I'm supposed to do what now?

XKCD has hit on this before- the feeling that people shouldn't be trusting me with nice things or responsibilities because deep down, I'm pretty sure that I'm nowhere near ready to handle that yet. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my maturity level has gone down as I've aged.

 

You can always test the deadness of things by poking it with a stick.

In a way this is a good thing. I’m not longer the terrified wreck I was as an adolescent, too scared to talk for fear of saying something wrong. I’ve learned that things just go wrong sometimes and that I’ll probably never understand fashion, along with a few other key truths. The need to just survive the day without doing anything embarrassing was worn down in the days where I just had to survive long enough to pay the rent.

Sleep was for the weak.

And for those that valued their sanity, but they worked somewhere else.

But despite all I’ve learned, I keep having the nagging feeling that I really don’t know enough yet. I don’t understand stocks, bonds or any of that (what the devil is a mutual fund?). I’ve been in school for years and keep running into things I don’t understand (though I suspect financial aid is unclear on purpose). I don’t really know how a car works or how to take care of it properly.

I get the feeling that I’m not really as advanced as I should be.

I probably would’ve been good at that whole hunter/gatherer thing. I could have made a fire. Heck I probably could’ve been the person who drew animals on cave walls and made stone cairns. 

My one area of pseudo-expertise, knowing monsters and how to combat them, probably would’ve landed me a cool cave-man job. 

Right now I’m just the person who sits on the couch thinking of how vampire/werewolf prejudice would play itself out in a realistic setting (damn fangs are always keepin’ a brother down) instead of one of those awesome people who are good at responsibility and time management. You know, those people who actually know how to invest money and can hold down two jobs while taking classes. The people who can start businesses and show up at 8 am looking polished and professional.

Damn them and their bar-raising.

Despite clearly not being one of those people and the fact that I’m probably not cut out for this advanced a society, people keep handing me responsibilities. They ask me to watch their children, houses and pets. They give me grants and loans. They come to me for advice like I actually know what I’m doing. There has to be some kind of explanation for this.

Is it all an elaborate ruse? Are we all still five years old inside, wanting nothing more than to blow off what we’re doing and pretend to be Batman instead?  Are there only a few real adults on the planet, getting things done while we just make it up as we go along, hoping no one will notice?

I kind of hope so. I mean at least then if I get caught doing something really goofy people will understand.

 Reason #332 of why I should not be a teacher.

Plus it makes the world seem less boring. I mean, should my hypothesis prove correct, you could potentially talk your co-workers into a giant game of hide and go seek.

Or a water balloon fight.