Rites of passage

There comes a time in every parent's life when the children start fleeing the nest, either to get married or to share a flat with friends. I did it 40 years ago when, unlike today, it was practically unheard of for anybody to leave home.

Therefore, I was not entirely surprised when my number two daughter announced that she was venturing out of the nest. To be perfectly honest, I've been expecting it since she graduated and started earning serious money.

Thank goodness, parents do not have to go through the birds and bees rigmarole any more, because children know more about the facts of life than we shall ever learn.

However, they do not know about electricity bills and the other expenses that whittle away your salary when you step out from under the family home umbrella into the unknown.

Getting your first electricity bill is a rite of passage. Rites of passage are something that we all go through. There is the growing up rite of passage like your first sexual experience, which you somehow fumble through and realise that it ain't like it is in the movies.

There is the age-based rite of passage like turning 18 and voting for the first time and actually believing that you are now controlling your fate and your country's destiny with your vote.

There is the rite of passage when you have your first alcoholic drink, get sloshed every weekend and lose your appetite for drinking a few months later.

There is the right of passage when you smoke your first cigarette, cough yourself silly and either give up or carry on hammering nails into your coffin.

Then there is the cultural rite like getting your drivers licence so that your parents do not have to drive you to another rite of passage. One rite of passage that you need like you need a hole in the head is the first time you crash while you're driving your father's car.

This normally leads to the first financial rite of passage of paying for your transgressions, which leads to the second financial rite of passage - buying your first car and getting on a treadmill for life to pay it and subsequent replacements off, insuring it, keeping it on the road and maintaining it.

Receiving your first electricity bill is the most painful rite of passage that there is because it's unexpected and normally arrives when your finances are at an all time low.

When you rent a place, the rent is supposed to cover the cost of your living in the flat, apartment or whatever it is that you've rented. And it does.

But if you want that place lit, heated or cooled, then it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. It's also going to cost you to bathe, do the laundry, cook, eat, and to phone your mother to ask your father how to change the gas cylinder, which you now also have to buy.

The major rite of passage of all is when you get your first pay cheque, which is the only way that you can afford to pay for your water and electricity bills, your phone bill, rent and all your other rites of passage. Your first pay cheque will also introduce you to another rite of passage - taxes.

I had to learn all this years ago when I went off to live on my own. Which is why, 40 years later, I walk around the house switching off all the lights that my children nonchalantly leave on.

There are also certain rites of passage that are cool and something to look forward to, like your first job and your first business cards. Getting your first lot of business cards is very exciting, not because you've become somebody very important, because in actual fact you have not.

Basically, your first business card says "Joe B. Flunky - lackey to somebody making more money than I am". However, it's exciting because now, unless you have a surname that stands out like mine, when you meet people you don't have to remind them what your name is. You give them your card every time you meet them, which is almost as daft as walking round the house switching off all the lights.

odea@waldonet.net.mt