When I'm All Grown Up and Can Do What I Please

When I’m grown up and can do I what I please

Karen Lungu
The Daily Record

“Animal crackers and cocoa to drink. That is the finest of suppers, I think; when I’m grown up and can do I what I please, I think I shall always insist upon these.” These are the first lines of a poem printed on coffee mugs one of my college roommates –and dear friend - and I shared. When Lavonne and I went off to college, we had $225 between us, a popcorn maker and a case of chocolate mint soda - a short-lived flavor found at the Piggly Wiggly.

Fast friends since elementary school, we were thrilled to be all grown up to do what we pleased - well, sort of. We quickly procured on-campus jobs. Because we were not quite as grown up as we thought, our dorm room was decorated with generous hand-me-downs from the women’s group at our church and knick-knack treasures we found traipsing the aisles of the local Five and Dime (yes, there were Five and Dime’s back then, complete with soda fountains, where one could sit on a sticky, vinyl bar stool, twirling and sipping a frosty Brown Cow.) It was at this store I found our mugs. Taking the verses to heart, our room never was without animal crackers and cocoa. We spent many a marathon evening with our steaming cups, sitting cross-legged on a dorm bed, crying over one another’s break-ups and laughing over the make-ups.

After graduating, I moved away, but we stayed in touch, both of us marrying, raising families and exchanging Christmas letters and school photos.

Now, we were all grown up to do what we pleased – well, not quite.

Thanks to social networking, Lavonne and I keep in closer touch than in years past, and though our faces have a few more lines and our heads are slightly grayer, we still aren’t as grown up as we’d like.

This hit home a few months ago when the carpet guy came out to show me carpet samples. Though I gazed longingly at the ones I especially liked, I finally pointed to the darkest stain on my carpet and told him to match that. He thought I was kidding; I wasn’t. He matched it and I’ve since discovered there are darker stains.

When I’m all grown up and can do what I please, I will not buy brown towels for the bathroom just because I don’t want to wonder why my white ones are grayer after my teenage sons have showered. When I’m grown up can have what I please, I won’t need a snow shovel to get from one end of my daughters’ room to the other.

When I’m all grown up and can have what I please, I will not have three open grape jelly jars with various expiration dates sitting in my refrigerator next to two open mayonnaise jars and a 16-month old pickle jar with one pickle, and my bathroom sink will not be littered with five half-used tubes of toothpaste. I will not need a putty knife to scrape my microwave; I will not have petrified orange peels under my couch; or gray-fuzzy apple cores behind the entertainment center.

When I’m grown up and can have what I please, my garden won’t be sorely neglected because I’m trying to fill a dishwasher, write a bill, e-mail my editor and make tacos at the same time.

My freezer won’t groan under the weight of school and sports schedules and reminder cards for dental appointments, and I won’t find moldy swim towels behind the bunk beds. When I’m grown up and can do what I please, I will watch French movies with sub-titles, instead of wincing at the sophomoric humor of masterpieces with titles like “Hot-tub Time Machine.”

When I’m grown up and can have what I please, I will have my own socks and not the mismatched, misshapen ones my sons keep wearing. And, I will not walk in the front door to 24 big, stinky shoes that I insist my kids remove in my feeble attempts to keep an unstained carpet.

And, when I’m all grown up and can have what I please, I will sit sipping my cocoa, eating my animal crackers, and I will miss every one of these things.

(By the way, Lavonne, I think we look great.)

Karen Lungu can be reached at klungu@ccdailyrecord.com.