I’m 40. I’m married and have a mortgage, but no kids (don’t want any).
The spouse and I haven’t grown up yet and don’t plan to. We play hockey and tabletop RPGs, ride motorcycles (sportbikes, even), and dote on three spoiled cats. When I get extra money I spend it on guitar and bass stuff–he spends his on hockey equipment. We just started our 401(k)s this year (a fact of which we’re not proud) but we do pay all our bills on time and have money left over when we’re done. Every year we go to Gen Con to spend the weekend playing games. I freelance for a company that produces a game about fantasy races living in the cyberpunk 2060s. I love Harry Potter. I ride a skateboard and listen to industrial music. I have a good job but I look at it not as a vocation but as a way to earn money to finance my fun. I drive silly impractical cars. I don’t own a dress or a skirt (unless you count Utilikilts) and wouldn’t be caught dead in girly trappings like panty hose or heels.
Am I responsible? I think so. Am I grown up? God, I hope not!
I used to be grown up, but I retired two years ago and have done some major regression. My life now is a lot like the summer vacations before we were expected to work or something.
I’ve just celebrated my 27th wedding anniversary. The kids are legally adults and the mortgage is paid off. But I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
Let’s see:
[ul]
[li]30 rapidly approaching[/li][li]In hock for a car and a small condo[/li][li]Holding down a full-time job as a corporate minion[/li][li]Mentor younguns without thinking it’s all a giant prank on people who think I’m a sober and responsible person[/li][li]Buy my own groceries instead of waiting for the Grocery Fairy aka Mum[/li][li]Thinking about starting my 401(k) early[/li][li]Can’t scarf even one Cadbury’s Creme Egg without reaching for a glass of water – used to be able to scarf three or four in a go with no ill effect.[/li][li]Own and care for two cats and a hedgehog – and they’re all fat and sassy.[/li][/ul]
…Yep. I constantly have “Oh MAH lawd, I’m an ADULT,” moments.
I’m like winterhawk11, responsible but not grown up. I pay the bills and support the household but that doesn’t always mean I have a full time job. Walking outside and playing with my dog are very important to me, work has to accommodate that. I love a good roadtrip and I’ll still sleep in the car to save money, even though my back complains about it alot more than it did twenty years ago.
When I get a new gadget I lay on the floor on my belly to check it out, spreading the parts and instructions all around me. At these times my wife thinks I act ten years old.
38, married 2 1/2 years, mortgage, two cars, and two cats, and mostly grown up. Like Qadgop, to me being grown up is about just doing the things I know I have to do. I don’t want to do the dishes - I do them anyway. I don’t want to go to work - I go anyway. We have lots of fun, and do lots of fun things, but we also do the un-fun things, and I think that’s where the grown up comes in.
I’m currently working with a bunch of women that are from 21 to 26 years old. I feel like Methuselah. I do plan to plant the seeds of sedition within them, though, and teach them how not to think that The Man owns you.
I think I’m a grown-up if that means accepting the chioces you’ve made when you weren’t yet one, and seeing those choices through in the hopes of still being young enough to start all over again and making the exact opposite choices, but without regret.
I have work responsibilities, wage-earner with one job, self-employed (and employing others) with the other. No mortgage (I paid off the last vestiges 7 years ago), no partner, no kids, no car. I live mainly to suit myself, but make sure that the needs of my friends and my clients are met.
I’m 42 this year, but I think I just simply refuse to grow up.
I’m 38 and have a house, car, and respectable job. I fulfill all my responsibilities and am a burden to no one. However, I do not have a spouse or kids. To my parents, I will never be a grown up until I do (not much chance of that at this age). In contrast, my brother, who relies on my parents’ assistance to make ends meet, is considered a grown up by them because he has a wife and son.
It’s not that my parents think I’m doing anything wrong or hold it against me. They’ve said several times that they’re quite proud of me. They also say that no one can be a grown up until they start a family of their own. Their logic is that I make my decisions based on how it affects me first and foremost. In contrast, someone with a family would put their needs first (ideally, they admit there are people with families who don’t do that). That’s being a grown up to them.
I disagree with them on this. However, we only disagree on the definition of “grown up” not whether my choices in life are right or wrong. So it doesn’t matter that much.
33, married nearly twelve years, two kids, homeowner, job, dog, etc. Too poor for stocks and haven’t had an employer who offered any pension or 401k opportunities.
Every time I have to clean out the gutters, caulk around the foundation, or clean up vomit, I think, “Yep, I’m an adult.”
I wouldn’t want to go back to the powerlessness of being a kid, in a sense – even if I’m chained to some boring routine or chore, at least I decided to do it instead of having it foisted on me. But occasionally I do yearn wistfully for the days when I could turn to someone else and say, “Can you fix this for me? Can you make it all better?” Those days are long gone. Now I’m that person to other people, and I have to fix it and make it all better or explain why that can’t happen. That’s how I know I’m an adult, too.
Two teenaged kids (with substantial savings toward college for them)
Responsible career that I enjoy.
House payment. Car payment.
All bills get paid on time.
Grown up.
The clincher? I haven’t chosen a pair of really great suede boots or tickets to a concert over the electric bill in about 20 years.
Yeah, I’m still working on that. I guess I could look at it this way - we’re being responsible and working to pay off all of our debt and not buy a bunch more stuff on credit, so all our mis-matched hand-me-down furniture is an indicator of our grown-upness.
(I really, really want nice furniture some day. There’s another indicator of grown-upness - I dream about having nice furniture. Sigh.)
When I was very small and would make my mom’s coffee and bring her cigarettes to her in the mornings, I’d taste the coffee and screw up my face becuase it was horrible. She’d say, “You’re going to love it when you’re grown up.” I still have never had a cup of coffee and I’m 35, so…I’m clearly not grown up.
However, I do think the music teenagers listen to these days is ‘noise’, so perhaps I’ve gone straight to codger.
Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha I’m 50 and on the downward slope of adult-hood. Kids are grown and gone, 401 K in place, spend more time on my hobbies than my work, and am ready to retire at any moment. Being an adult was a cool role-playing job for awhile, but it’s not a lifetime gig (I sincerely hope). See ya’ll on the other side.
I’m 43, married for nearly 18 years, two kids, a mortgage, two car payments, full-time job. I have enough gray hair and wrinkles that anyone who tries to card me is just plain stupid.
I’m still amazed sometimes at the fact that I am allowed to make decisions on my own, without input from parents or other “adult” units. Of course, my husband gives me input when necessary–like buying a car–but it absolutely astounds me when I realize that I could literally go to a car retailer on my own, and trade in my minivan for something a little less like a “Mommy mobile” without anyone blinking an eye about it (at least until my husband finds out…).
And the thought that I am completely responsible for the lives of two other humans (my kids) overwhelms me sometimes.
Way down deep inside, I still feel like the kid who drove from one US coast to the other within a year of getting my driver’s license, and who Eurailed around Europe in college, camping out overnight in train stations in countries whose languages I barely speak, and thinking it was all just a great adventure.
I have a wife, a car, and own my home (it’s a townhouse/condo, but still). I’m hoping to get the kids thing checked off pretty soon.
I am NOT a grownup. By the time my Dad was my age, he had three kids, owned a real house, put himself through college (only person in his family to even go to college), and his first wife had died. He was busting his ass raising all of us by himself and putting three squares on the table every day. How in the bloody Hell he managed that I haven’t a clue, but that’s the sort of benchmark for adulthood I have. And I ain’t there.
Being an adult was a cool role-playing job for awhile, but it’s not a lifetime gig (I sincerely hope). See ya’ll on the other side.