Faking it

So this is my all new, grown up blog template. I hope you like it...it was either this or robots.  I've been doing some thinking, and it's time for some changes around here, some more, uh, adult content. 

It’s been a good run, all this faking like I'm a grown up stuff...but now, nearing forty years old, I've decided to join the ranks of adult society.

For over twenty years I’ve been able to slide through undetected, passed over as eccentric or “funny” when in actuality I was performing. I was playing the lead role of Me, The Adult.

And no one's been the least bit suspicious. Well maybe a few people, like the cashier at the grocer store when I slap down an industrial-sized bag of Fruity Pebbles on the belt and avoid eye contact. Or maybe a few of the neigbors when I head down the street to go shoot hoops until my wife calls me for dinner. And at the bank, but, then again, why put the suckers out if you're just going to shoot me a look for taking one...or three?

But my love of candy aside, I've had everyone fooled. I paid bills and even got the hang of that smile/grimace thing people do in passing at work. So what I have an affinity for toys and or poop jokes that never morphed into something refined or mature. At least sometimes I do manage to tame or at least fight off the impulse to fall on the floor kicking and screaming when told I have to do something that I really really don’t want to do.

I've gotten scary good at faking adult conversations, nodding and uh-hushing, all the while thinking about those little plastic pizza topper things they stick on pies as my favorite pizza places while unknowing adutl yammers on about  budgets, plans, insurance, or maybe even gulp, vegetables or politics.

And for years it’s worked, getting pegged as an eccentric when I’m really wondering how I’ve managed to fool all these people into thinking that I’m really an adult. I mean, I even drink coffee, albeit loaded with sugary creamer so that it resembals liquid caramel, but still, coffee+adult.And even on the occasion that I get caught, stuffing my face with chocolate at work, or hopping up and down after getting free ice cream. Most people laugh it off as a joke anyway. Oh yeah, I was joking.  

But now we reached the dreaded but portion of this post. (See, no butt jokes?) Now that I have a kid, one who's vocabulary seems to be multiplying faster than a Gremlin after midnight, I realize that I have to be a uh, father figure. and it might not be best for my son to see me behaving like well....an adult. It's time I acted my age.

I mean, I'm not going to start wearing a watch or smoking a pipe or anything. But maybe I can work on toning down some of those knee-jerk reactions. No temper tantrums, and  I’m adjusting to saying no. Because as much fun as it's been playing Tom Hanks Big, it’s more important, I suppose, to set a good example.

But back to this blog, I'm going to start posting more stories and other kinds of stuff, whatever I feel like really. So for all of you readers out there, and that goes for both of you guys. Sit back and enjoy...