Looking over previous entries, I realized I’ve written a lot about insurance lately. It’s still something that seems strange to me. You’d think, at almost 22, I would feel more adult – more initiated into that world. But I don’t. I feel there are still some occult secrets, like insurance quotes, tax forms, credit cards, car ownership, and so on, that I haven’t been let in on yet. I just got my all-important sideways driver’s license the other day. Is that my pass?
One of my dearest friends moved to New York City five or six months ago. That seems frightening, like throwing yourself into the adult baptismal pool where you must learn the secrets immediately, be baptized in adulthood, and emerge shining, a golden Adult. She’s just a year older than I am. Maybe she’ll pass the handbook down to me when she’s done memorizing it.
I’m not afraid of very many things, I think. I’m not afraid to be a starving artist, for instance. I’m not afraid to travel abroad, like my roommate is. And though I said my friend’s move to NYC sounds scary, I don’t mean in the sense that I wouldn’t do it myself. There are just these things to learn, and you don’t quite know how to learn them, and what if you overlook something? What if you get car insurance and home insurance but forget about some other important kind of insurance, like the health insurance? What if there’s something you just don’t know about at all? My friend says both he and his parents didn’t know that you could take out loans to go to school, and that’s why he ended up at the University of Pittsburgh – he thought he just flat-out couldn’t afford anything more expensive.
That is scary to think about: that there might be a time when you, as a golden Adult, don’t know something that Adults are Supposed To Know. Like about loans for college. Or what if you didn’t pay your taxes right, or on time, or whatever, not out of negligence, but just because you didn’t know?
No wonder my NYC friend is taking such a long time with that handbook.
