I recently had a cell phone conversation with Jen that went a little something like this:

Jen: Hey girl, wassup?
Me: Busy day at work, but I’m chilling at home right now, about to meet the Brits as Hi-Fi. Hey, it’s 6:30 in LA, where are you?
Jen: I’m in my car.
Me: Wait a minute – does this mean you’re wearing one of those wacky headsets so you can talk while you’re driving?
Jen: (hesitates, giggles) Yes.
Me: (joins Jen in fit of laughter)

The week before I had spoken to Jayme, who was driving around Peoria with Syrus her dog along for the ride. As she gave an amusing blow by blow of a drunken Santa swaggering around the Toys R Us parking lot, I couldn’t help but find the whole thing so strange. Not only are my friends calling me from their cars, but they have cars, period.

I’ve been receiving a lot of phone calls lately that have given me pause. People calling me from their cars, or calling me to tell me they’re looking at houses, or asking me if I’m aware of how low interest rates are right now.

The answer to that question is NO, I haven’t been following interest rates, in fact I only recently appreciated the state of interest rates when my little brother called me from Wyoming to calculate the mortgage payment on a house he and his wife recently bid on. Yes, the same kid who was known for industrious yet unauthorized use of our father's credit card during his teen years is about to buy a house. Upon hearing news like this, my immediate reaction, after congratulating my friends and loved ones on taking the Next Big Step Towards Adulthood, is, “Am I ever going to grow up?”

I live in a playground for adults, in a city where anything you want is at your immediate disposal. As I watch my friends who live elsewhere enter adulthood, I begin to feel as if I’m suffering from some sort of arrested development. I go out a lot, I hang out with my friends, I shoot pool and smoke pot, and sometimes address my co-workers as “Dude”. I’m the only person I know who made a new years resolution to quit the gym. I live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in which every square surface is covered with a book, a CD, a photograph, or a sock. It’s a lot like my apartment in college, minus the slacker roommates. I don’t own a vehicle, and when I’m home for Christmas, I utter seven little words that bring me right back to high school: “Hey Mom, can I borrow the car?” I’m thirty years old. Is this a bad thing?

I guess compared to most people who share my demographic, yeah, it might be a bit strange. Over the years when I’ve returned to Peoria for holidays I’ve watched the local watering holes get emptier and emptier of people I know as they settle down, get married, have children, and forget what the inside of a bar looks like. I’m far more likely to see someone I used to baby sit in a Peoria bar than someone from my high school class.

Then I return to New York, and am welcomed by the open arms of innumerable 30-somethings just like me. I have settled down in one of the last communities in America where a 30-year old single woman is not considered a pariah, in fact, she's considered pretty smart. I have married friends here, but they’re really cool married friends, the kind who seem more like fun roommates than two people conjoined until death do they part. They, like my single friends, are a constant source of intellectual stimulation and good old-fashioned fun. Married or not, we’ve all embraced the collective culture that comes with living in a big city. We traipse around neighborhoods, befriending local business owners, chatting with strangers, constantly keeping our eyes and minds opens for new experiences.

I’m not saying that people that live elsewhere don’t embrace exploration, nor am I saying that mortgages and car payments an adult make. I do however know that when I’m away from the music, ideas, and excitement about life that I share with the friends I've made in New York, I want to get back to them as quickly as possible. My friends challenge me, they teach me, and they have a way of saying the right things at the right time. While expressing to Stevie my fears that New York City is a catalyst for arrested development, he broke it down like this. “I wouldn’t say arrested development,” he said. “It’s more like… prolonged young-adulthood.”

Although that could be just a matter of semantics, looking at the issue a little deeper, I realize that New York living has a way of keeping you young. I’m not just a 30-year-old, car-less, renter. I’m a 30-year-old, car-less, renting New Yorker, and I am all of these things by choice. There are plenty of years ahead of me in which I can pay car insurance and buy a house. Of course I probably won’t even be in NYC when that happens, because for starters there are no houses in Manhattan, and cars that aren’t painted bright yellow with a “For Hire” sign on their roof do not belong here. But when and if that day arrives, and I do finally join the ranks of my married, home-owning, driving peers, I’ll think back lovingly to this colorful mess of an apartment, the three block walk to Hi-Fi, and the cast of characters awaiting me there. As far as I’m concerned, adult life doesn’t get much better than this. I plan to prolong it for as long as I possibly can.