Adulthood, Aisle 4

So there I was, standing in the paper goods aisle of the Piggly Wiggly at 8:45 on a Tuesday evening, having a full-blown crisis over two ply versus three ply. Now, when you’re seven, you think adulthood is going to be magnificent. You imagine staying up until midnight, eating chocolate cake for breakfast, and buying whatever cool stuff you want. Getting yourself a pony, 15 cats, and a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Standard kid dreams. Nobody tells you that 80% of actual adulthood is just staring at household products and trying to remember if “Mega Roll” means it fits your specific plastic holder at home, or if you’re about to buy an absurdly huge roll of tissue that will sit precariously atop the toilet tank for six weeks. There I stood, holding a pack of brand-name ultra-soft toilet paper in my right hand and the store-brand double-roll in my left. And I was seriously weighing the financial trade-offs. I was running the mental math: “Well, if I spend the extra three dollars on…