This path of rational discourse

A few weeks ago R and I went over to visit Squishy and Skyhammer in Victoria.  It was funny, walking into the beautiful entrance of their beautiful apartment, sharing meals together, having a glass of wine up on the very windy rooftop deck as we overlooked the city and the water: I just had this funny thought that we're all adults now.
Maybe they all think they're adults already, but it was sort of a novel concept for me.  I routinely called my dad and still call my mom for things that I really ought to know by now.  I don't feel like I'm an adult.  At 35 years old I am still feeling my way and making incredibly extravagant mistakes.  In the last few years I have come to understand how little I know in the grand scheme of things.
One thing we talked about over a few glasses of great red wine was how we are all childless.  None of us will have kids to check in on us, to care for us as we get older.  We joked about the lot of us all sharing a house and caring for one another.
And then Coco was in a bad car accident.  And she's older than us, and she's unmarried and she has no children.  And so we have all stepped up to the plate.  I do her grocery shopping.  Renee and Paola help clean her place, run errands and do her laundry.
Michael and I were there on Saturday, dropping off groceries and installing a new shower rod for her.  I asked Michael to take out her garbage and recycling and he did, using this cart she had.  He came back to her apartment a few minutes later, stricken.  In the 30 to 60 sixty seconds that he had left the cart next to the elevator while he darted outside to the garbage and recycling, someone had taken the cart.  He was devastated and angry.  Coco wrote a note asking for the cart back which we affixed to the wall where it had been taken, but Michael and I didn't have any great expectations of it being returned and I told her we would replace it.
It was a low point.  Coming over, doing a good deed for a friend and being rewarded this way.  I thought my horseshoe was malfunctioning.  We were hungry so we headed over to the Foundation for a bite to eat and found out it was their ten year anniversary so the owner gave us both $10 gift certificates so we got $20 off our meal.  We felt a little better.
Today I got an email from Coco that the cart was  returned.  So was our faith in humanity, a little bit.  We watched "Terri" tonight, which is about an overweight orphan in high school and the relationships he develops - namely with John C. Reilly, the principal of the school.
It was good.  At one point in the movie the principal reveals to Terri that he is only doing the best that he can and that he is sorry if he has hurt or disappointed Terri, and that he can only try harder, but that he won't always succeed, and that he makes a lot of mistakes, as that's what human do.
And so, in thinking about my own high school experience and who I was back then (studious, overweight, unnoticed, unambitious, shy, nonathletic, angry, emotional) to where I am now, the changes are vast (still working on the angry bit).  And so maybe those changes make me an adult.  And like John C. Reilly's character: I don't always know what I'm doing but I try to do the best that I can with what I have.  And probably when my parents were my age they were just doing the best that they could with what they had as well. 
The long and the short of this story is that we were upset that the cart was lost, and we were so happy that it was returned.