When did you become an adult?

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I'm 23, but I have difficulty feeling like an adult, especially when dealing with women who are my age or even a bit older. My sister-in-law is 33, and she's perfectly wonderful to me and we get on very well, but I always feel like a little kid when I'm talking to her. She has two little girls (one with special needs), used to be a bank manager, is an artist who has remodeled and redecorated one home (and is in the middle of doing the same to another), and is just very motivated and highly efficient. I feel so in awe of her that it's like I'm an 11-year-old or something.

Can you pinpoint when you actually started to consider yourself a 'grown-up'? Are there times when you feel not 100% up to that label?

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Answers

I was 17, away from home for the first time, and people I didn't even know were doing their best to kill me. RVN, early Oct., 1965.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

I'm 29, and just recently had to face the fact that that, yes, I am technically an adult. There were really several defining moments - being treated by a physician who was younger than me, being called ma'am to my face (ouch), drawing up a will. That being said, I still feel like a kid when I'm dealing with other parents at my kid's school (they tend to be about 5 to 10 years older than me), or with my family (my older brothers are 9 and 10 years older). I don't know if anyone really ever feels like they've "grown up" - it sort of implies that you're complete or finished (hell, I'm still trying to decide what to be when I grow up).

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

The first time I thought I was grown up was a month after I had my first kid.

Several months ago, I again thought I was grown up because I realized that I was no longer afraid of angry confrontations with other adults.

I think I will grow up again when I'm not afraid to sing like a real opera singer.

Do y'all know The Flaming Lips? They have this song about a moth in an incubator. Part of it goes: "I've been born before. I'm getting used to it."

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000


Several months ago, I again thought I was grown up because I realized that I was no longer afraid of angry confrontations with other adults.

Gwen, you just summed up my one goal in life. Well, the only one I think I can (possibly, maybe) realistically achieve.

I guess I feel a little bit grown up anytime I do something I don't want to do, just because my father always told me that that's what being a responsible adult was all about; still, that feeling fades pretty fast, for me.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000


Geez, you guys are *really* just pups. I don't think you ever feel your age. My mom is 69 and she says she doesn't feel it. I never feel older than anyone else. If people act mature at any age I feel equivalent to them. Age *does not imply emotional maturity*. I've met some horribly immature, insercure and malicious 40 and 50 year olds. On the other hand, my 23 year old roommate is, for the most part, wise beyond her years.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000


I only feel like an adult in moments. I felt grown up the first time I did my own taxes. I felt grown up when I had to manage my department at work. I feel grown up when I check into a hotel. I feel positively ancient at my new job because 85% of my co-workers are fresh out of college and still agonize over what to wear to the bar on Friday night or the results of Saturday's football game. It's all relative....

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

I feel like a kid all the time. I'm 27 and there's this 25 year old at work who I just figured she was older than me because she's so much more accomplished and motivated than I am. My boss is only 33 and I feel like a little kid (and a slob.. she's a sharp dresser) every time she calls me into her office for a meeting. If we all go to lunch together I feel like a moron because they're all talking about houses and kids and stuff and all I do when I go home is watch tv and talk to my fiancee or my friends online. (none of the other people at work has kids besides my boss..)

In my experience anyone my age who had a kid suddenly seemed so much older than me. I had a friend in high school who got pregnant her first year at college (she was two years older than me).. I felt "equal" to her for the longest time, until she came home with this baby.. unfortunately we're no longer friends. Not that I'd be a jerk to her if I ever saw her (I'd be happy) but we just grew apart.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000


I don't know that I am there yet, but it is slowly dawning on me that I am not a teenager any more. I know that's not the same thing, but it's the only way I can describe it. I realized the other day that the paralyzing fears I used to have (people thinking I am stupid because I didn't know who an artist was or hadn't read a certain book, people hating what I wear, etc.) are thankfully gone from my life for the most part, and I associate those fears with my self-absorbed adolescence. But I also have friends with children, friends who own homes,etc. and their responsibilities seem much more substantial than me making sure that I tape Dawson's Creek for my roommate while he's at work...

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

I'm with Gwen. When I realized that I was going to be a mother, I was baffled!!! I was 19 and still felt sooo incredibly young. Now, at 21, with a wonderful 2 year old boy, I am the epitome (HA!) of maturity. Actually, I have grown up a lot since I became a parent. I hardly ever go out, I cook dinner every night, etc. There's not much I would change, if I could. I'm perfectly content living the life of a 30 year old. :-)

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

I just had a major birthday but still don't feel grown up. I've been mature and responsible forever but never grew up.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000


I don't mean to sound grim, but I'm pretty sure it was when my mother died--and I was 35 years old when that happened. Even though for many years I had been earning a living, making my own dental appointments, doing my taxes, making car payments, and having sex; and even though I had been married for four years and had long gotten used to being called "ma'am", part of me was still a kid as long as I had a living parent (my father died when I was eight).

