The Gift For Fakers

I want you to picture, for one horrifying second, the moment you turned twenty-two. Nobody handed you a manual. Nobody sat you down and said ‘here’s how a thermostat works’ or ‘here’s what an escrow account is, and no, it is not a small Italian car.’ You were simply expected to know things, the way toddlers are expected to know not to lick electrical outlets, except with worse consequences and significantly less supervision.

Somewhere along the way, faking adulthood became the actual job description. Not ‘be an adult.’ Just ‘look like one, convincingly, under fluorescent lighting, while a customer service representative asks if you’d like to speak to a supervisor.’ You say no, obviously. You are the supervisor now. Of your own chaos.

The Secret Art Of Faking Adulthood While Your Thermostat Judges You

Every household has one thermostat and one designated liar. That’s the person who walks past it, sees the number 68, and confidently announces ‘yeah, that feels right,’ despite having no functional relationship with the concept of degrees. This is peak faking adulthood energy. It’s not about knowing the answer. It’s about saying a number with your whole chest and daring anyone to challenge you. Nobody ever does, because everyone else is also faking it, and questioning the thermostat liar means admitting you, too, are just a raccoon in a blazer.

I once watched a grown man debate his own thermostat for four minutes like it had insulted his mother. He lost. The thermostat did not care. Machines never do. That’s the cruelest part of adulthood — your appliances know you’re bluffing, and they simply let you keep going.

Faking Adulthood At Work: The Insurance Call Nod Heard Round The Office

Nothing showcases faking adulthood like a good insurance call. You call in about a claim, a very calm stranger starts using phrases like ‘deductible tier’ and ‘coordination of benefits,’ and you respond with the universal adult noise: a soft, thoughtful ‘mm-hm,’ deployed at intervals to suggest comprehension you absolutely do not possess. You could not define a deductible tier under torture. You would simply say ‘mm-hm’ louder.

Somewhere there is a customer service script sitting in a drawer that every adult has half-read exactly once, skimmed for the return policy, and then quoted with total false authority for the rest of their natural life. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s thirty days.’ It is not thirty days. It has never been thirty days. You made that up in 2014 and you’ve been reciting it like scripture ever since.

Faking Adulthood At Home: Where The Thermostat Is Basically A Lie Detector

At home the stakes get higher, because now you’re not just nodding at strangers, you’re nodding at your own children, who unfortunately watch you with the unblinking suspicion of tiny federal auditors. A kid asks why the sky is blue and you say ‘science’ and hope that ends the meeting. It never ends the meeting. Kids keep asking follow-up questions like they’re deposing you.

Somewhere between assembling furniture with the wrong screws and pretending you understand your own Wi-Fi router, you realize the horrifying truth: there is no adult in the room. There was never an adult in the room. The room is entirely staffed by people who read one paragraph on the internet once and then repeated it with tremendous confidence at dinner parties.

So look, if the faking adulthood in your life has been improvising a full personality since roughly age twenty-two — the thermostat guesses, the script cold reads, the insurance-call nodding — the least you can do is upgrade their footwear for the performance. Which is, conveniently, the entire premise behind Guide to Looking Like You Know What You’re Doing: Adulthood, Bad Decisions, and Other Things We Pretend to Understand — available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HH2VFXNF. Give the improv some decent shoes. The bluffing continues either way.