The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Since college, some things have changed. I can’t pass out in a random bush in my apartment complex and not feel like a complete ass when I wake up. I can’t skip my daily responsibilities to play Mario Golf and get into a heated debate with my roommates over the merits of Yoshi’s control over Donkey Kong’s power. And I certainly can’t make it my own personal goal to urinate in every public fountain in town.

I’ve accepted that things are never going to be the same. But hey, this growing up thing isn’t all bad. Like everything else in life, it has its ups and downs.

For example, in college, we’d all buy the cheapest beer we could find and treasure it like it was our first-born child who happened to crap gold. It was used in an intricate system of bartering and wages that everyone took very seriously.

ME: Hey, can I bum two beers from you? That’s the exact amount I need in the next 5 minutes before our cab shows up.

ROOMMATE: Actually, you can have three. Last night, I ate a slice and a half of your pizza and four Doritos. Normally, that would constitute two beers, but I also opened the garlic sauce that came with it, ate a third of it, then covered it up with tin foil I found under the couch.

ME: Fair enough. Let us seal this exchange with the traditional “flicking of bottle caps towards each other faces.”

ROOMMATE: Agreed.

But now, we always have community beer around and can offer it to anyone who comes over. If we bring it to someone else’s house, we leave what we don’t drink because we know it’ll come back around to us. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have any beer at all, whether it was mine or someone else’s.

The only downside of this arrangement is when you have a few people over who you don’t know that well. You offer them a beer and they drink all of them and leave, knowing you’ll never go to their place and drink their beers.

These people suck. If you’re one of them, I hope and pray that the ghost of Adolphus Busch haunts you with the stench of musty, crapwood-aged beer.

Of course, every now and then, you get a 6-pack of your favorite microbrew and want at least a few that are guaranteed to be there for you when you need them. That’s when you implement the treasure trove known as “The Vegetable Crisper.”

I don’t eat vegetables, so it’s always empty. And I know for a fact that none of the people hanging out at my place are going to suddenly have an urge to bite into a head of iceberg lettuce. They should rest safely in the confines of the crisper until you’re ready to enjoy their malty goodness.

Of course, one morning you wake up and your friend has shown that college isn’t really that far behind you. After you passed out, he found and drank your extra beers, ate twenty-five of your Doritos and pissed in your vegetable crisper.

At least now you can do the same thing next time you hang out at his place.

Isn’t growing up awesome?