WINNIPEG – 45-year old Jason Kingsley sits in his home wondering when he’ll feel like the grown-up in the room.
Kingsley admits that he can vote, buy beer, and rent a car but that’s only because he’s gotten older. When it comes to grown-up stuff, Kingsley doesn’t have any retirement savings and still knows more about Thunder Cats mythology than taxes.
“I’m definitely cool. Like I still find old people annoying. I said “Ok Boomer” to a colleague the other week when he was giving me grief,” lamented Kingsley while eating a hot dog off a Corelle plate. “Then he said I was the boomer gloating that he’s at least 10 years younger than me. But that’s just physical age.”
That hasn’t been the only incident that has Kingsley questioning when other people started to believe he was a grown-up. Kingsley was on a walk last week when a group of children ran up to him asking him for help because one of them got their hand stuck in a fence. Kingsley’s first reaction was to look around to see if there was an adult he could ask since this seemed like a job for a grown-up. It was at this point, he realized the children thought he was the grown-up.
“I panicked when these kids came to me for help. I kept thinking, I’m not qualified for this, and where are all the grown-ups? I know logically that I’m 45, but since when am I the adult?”
The children couldn’t understand Kingsley’s hesitation. 9-year old Sarah Gupta spotted Kingsley and was the first one to run over to him.
“My parents always told me to look for the oldest person you could find if there was an emergency. It was so scary when Anky got her arm stuck. I saw this man walking near us, and he looked super old so I figured he could help.”
At press time, Kingsley was home alone in his studio apartment when he heard a bump, and wished there was a grown-up to go investigate the probable boogeyman, or boogeymen.
