The grass had grown long enough to need cut this past summer, and I pulled the mower out of the makeshift shed at the top of our property. I started it and took it on long swipes across our sloping lawn. I’ve always found cutting the grass calming. There is a clear sense of accomplishment; I can see what I’ve done and what I need to do. Simplicity clears the mind.

Over the drone of the mower I heard an unnerving thought: I want a house.

It was an insanely adult idea. I don’t want a house with a five-car garage, a swimming pool and hordes of nameless beautiful women hanging around. I just want a house, like the one I grew up in. I want my things to be in that house. Ordinary things.

This absolutely has to be growing up. The practicality is killing me inside. I’ve quit smoking because it is bad for me. I only want to drink in small groups. Tattoos on the small of girl’s back turn me off.

I even drive the speed limit.

I lived in the Centre Plaza apartment building in Shadyside while attending main campus. The streets in Shadyside are named things like Devonshire and Ellsworth and are lined with stone English Tudor houses. The neighborhood looks like a garden, a place silently kept by an old man. It was peace on the edge of Oakland’s constant and rancid movements.

The quiet walks home from class through Shadyside kept me from being a danger to myself. I had my own bedroom on the sixth-story that had its own lock. I had two quiet roommates, and I only saw the one guy 12 times that semester — yes, I counted. I kept my space clean and bare, and no one came into it unless I unlocked the door.

My first night back at UPG, I stared across a dark room at a strange redheaded man lying in a bed a few feet from me. He made noises and I could practically feel his bodyheat he was so close.

What the hell are you doing in my room? I thought. His name is Dan. He’s my roommate. This had never bothered me before.

The guys who live above me, they yell. They yell and they stomp and they drop 50 pound weights on the floor, train elephants, build airplanes, kill ants with hammers. I don’t know what they’re doing but it’s loud. They’ve blown out my bedroom lightbulbs twice.

I get angry and I holler.

“I’m only asking you not to be dicks,” I said to them while standing in their doorway. That was right before the lights blew out the second time. They thought that was funny.

My sense of humor failed when my one roommate came home and passed out on the bathroom floor. I didn’t go, “Oh man, he’s so wasted. Let’s draw a penis on his face!”

“Get him in bed,” I said to two of the guys from upstairs, “then leave.” Later that night, the African fertility dances began.

I’m not without guilt. My freshman year we played football in the room. We threw a football at the fire alarm till it went off. We broke lamps, doors, furniture. We found a couch in someone’s trash and hauled it back to the Courts. We paid two guys 20 bucks a piece to sleep together on the couch all night. We had fun.

Now, I’m a junior and I just want my degree.

Maybe I was this lame all along and just fighting a bitter battle against it. After all, being young has always made me nervous. In high school, no matter how far in the woods the party was, word was the cops had heard about it and they were coming.

“I don’t give a shit,” I’d say, “cops aren’t coming here — this is Carnwath.” Carnwath is a road with a mobile home beside it that’s 10 miles from the nearest mobile home. Though I acted tough, I was horrified the cops would show. I was the dude strolling into the woods at the first sight of headlights. I knew I had this whole life as an adult coming up.

The idea was abstract, vague — like trying to imagine forever. Old isn’t a day I can assign a number. I can’t cower as I watch it barrel down on me with all the force of this universe of unbreakable laws. Instead, I’ll take it in blows; it will ruin me moment by moment.

And after long, I’ll be standing in front of my house bitching about the neighborhood kids walking on my grass. I’ll be very particular about my grass.