What Your Early Twenties Will Be Like

Puberty Part Two

James imagines a “Puberty Part Two” video for high-school seniors: a follow-up to awkward body-changes lessons that prepares them for adulthood. At 25, he jokes that he’s a quarter-century old—and that viewers who watched him in eighth grade may now have bigger beards than he does.

The returning Puberty Platypus warns that grown-up life brings thinning hair, constant tiredness, and the bizarre thrill of browsing houses just to admire the kitchen backsplash. Then there’s adult mail: most of it is junk, but the important letters can threaten your utilities or demand taxes without clearly explaining what you owe.

Adulthood does have perks, like making your own choices and eating whatever you can afford. But cake for breakfast can leave you immobilized, and surviving on Bagel Bites eventually makes your body beg for fruit. James finds the daily question of what to eat exhausting. He jokes about wishing he could eat a month’s worth of food like a snake and admits that most of his driving is food-related.

Cooking extra food to avoid cooking again only delays the next unavoidable chores: dishes and laundry.

James also talks candidly about burnout and working from home. When your boss lives inside your head, it can be hard to stop working—even on weekends. He says he’s learning to relax, socialize, and keep a healthier work-life balance, though he plans to discuss his YouTube journey in more detail another time.

The ending punctures the cheerful message about adulthood with a sudden, melancholy question about feeling lost while friends marry and start families. The Platypus’s answer is simply: “Bagel bite.”

Personalities

• James — Narrator
• The imagined Puberty Platypus