How to be an Adult (And Also Super Popular)

     

Although I am a middle child, I hold the prized calling of an older sister. I have older brothers, but my only sister, Katherine, is younger than me. This is something that I don’t take lightly. I am constantly trying to pass my life advice onto her so she never has to make the foolish decision of getting locked out of the house or accidentally leaving moldy oranges in her backpack for a semester. It must have been this sort of drive that urged a 10 year-old me to sit Katherine down upon her kindergarten graduation and insist on teaching her how to be popular. I am unsure whether it was my Harry Potter-like glasses or the fact that I frequently taped the misspelled ‘Do not distrb, scintist at work’ sign on my bedroom door that made me feel so qualified. (I hope that those who attended school with me are now in hysterics because instead of being popular I actually walked around outfield while the rest of the kids played kickball and would run to the opposite side of the field where the ball was coming so I wouldn’t have to make an attempt at a catch.) I lectured her on the importance of picking popular friends, wearing cute clothes, mastering a hair flip, and being occasionally bossy.

Not much has changed since then. My sister graduated high school and moved in with me last week, and I am still trying to use my wealth of knowledge to drench her. Upon arriving, she turned to me and said “Okay Rachel, teach me how to be an adult.” Although I am clearly more qualified to be a mentor of popularity, I finally gave in.

Rachel’s Guide to Being a Grown-Up: Part 1

1.     8 am college classes will always come too early. 12pm classes are during lunch. 2pm classes will interfere with an afternoon nap. 4pm classes are in the hottest part of the day, so if you walk to campus your back will be covered with sweat from your backpack. 6pm classes are too late. I have found the only good time to take classes is between 10:24am-11:09am. All other class time is spent googling where the nearest vending machine is.

2.     Coming up with excuses is hard. Before I was an adult, I always avoided activities that I didn’t want to attend by swiftly saying, “My mom says I can’t go.” There is a group of people who will read this and think, “Just be completely honest! No need for excuses.” Wrong. Until there is a way to politely inform someone that you will not be attending their party because you think it will be super boring and you would much rather stay in your pajamas all evening while taking 700 selfies on your webcam trying to see how many double chins you can make, there is no way to be completely honest. A completely adult way to address situations like this is to kindly say, “I won’t be there, but thanks for inviting me!” or pretending that you can’t hear the person inviting you and continue to say, “What?!” until they’ve repeated their invitation so many times that they decided they don’t want a person with that caliber of hearing problems at their party anyway.

3.     Learn to say no. Why am I on the Famous Footwear email list? Why did I let that guy at the mall take 15 minutes of my time trying to convince me that I needed a nail buffer? Why have I watched one zillion of those videos shared on facebook that has the caption, “You’ve GOT to see this, lol”? Because I couldn’t say no. Now that I’ve learned to say no my nails are certainly not as nice, but I do have more time to do great things like eat ice cream.  

4.     Learn to say yes. Sometimes you have to say ‘yes’ to things you don’t want to, like flu shots or going in to talk to your school counselor about changing your major. Other times you have to tell yourself that yes, you will buy spinach at the grocery store instead of eating out. Sometimes you have a bad day and you have to look in the mirror and tell yourself that yes, you really are an incredible person. But there are also lots of great things that you get to say ‘yes’ to, which include but are not limited to: wearing pajamas all day, choosing the least gross fluoride flavor at the dentist’s office, and deciding to eat out instead of eating your spinach that’s in the fridge.

5.     Celebrate. Being an adult can be hard. One day you’re hanging out with your family and the next day you have to do your own laundry and go to the bank and buy your own groceries and be financially responsible and know how to get grape juice out of new shirts and talk to strangers at the grocery store about tomato prices. Whenever I do something that is particularly adult-like, I congratulate myself. Sometimes I celebrate my transition to adulthood by doing things I couldn’t do as a kid, like eat food in the living room or pillow-surf down the stairs.

6.     Be yourself. My sister Katherine is always full of an infinite amount of love. (Except for the time she told me I used the word infinitely incorrectly.) Her constant desire to help others inspires me. Not only does she help edit and revise my blog, but she also came up with the name ‘Sense and Sarcasm.’ One day I was looking at the stats of people who had viewed my blog, and was quite pleased when it looked like a huge number of people were reading it. I made immediate plans to call Ellen DeGeneres and tell her that of course I would love to be featured on her show as the newest internet sensation. When I opened up my sister’s laptop later that evening, I saw that my blog had been opened on enough tabs to cover the whole screen. The more I deleted, the more appeared.  Not everyone has a sister that opens your blog a zillion times to make you think you’ve gone viral. So as good hearted (and super relevant) as my popularity advice was to my sister, I sure am glad she didn’t take it. I’m glad that instead of selecting elite friends and bossing people around, she was simply herself.

(But let’s be totally honest. With glasses like these, I actually was the coolest person in elementary school.)