.4 children, but I’m ready to poke my nose into the real world. Who knows, I might get a pony or a Vespa next.
~
*’woah’ is actually a common mispelling of the exclamation ‘whoa’, but I think that looks funny, so I’m sticking with my version.
**not a euphemism. Behave.