You might be due for your Quarter-Life Crisis if…
1. You’ve finally graduated to a “real” email address, something “professional”, though you often find yourself feeling nostalgic for your first email, rife with xx’s, sHiT tYpEd OuT LiKe dIs and a Fall Out Boy reference.
2. You have your own place, most likely with cohabitants, but you still sheepishly expect to do laundry whenever you visit your parents.
3. Your Google search history includes questions like “Why does boy pee stain the toilet?” or “I have a hair on my boob, what should I do?”
4. You’re still not 100% sure what a 401k is, but if you have one, you like to say things like “I have a very diverse investment portfolio” at parties.
5. If you have a car, it probably has a college sticker from your alma mater in the back window, and you realize that you are slowly crossing the threshold of people assuming it’s your alma mater to asking if your kid goes there.
6. Coffee is considered either a major food group or, if not that, a daily supplement. It should technically be covered by your health insurance.
7. Your hairstyle is a constant source of insecurity because you can never tell if you look older or younger than your age.
8. You have accumulated a very large collection of pens, 95% of which don’t seem to work but you keep them anyway.
9. Snow Days mean nothing to you. Except, maybe, getting up early to shovel and defrost.
10. “Sick Days” are much harder to justify. Basically, if you aren’t puking or bleeding, you go to work like a grown up.
11. You have at least one contact in your phone that says something along the lines of “Hairflip from Seattle” as a description for a person you once met.
12. You routinely list your childhood best friend on your resume as a “character reference” — because they are, truly, the one person in your life qualified to refer to you as “quite a character.”
13. You’ve already found a few stray gray hairs and you’ve decided to keep them because they make you seem more mature.
14. You’ve said, “Sorry, I’m still pretty new here” for at least the first six months of a new job.
15. Shows like Girls infuriate you: no one you know has an apartment or wardrobe half as chic as those girls.
16. You’ve worn the same pair of underwear for two days because, you know, if you turn them inside out it’s basically like they’re still clean. Right?
17. Alcohol poisoning was not the most serious alcohol related emergency room visit you’ve had.
18. You’re a smoker in the sense that you often say things like “Ugh, I need a cig” when you’re stressed and you like to flash that pack of American Spirits you keep in your purse.
19. You might be the youngest person in your office, but you’re pretty sure you’re the only one who knows anything about #Life.
20. The formula for deciding how offended you are by being called “Kid” is as follows:
Person calling you ‘kid’ = >age 50= minimally offended
Person calling you ‘kid’ =<50= extremely offended Person calling you ‘kid’ = >/=75= you are like “Aww, that’s so cute, I am a kid!”
21. Suddenly everyone is “really chill” talking about masturbation.
22. The amount of money you spend on bachelorette/baby shower gifts suddenly precludes any actual social activities with friends that would cost money.
23. People no longer ask what your parents do; they ask what you do.
24. And if they do happen to ask what your parents do, your recent revelation that they are “people” and not just “your parents” leads you to respond with something like, “Well, my father is an investment banker and a functioning alcoholic!”
25. Going to sleep before nine pm is to present-day-you as staying up later than seven pm was to childhood-you.
26. You pat yourself on the back for buying floss whenever you go to the drug store, but the reality is, you don’t use it fast enough to warrant as much as you buy, so suddenly you are drowning in floss which is taunting you with anxiety provoking thoughts like “You aren’t flossing enough! You’re increasing your risk of heart disease!”
27.You see a cute baby in the grocery store in the cereal aisle and you think,“Oh, I can’t wait to be a parent.” but by the time you get to the milk you’ve heard enough screaming children to do a 180 and as you grab your gallon of 2% you shudder at the realization of “Ugh, kids.”
28. When you go for a physical and the doctor asks you how much exercise you get in a week you’re like, “Well, not that much I guess but I’m always really tired so I think I must be doing enough physical activity.”
29. Your yoga mat is serving you well as a bath mat.
30. You like to think you know about world affairs but even if you don’t you’ve figured out that saying “I can’t believe what’s happening in (insert any country, even your own) is always a conversation starter.
31. Every month when you cut a check for rent you say, “Didn’t I just pay the rent?”
32. You’ve had to cover up a poorly placed laugh by saying something like,“I’m sorry, I’ve just never met anyone whose last name is actually Butman before.”
33. You semi-understand that your tax return isn’t exactly “free money” but it still is a nice surprise.
34. If you say you don’t like something and someone asks why, if you don’t feel like explaining it to them you just sigh and say, “It’s bad for the economy.”
35. On a first date you’ve been poised to ask, “So, how often are we realistically going to have sex?”
36. You have a separate ringtone on your phone for your mother so that you can prepare to sound as sober as possible when you answer the phone.
