I hadn't been too concerned about the age gap until we were drinking forties out of paper bags in the parking lot of a dive bar at midnight.
Who's "we" you ask? That would be 31-year-old me, my two mid-20s male coworkers, and one of their girlfriends.
As we slammed the last of the malt liquor and headed inside the bar, I couldn't help but think... Am I acting my age?
Since entering into this new decade of my life more than 18 months ago, one cultural wonder above all others has comforted me when I began to worry that I'm not acting the way a person my age should. That's right my friends, I'm talking about New Girl.
Now, Jessica Day (played by Zooey Deschanel) I am not. So don't think I'm making a direct comparison (to either lady). But when I see the antics these six roommates/friends get up to every Tuesday night, I breathe a sigh of relief. Here are characters in my age group (and the actors are around the same age as well) bumbling through life, still co-habitating with people they are neither married to nor to whom they gave birth, and, for the most part, having an awesome time.
One character even has a boyfriend who's barely of legal drinking age.
And let's not forget "True American," the incomprehensible-yet-hilarious drinking game they play. Knowing this representation of 30-something life is out there in prime time makes me feel less weird about still wanting to play the occasional game of beer pong.
I'm not married, I don't have kids and I like to stay up late drinking beer and talking about music as if it is the most important thing on earth.
Those are just the facts. Here are some more: I don't like wine, I think book clubs are boring, I don't cook, fancy restaurants freak me out and lounging poolside with my girls doesn't sound like a fun way to spend a Saturday -- it sounds like skin cancer. But those are the things I most commonly see girls my age doing.
I'm not at a point where I have to designate a night as "Moms' Night Out" and I'm glad. I just want to go out. At 5 o'clock on a Wednesday, or at midnight on a Sunday.
When I go out, and, trust me, it's really not that often because I can't deny biology and the fact that I get tired a lot easier these days, drinking beer at a dive bar sounds like the best thing to me! Pair that with a weird work schedule and I'm left with a small pool of coworkers who are just north of 20 and a few years south of 30 to go out with.
I'm aware that this fun won't last. The spontaneous drive to a casino in the middle of the night, the parking lot drinking and staying out until the wee hours is surely only temporary. But it's what still satisfies at this point in my life when I just want a release from work, job hunting and, yes, worrying if I'll ever advance to that next stage of life (i.e. marriage, babies, a house with a white picket fence). I don't share my deepest fears with this bunch or ask them for advice when I begin to panic that my life is going nowhere. I reserve those conversations for lifelong friends of a certain age.
I do still find myself questioning if my association with this younger crowd makes me, er, desperate. And do they, those young kids with which I am fraternizing, look at me with pity when I'm pounding a Miller High Life like I'm still in college?
Maybe they do. But I have a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy. I haven't asked them and, so far, they haven't told.
We ended up capping off that drunken night at the dive bar with a trip to Denny's that lasted until right around 3 a.m. The table was filled with a buffet of breakfast foods, we coloured in word searches on place mats put out for children and we laughed our asses off. None of us were acting our ages.
And it was glorious.
By Kendra Gilbert
The Purple Fig is a community where women share personal and relatable stories; no ego, no shame, no judgement. We're about life, love and all of the stuff that makes us yearn, squirm, and giggle. These stories make up the authentic and intriguing journey of a woman.
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