A few months after my mother died, my husband and I bought our first house (well, my first house anyway), and it felt very grown up signing escrow papers. But it was really becoming an orphan ("I'm totally unsupervised!") that made a grown-up out of me.

I'm 39 now and have returned to college, where I am being instructed by a least one professor who is younger than me. That doesn't make me feel particularly grown up -- just old!

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000


I agree with Oma. I'm responsible on a certain level, but I'll never grow up. If you ever saw a picture of Huckleberry Finn all grown up, it would look just like me.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

I'm not sure I ever grew up. I will be 35 in Dec. and I still laugh at farts and stuff like that and act as young as my kids at times.

But, If I had to choose, I'd say it's when I became a mom.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000


dont you be come a adult whn you get ur period????

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

When I had my son. Like Gwen, it wasn't like that moment, but after handling things by myself for a month or so. I was in charge of a whole human being and I didn't mess it up or anything!

People left in my care will not die! (Which is more than I can say of some plants that have been left in my care, or that whole vermicomposting scandal -- but human infants I seem to be able to handle.)

Oddly, I thought that I would be a grown-up when I owned a house, but now I think I'm an adult because I don't own a house and I'm fine with that.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000



I became an adult when I realized I was taking the smallest portion for myself, using the last of the fabric softener on my children's sheets, and using more logic than my mother. Which isn't mind-bendingly difficult. I still stick my tongue out at my kids, but I also protect them better than anyone else could, so I guess I'd say I'm proportionately grown up.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Even though I had my daughter at 17 years old and moved on my own at 18, I always felt like a kid with a kid. I think I finally started feeling grown up when I had worked my way up the ladder at my job and was traveling the world training computer users. I was about 24 and was making enough money at that point to send my daughter to private school. I thought "Wow, I am a career woman that sends her child to private school"!I finally felt "grown up". After I re-marrying I quit my "career woman job" to form my own band and play the clubs in L.A. I felt like a kid again. Then later on when my daughter got pregnant I thought "Oh no, now I have to be a grown-up again because I'm going to be a grandma at 36"! Well I'm a grandma now but most days I still feel like a kid. That is "a good thing", it will keep you young forever! Grandma's ROCK!

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

I feel like an adult in the sense that I have a great deal more perspective than I did when I was younger, and am able now to see beyond my own self in a way I just couldn't when I was 19 or so. But, like most people here, I can feel like a kid again in a heartbeat. I feel like a kid when my fiance takes me to the zoo, or when I play with my nephew, or a thousand other situations. I think that's healthy and a good thing - I wouldn't ever want to lose my ability to enjoy things on that childlike level where everything is so pure.

I don't know if it made me feel like an adult really, but I know that seeing my father in recovery after his cancer operation, having just lost three organs, and holding his hand and telling him: "You did well, Dad, you did such a good job" aged me about fifteen years. It always seems to be things like that that really bring adulthood home to you.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000


This is gonna sound dumb, but I felt more like an adult the first time I went to Kinko's and I figured out how to use the copy cards by myself. And that was just a year ago.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

I refuse to become an adult. I don't care how old I am. I refuse. Adults are old and stifled. They're responsible and can't have fun like a kid can. They can't play with anyone. They can't cry and sing and draw and jump in puddles and make faces with the other kids. Adults are old. And I refuse to get old. I can still draw wild designs in the sand at the beach and laugh out loud in the theater and yell for joy when darth maul gets cut in half. I can have fun. I will never get to be an adult. Never. jamesee

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

floosie you made me almost pee myself laughing.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

I love being an adult. I would have a lot of problems in my day to day life if I didn't have the kind of self-assurance that adulthood brings. And maturity. I like not being reduced to tears and frustration over petty things, and knowing more important stuff is going on in the world, and not being a little snot about stupid stuff, and knowing I can take care of my kids. . .

Being an adult is great. Although I might pine one wistful moment or two over noticing things with the freshness of a four year old I get over it as soon as I remember I have a four year old I can share the world with. And never being four again means I never have to go through the hell of being fourteen again.

So it's all good.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000


thanx fruitcake :)

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

I haven't become an adult yet.

Well, except for the living on my own, paying my bills and taxes and holding down a steady job parts. But at heart, I'm still a kid, damn it.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000


floosie, when you get your period that means you have become a WOMAN which is a good thing. It doesn't necessarily mean you're grown up.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

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