I Thought Adults Knew Everything
On adulthood, choosing from the middle, and the doors we’ll never open.
I remember being in Grade 3 and feeling like I knew everything.
By this point, I’d never moved houses, been on a plane, or changed schools.
Every morning, I rode the bus to my tiny elementary. All of the kids were local, from families who worked at the post office, grocery stores, or carpet barn.
I still recall the name of a student, James, who was called for attendance on the first day of class. He never ended up in our homeroom because he was dying. That was the first time I heard of leukemia.
A few years later, another kid, Sammy, who I sat beside on the bus, drowned in a pool on a family vacation.
Another time, a group of girls ran into a hornet’s nest in the schoolyard. They got stung so many times that one of them ended up in hospital.
Going to the hospital sounded exciting. I was naive to the cloud of worst-days-ever that hangs over every wing. I was envious of those who broke their arms and came to class with a hunk of plaster to sign.
At some point during Grade 3, I asked my Mom if I could skip the grade.
I had already learned all there was to learn.
Math? I memorized the times tables!
Spelling? I knew every word!
Music? I could play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”!
I decided that I knew everything. And this was very disappointing.
What a pity that no more new ideas could slide across my desk!
I figured I’d crossed over into what it must be like to be an adult. Adults know everything.
I didn’t end up skipping a grade.
It wasn’t long before fractions and verb conjugation (en français) entered the picture. I also got invited to train early for my “pen license” which was a worthy prize. I’d get to leave the lowly pencil-users, whose penmanship made them unworthy of ink, in my wake.
In a way that feels inconceivable, I think back on this slice where I thought I’d reached the ceiling on knowledge. That somehow, I’d hit the finite wall of all there was to know.
This feeling, unique to a couple of days in Grade 3, is the only time I’ve ever felt like I had all the pieces.
Funnily enough, the older I get, the more I realize how little I know.
Each year seems to reveal another room behind the room. A yellow wallpapered living room leads into a wall-to-wall walnut library, then into a moody velvet parlour, then down a creaky staircase into a cobwebbed cellar.
In Grade 3, I imagined adulthood a lot more linearly.
We’d finish school, get glossy jobs, strike book deals, then spend the rest of our lives building families and dispensing wisdom next to a lake somewhere.
Instead, adulthood feels like venturing deeper into the house. Outgrowing rooms. Finding trap doors. Leaving convenience behind for space.
For that brief, all-knowing slice of Grade 3, I had maxed out on everything at my limited disposal.
Those of us in the middle, stuck somewhere between demo and reno, are aware of too much.
We know that good-on-paper can eat away.
We know about sacrifice.
We know that people can get sick.
And still, we’ve chosen to trade in well-appointed rooms for basements.
We are acutely aware of the possibility for beauty and disaster, and that both are attached to a timeline we, unfortunately, are not privy to.
We only get one chance to explore, overhaul, and design a life that is “us”.
There are entire countries, hobbies, and versions of ourselves that we’ll never get to try on.
We will never get to all of the doors, and now, we know better than to try.
In Grade 3, my world hadn’t yet been cracked open.
I didn’t understand the empty desk, the burden of a plaster trophy, or that limitlessness was just around the corner.
In Grade 3, I was overwhelmed by the belief that there was nowhere left to go.
Today, I am struck by the opposite.
I’ve shut countless doors in favour of wandering the halls.
I enter rooms, but I’m afraid to unpack more than a toiletry bag.
I want to put up art, find the perfect wool rug, and fill each corner with tchotchkes. But I know that choosing one room means leaving another unexplored. And that every yes becomes a thousand quiet nos.
The house is bigger than I’ll ever have time to see.
As a kid, I mistook a small world for a complete one.
Now, I know better. And maybe that’s what adulthood actually is.
It’s not wandering the halls forever, but learning how to be happy with all of the doors you’ll never open.
Then it’s choosing a room anyway, and finally hanging some fucking art.