When did I become so old?

New refrain: not a boy, not yet a man

IN TRANSITION #13

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 23, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

In a tragic turn of events, somebody stole my umbrella last weekend.

It wasn't so much the umbrella that bothered me -- it was only ''mine" because an unknown passenger had left it in my car. It wasn't even the fact that it meant I'd be soaking wet by the time I arrived home in Somerville. It was simply a poignant end to a cold, unfriendly night, which I can only hope does not foreshadow the rest of my postgraduate social life.

But I'm worried.

The Friday night had begun with some promise -- drinks with friends from college at Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge to celebrate a birthday. Charlie's was a mainstay: the jukebox, the jumbo-sized bottles of Newcastle, the bad, bad karaoke. But the festivities very quickly reached a plateau.

''I can hardly keep my eyes open," one friend admitted after a single round.

A full day's work -- no matter how lacking in laboriousness -- put a damper on our after-dark plans. We were beat, and minutes after the last (first) pint was empty, we were out the door and headed separate ways into the night. The rain, which had been falling for over a week straight at this point, only seemed to intensify.

Faced with the prospect of retiring early -- yet again -- I did the unthinkable. I met up with a couple of other friends who could still lay claim to the collegiate party-all-night lifestyle, being well, still enrolled undergraduates. How I suddenly envied them.

I braced myself for the confused stares and incessant ''What are you still doing here?" questioning that awaited. I had for so many weeks now successfully resisted the temptation to immerse myself in campus social life. Am I that desperately bored? I was. And I resigned myself to spending Friday night party-hopping with the college crowd.

Er, well, I went to two parties. Which was enough to remind me that maybe I'm too old to be drinking straight vodka (they were all out of mixers . . .) from already used plastic cups (. . . and glasses) while socially awkward 19- and 20-year-olds grinded up against each other to badly mixed music on a poorly ventilated, cramped dance floor/dorm common room.

When did I become so old and cranky?

It was at the second of these parties that my umbrella and I parted forever. By the time I arrived home in Somerville, I was drenched, annoyed, and confused about what to do with myself now that I'm not a student, yet not ready for the domestic, Martha Stewart breakfast-in-bed life I imagined as my fate.

I kept thinking of that bad Britney Spears schlock song from that waste of 93 minutes, ''Crossroads": ''I'm not a girl, not yet a woman."

So what am I?

People often say college is where we're supposed to go to find ourselves, but those people are lying. College is where we find ourselves hanging out after high school. I had a good time, learned a lot, trained and experimented in the things I now pursue. But I didn't find myself. Why?

Because I was in college. It's like finding out who you are on a reality TV show. It's not who you are. Just who you are on a reality TV show.

Who we are in the world? That's a more difficult one. But I wonder if maybe it's time I bought my own umbrella. A new one. After all, this rain's got to be just the beginning.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.