Column Eva: ‘Adulthood is something that just slips in’

Now I’m twenty-six, I like to eat easy casseroles and I think seafood is too expensive. I prefer to be in bed at ten o’clock at night and the money I earn goes straight to fixed costs and a piggy bank ‘for when the washing machine breaks down’, as befits a real adult. I don’t know where exactly it started that the dream of staying over with friends every night turned into reading in bed every night – adulthood is something that slips in accidentally, like a cold on holiday – but suddenly you no longer send text messages to friends when you’re together. eat.

Suddenly, on a sunny Saturday morning, you feel like cleaning the windows. Suddenly, cliques aren’t boring, but a true gift from yesterday-you to today-you. And suddenly the washing machine actually breaks down and you are still satisfied with yourself even if you use that piggy bank for a new one, with a steam function and an I’m-done song that you can choose yourself. And are you, like my friend and I last week, nodding with our hands on our hips in front of your new washing machine, saying things to each other like: ‘What a beautiful thing, isn’t it’ (me) and ‘This machine is life-changing’ (he , Yes really).

We had just returned from a long trip through Asia, which we paid for with our adult money and during which we could decide for ourselves what time we went to bed. It was one of those journeys that you make ‘while you still can’, before expensive houses and expensive children come along. On one of those travel nights we went out. We used to drink vodka in the hotel room, put on heavy perfume, shake our asses to obscure hits and then hit the town. Or not.

It used to be just a few years earlier. Before corona I was still a teenager, now I suddenly found myself on the fringes of being young and brash. We got ready in the hotel room. Without vodka, perfume and music, but in silence, lying on bed, as stimulus-free as possible while it was still possible. Previously I only had to recover from a night out, now I have to recharge before leaving. Once we worked up the courage to leave the hotel room, we got up and got dressed.

In the past, we wouldn’t have paid attention to the wrinkles in our shirts. Now it is. In fact, my friend took a handheld steamer from his backpack. And so we stood dry-cleaning our clothes, dead serious, saying things to each other like, ‘This is so handy!’ and ‘Shouldn’t we also buy a petty thief in the Netherlands?’ We managed to stretch that wild night until one o’clock.

This column by Eva comes from Flair 19-2024. You can read more stories like this every week in Flair.