There are a lot of things that I just don't think should cost any money. Pencils. Toilet paper. Tank tops that are only ever going to be partially seen because I'll wear them with other things over them. Gum. Word processing programs. Gas. Use of the internet. This is not to be confused with the List of Things That I Wish Were Free, which includes pretty much everything barring service industry jobs done for me, which I do and will always feel empathetically obliged to pay for, unlike material products, which by their faceless, nameless nature could be provided to me guilt-free until I see a documentary about sweat shops. Most of what falls into the first list are things that I can sometimes get for free depending on where I am, things that when I was younger I sincerely didn't know people paid for, and things that don't seem significant enough to spend my hard earned money on.
To me, this signals that I am not quite yet ready to be an adult. The fact that I'm an unparalleled neo-Depression Era penny pincher aside, were I prepared for adulthood, I would have accepted the fact that not all of my paycheck can go to comic books and ice cream (or in my case, coffee, concert tickets, and jeans to replace the ones Tommy's destroys) and that some of it needs to go to things that won't necessarily make me directly happy, but will keep me alive, functioning, and toxin-free. I haven't fully realized that I won't always be able to put 70% of my earnings into a savings account and feel guilty about the fact that the percentage isn't 85. One day - actually, in 93 days - I will have to send a check out to ensure that there will be water in my living space, despite the fact that it literally falls from the sky.
If I were a real adult, considering these concepts as "concepts" instead of "duh" would be way more quaint and way less in the future tense.
Some of this train of thought brought to you by The Fact That Someone Thought I Was A High Schooler Today.
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