Career . 06/17/2008 12:29 AM . Alisa Harris

Adulthood means scrubbing a toilet of your own free will.

This epiphany came to me as I stooped on my knees scrubbing months worth of gunk from my first real apartment, after I realized that this was the very first time in my life I’d taken Lysol in hand and cleaned a bathroom without anyone pressuringe me to do so.

I’ve cleaned toilets under parental duress and at housemate urgings. I’ve applied my roommate’s toxic homemade bleach cocktail to bathtubs before room inspections while my brain cells slowly choked from the fumes and died. But this was the first time I’d seen something dirty, said “This is my job because this is my home,” and cleaned it without anyone suggesting I do so.

There’s a moment when adulthood hits you and you realize that you have, for perhaps the first time in your life, made a mature, adult decision with no external coercion at all. For those who clean toilets freely and embrace responsibility at a tender age, the moment may be different, and it may come before the age of 23 and sooner than a year after graduating from college.

One friend said adulthood hit her when she bought a can of Drano and unclogged her drain by herself. Another friend told me adulthood hit her when she was alone in a flat in England and realized she had to take out her own trash, that there was no brother or dad upon whom to foist the task. For yet another friend, the moment came when a Radiohead song made him give up French fries and fast cars forever.

The mature decision – the drain unclogging or the fry-eschewing – must be willingly made. This is why adulthood did not hit me when I did my taxes, which I put off until a month too late, entering the IRS number into my contact list preceded by expletives, seething with resentment that the government was forcing me – impoverished, a perfect child – to decipher a 1099 MISC and pay multiple hundreds in self-employment tax plus a vague amount in very-late fees. That was the government and my mother, not adulthood, beating me over the head with the threat of huge fines if I refused to hand over the cash.

Adulthood didn’t hit me when I signed my first lease or when I spent the better part of a week carting my stuff to the borough ofacross the river from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The thought of homelessness compelled me then. I got just a quick taste of adulthood when I (who have only the blurriest picture of modems and routers) tried to set up my Internet. But the real, defining moment came when I knelt before that porcelain bowl and I realized that I, under no external pressure, was maintaining and making my own little home in spite of myself.

Heady with responsibility that day, I cleaned the toilet and scrubbed the sink, wiped the mirror, swept the bathroom floor, did the dishes, mopped the entryway and living room and lifted months of residue from between the radiator and the wall. Then I sat on my hideous couch (because there was nowhere else to sit, because I chose a trip to England over buying a bed and a chair) and examined my bare walls and pondered throw pillows and rugs.

Once adulthood begins its momentum swells, and you find yourself making shockingly responsible decisions for at least the next three days. Two days after my epiphany, I (who once shied away from domestic arts) found myself in the New York Strand before the cookbook table, agonizing between the ponderous 1152 page Joy of Cooking tome and the friendlier Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals 2, wondering if I would really use a cookbook that had no pictures. I chose a cookbook from the Kitchens of Martha Stewart Living, lustrously illustrated with pictures of adult-looking foods and studded with ingredients like quiona and orechiette, which I have never heard of and cannot even find on Wikipedia, let alone at Susie Farm Grocery on Flatbush Avenue.

The thought – both tragic and ecstatic – that I would never make an irresponsible choice again turned out to be a little premature. I read my cookbook on the subway home but am still living on peach-colored yogurt and soy milk. The arrival of the internet technician was my only impetus to hang up the 53 outfits I’ve thrown on the nicely-mopped floor in the past three days. I’m putting off the bed and chair for a couple more weeks, and we’ll see how long it takes to work up the courage to assemble it all myself.

It’s a painful thought to confront, but I won’t grow up in a moment. (Neither will my friends, who may foist their trash on others or succumb to the temptation of $1 McDonalds drinks specials.) But that moment – that epiphany that floated to me in a Lysol cloud – still propelled my lurch towards maturity.

Alisa Harris is a reporter for World on the Web.

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