37. Even though you were on the receiving end, you’ve apologized for accidental anal because, you know, you’re like sorry that your butthole was just like, right there.
38. You have called your best friend specifically to ask them how they poop, because you are really starting to question if the western way is the best way.
39. You have had an inconvenient boner and surrendered to it. Maybe if you keep talking no one will notice. . .
40. You’re never sure when you can use a smiley face in a work email, but once you see someone else do it you’re relieved.
41. You budget your groceries in the sense that if it’s above a certain amount when you check out, you audibly groan.
42. If you’re in a relationship, you’ve found yourself wondering if you’re going to get married. If you’re not in a relationship, you’ve found yourself wondering if you’re going to get married.
43. You have a Pinterest board specifically dedicated to getting you into your “happy place” after a hard day. May or may not include puppies.
44. You’ve specifically denied that there are any similarities between your current girlfriend and your mother.
45. “Free food” is a pick-up line.
46. When attempting to “woo” a potential date, you’ve heard yourself say, “My roommates are totally chill with me having people overnight.” — unless, of course, you still live with your parents.
47. When a job you’re applying for requires you to have “reliable transportation” you wonder what exactly qualifies as “reliable.”
48. Your willing adherence to expiration dates is directly proportional to how much money you spent on the item.
49. Listening to the radio in the car with younger siblings/niblings when a song by Alanis Morissette comes on and they say, “Who is this?” and suddenly you realize the grief your parents felt when you didn’t know who Bruce Springsteen was.
50. You’re still not exactly sure when you’re really sick vs. you’re being a weenie because that’s what Moms are for.
51. You’re excited about getting mail for about .5 seconds until you realize it’s all bills, spam and your alma mater asking for cash.
52. The first time you go in to a job interview and you have legit, well-thought out answers to all their questions and then you they hire you because you are actually, completely qualified is such an amazing moment that you don’t understand why they haven’t included the key to the city in your new hire package.
53. You still save Word docs as “Blaargblarg5025″ and you’re wondering when you’ll grow out of that.
54. You have yelled, “Does Taco Tuesday mean nothing to you?” during a heated argument.
55. You comfort yourself with the knowledge that there are soap operas older than you (I’m looking at you, General Hospital).
56. You have a thermometer in your medicine cabinet, but you’ve never used it because if you feel shitty enough to take your temperature, you feel too shitty to get out of bed and walk to the medicine cabinet.
57. Washing dishes is a thing you do when you haven’t got much else going on and you’re waiting for a pot of water to boil.
58. Your parents suddenly seem really old, yet your grandparents are just as old as you remember them.
59. You have nightmares about tripping over your words when you have to answer the phone.
60. The last person to knock on your door was either the pizza guy or a Jehovah’s Witness. Your friends don’t knock and your family certainly just barges right in.
61. You’re just old enough to not remember learning to read.
62. You’re now the young “up and comer” at the office that your father is alternately terrified of/annoyed by.
63. You’re no longer getting taller, you’re actually getting shorter.
64. Suddenly you realize no one has asked you about college in a really long time, and it’s been years since they asked about high school.
65. You have this nagging need to gain closure about a kid (see number 20) you knew in high school who went on to work at a zoo. It bothers you that you don’t know why or how a person becomes a zookeeper. You know they exist, but how?
66. You don’t realize how uninteresting you are until you meet someone who is actually really interesting. This is the time of your life when that’s going to happen, if it hasn’t already.
67. Just when you think you’re still “too young” to worry about cancer, someone your age gets it and you’re like, “Damn it.”
68. Having a lot of condoms either means you have a lot of sex or you haven’t had any in a really long time. Don’t divulge to guests; allow them to wonder.
69. Watching vintage pornography with your best friend seems like a great idea until you realize it’s probably the exact porn your father used to mastubrate to.
70. You realize you don’t actually own a pair of scissors and you don’t know how you let that happen.
71. Until someone points it out, it never occurs to you that you have to clean the top of the faucet in the bathroom sink because that’s where the spit lives.
72. Whenever you sign a check or otherwise important document you get nervous that your signature doesn’t look enough like a previous signature and someone will be like, “Hey, are you really you because when you signed your license three years ago you dotted your I’s with hearts and now you don’t.”
73. When you can’t sleep at night- nine times out of ten- it’s because you remembered that one time when you were like, thirteen, and you peed on your boyfriend, and suddenly your life seems like a terrible mistake.
74. You remember learning to drive and being kind of amazed at how people could just let the wheel slide through their hands when correcting from a turn, and now, when you do that with ease you’re like, “Yeah, that pretty much sums up how I should approach my life.”
And now, you’re probably looking at people older than you and wondering how they just let life slide through their hands — don’t worry, you’ll get there eventually.
