Lately I've been kind of restless about graduation. It's not the whole not having a job thing, or even the moving back in with my parents thing that's got me down.
I think it's the prospect of having to become an adult that is the most difficult and painful thing for me to process because after almost 22 years on planet Earth, I'm still not really sure I have any idea what it means to "grow up."
Last weekend I went to a wedding, which, to me, is about as adult as it gets on the spectrum of maturity (second only to having a kid). My friend Anish's sister was getting married and we were told it was going to be a traditional Indian wedding.
Their family had relatives flying in from India who had never even been to the United States, the groom rode into the ceremony on a white horse, and everybody had these really cool henna tattoos on their hands. Granted, the other friends I went with and I had some idea of what to expect (we've seen "Bend it Like Beckham" [2002]).
Since we're still essentially just kids, we had to liven up what seemed at times to be a little bit too serious. So, as college students we decided to turn everything into a game. The first three hours were termed the "maturity game." This entailed staying silent during the ceremony and not approaching Anish's relatives during cocktail hour with comments like, "I'm kind of wasted right now."
We also won points for giving up our seats at the crowded ceremony for actual blood relatives. One thing about Indian weddings: it's kind of like a game of musical chairs; guests tend to get up every five minutes and come back whenever they please.
Once we got to the reception, however, our mask of maturity started to slowly shatter. I blame it partly on the open bar. You see, I liken college kids and an open bar to an old anecdote I heard about cats and dogs.
If you leave a week's worth of food in front of a dog, he'll eat it all in one sitting, but if you leave the same amount of food with a cat, it will ration it out day by day. And college students are most definitely dogs. A few drinks in and talk turned to a new game: which bridesmaid our single friend had the best shot of hooking up with.
Then talk turned to making fun of me for drinking a Shirley Temple. Then talk turned to which one of us would get married first. Then it got uncomfortable and someone changed the subject. Then talk turned to other people as friends and family of the bride and groom started to give toasts to the couple.
Anish's toast was eloquent and sentimental as he recounted childhood memories about his sister. The bride's best friend talked about the first time they met in middle school. But the best man was a different story.
In front of hundreds of relatives, he let it slip that the couple was already legally married with the state for several months, and then went on to recount a story about this time the groom made out with a random girl at a bar in Canada. And as I watched this 29-year-old with an M.B.A. make a complete fool out of himself, uttering the most inappropriate comments possible, I realized something.
I realized that there is no clear-cut entry into adulthood. You don't wake up one day with a job, and a house, and a wife, and say, "I've made it. I've got all the answers." And I think the scariest part about marriage is that most of the time, it leads to kids. And most of us never want to stop being kids ourselves.
For example, I have one friend who graduated early and now teaches high school biology full time, yet his favorite pastimes still include throwing chairs down a flight of stairs and walking around my house singing songs about poop. I have another friend who inherited more money than he knows what to do with, but insists on spending it on video games and car speakers. And the rest of my friends are in the same boat as me. They have no idea what they're going to do with the rest of their lives.
But the truth is, we don't have to grow up. At least not now. We can make all the mistakes we want, fall back on our friends when we need to, and just enjoy the moment for what it is. That is, as long as it's somebody else's wedding.
Neil Padover is a senior majoring in English. He can be reached neil.padover@tufts.edu.
