Three Suburban Rites of Passage in One Day: Costco Membership, Getting an SUV, and Our First Suburban Party

The Suburan Rites of Passage.  Those changes, both big and small, where you start losing your urban identity and start adopting the customs of your new home. When you start evolving from urban hipster to suburban fuddy-duddy.

I’ve been noticing those Rites of Passage over the past few months, most of them little changes in perspective that sneak up on you where you realize that you’re becoming a true suburban.  You become exasperated when there isn’t a close parking spot in the mall, forgetting the 25 minute drive-arounds you used to do to find a spot anywhere in the city.  You go to the movies for a first-weekend blockbuster and get there only 20 minutes in advance, secure that you’ll still be able to get a seat.  You eat at Cheesecake Factory.

But it’s the big Suburban Rites of Passage that slap you in the head and make you confront your reality.  We had three of them today.

1.  Joining Costco

We got our Costco card today.  Now, I’m not going to belabor the experience, because the whole “marvel at all the giant boxes of things you buy at Costco” is a pretty tired cliche at this point.  But it really is amazing — huge warehouse full of all these oversized bottles and boxes, where you end up getting way more stuff than you really need.  And joining Costco is almost a suburban requirement, particularly if you’re new to the suburbs and you’re not used to needing, say, toilet paper in more than just one bathroom.  So instead you get the 800 roll pack, or whatever, so you’re well-stocked for the next 100 years.

2.  Getting an SUV

You know how in the city, if you look at traffic stopped at a light, about half the cars are taxicabs?  In the suburbs, half the cars are SUVs.  Every family has one.  So we had to have one, even though it’s going to be my wife’s car and we don’t even have a kid yet.  But we are desperate, you know, to fit in.  Seriously, it just wouldn’t look right if my thirtysomething suburban wife was driving around in some sort of convertible or sports car.  More importantly, she’s a terrible, terrible, driver, so I wanted her to be able to ride high in the saddle and, moreover, have a lot of car between her and whatever it is that she’s going to hit.  So an SUV it is!

3.  Our First Suburban Party

We’ve been in the suburbs for almost five months, but we hadn’t yet been to a proper suburban party.  Part of that is we don’t have a lot of friends in the area, and haven’t been particularly good about meeting new people. And part of it is, frankly, that I’m a crotchety person that people don’t like having around.  Despite all that, we were invited to her friend Noelle’s house for a Christmas party.  She lives in Northern New Jersey, and we actually know her through a group of friends we made in the Apollo Circle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my wife’s recent desperate attempts to inject some cultural significance our lives.

So Noelle threw our first suburban party, which is different from city parties in one big way: I couldn’t drink, because I had to drive home, and I don’t like dying or getting arrested.  I can’t begin to tell you how much of a difference not drinking made. I’d like to say that it was like one of those movies where a guy who’s a borderline alcoholic learns that he doesn’t need to drink to have a good time.  But it wasn’t.  It was like one of those movies where a guy who isn’t a borderline alcoholic learns that not drinking all night at a party is a real fucking bummer.

So that was our day: joining Costco, getting an SUV, and going to a selectively-dry suburban party.  Three Suburban Rites of Passage in one day.  Awesome!