But I don't wanna!

When I first started my job, all employees were expected to wear suits four days a week (business casual on Fridays). For the month of August, we also enjoyed business casual, which was fabulous, because part of the business-business dress meant pantyhose with skirts and no open-toed shoes, and that made me hot and sweaty and irritable. Not that it mattered a huge amount in the ice box of the actual office, but heading to and from work made me cranky.

Eventually, our leadership came around to the notion that business casual from Memorial Day to Labor Day would make good sense, and I agree wholeheartedly, especially because Minnams and I have great fun with people's -- almost always men's -- interpretation and execution of business casual.

Anyway, it comes to an end tomorrow, but today I have an offsite meeting at an impossibly conservative company, and although I didn't specifically ask, I can only assume that they are business-business alllllll the time, so here I am in my business suit, dreading, dreading, dreading having to go out in this humidity and heat. Blech.

But I suck it up, because I've realized that, as much as I hate it, sometimes I have to be a grown-up. In the last week, I've eaten green beans, cooked zucchini and overcooked tilapia; pulled off charming, engaging smalltalk with co-workers' spouses and significant others at the end 18-hour day involving a cross-country flight; and consistently refrained from telling people that they're arrogant, incompetent jackasses, opting to take the high road, smile, and play nicely in the sandbox. Because that's what grown-ups do, and sometimes you just need to suck it up.

But I'm wondering whether I'll ever get to the point where I kick and scream -- even just in my own head -- about these things. Does one eventually actually grow up, rather than playing the expected role of grown-up? And will being an actual grown-up mean that I'll actually be excited about the food issue of the New Yorker? It's now totally wasted on me (Gina, it's all yours if you want it!), just like fancy restaurants are wasted on me, because I enjoy food like white rice, or my mom's apple crisp with ice cream, or something not involving complicated sauces or intricate flavors or, god forbid, unusual textures. And although I suck it up when I really, really have to, in general I'm fairly naked about my food issues, unabashed about scraping off sauce or picking the broccoli out of a pasta dish.

I think my food issues are evidence of my lack of sophistication or resistance to being a proper adult, but I'm not sure to what extent this holdover from childhood, as it now manifests itself, is a threat to my credibility as a grown-up. Something for the back of my mind, I suppose, but for today, I'm focused on getting through the morning without passing out or dying of heatstroke from this suit.