Your dishes match your bedding? :eek: I think you’ve even one-upped Martha Stewart!
I kinda went through this twice. And it wasn’t about toys (which I still have), or childish attitude (ditto).
First time, was the first summer in college when I didn’t go home for the summer. Instead, I moved out of the dorms, into an apartment, and got a full-time job - the first job that I worked 40 hours a week. For the first time, it hit me that I had to look after myself. Even at college, in the dorms, I had a roommate (and we would check up on each other, and help each other if needed), and the dorm caf did the cooking, and there was maid service. Living alone and working was nice in a lot of ways, and took a lot of getting used to in a lot of others.
Second time: a year after graduating from college, I had a “real” (not summer) full-time job, new car, new house, was married, new baby, much payments… and it hit me that not only did I have to look after myself (previous revelation), but now I was responsible for other people. That was really an “adult” feeling, if you will, and kind of a heavy one.
So, 19 and 23, respectively.
I felt like n adult first at about 18 or 19, luckily I grew out of that silly idea by the time I reached 30.
At 25 for me. It was the first time I lived alone and the first time as a person over 18 years old that I had bought a box of Kleenex™. Something about not always using the toilet paper to blow my nose made me feel all grown up.
I’m 31, and don’t feel like an adult. I feel old, at least physically, but being fat doesn’t help that. I play World of Warcraft a LOT, play with the cats. While I DO work, and pay the bills, and am married to a hard-working woman, I just don’t feel all growed up yet. Not having kids probably is a major factor…
George
35 here, I think I first felt like a adult after I had been a TA for awhile. At first, the students seemed more or less like peers, but by the time I finished my doctorate, undergraduates were starting to look more and more like children. Then, somewhere around age 30, I realized there were freshmen, ostensibly adults, who were not around for the premiere of the Star Wars trilogy, who wouldn’t get references to the A-team, and who didn’t know who Charlie the Tuna was. They don’t really remember things like the Soviet Union, or appreciate what the Cold War was about, and so on.
I also felt like a adult when I bought my first car.
So, say 30 or 31.
Sometimes it’s difficult to really feel like an adult, but when I spend so much time teaching undergraduates, it certainly happens rather easily.
- My dad had just died, my mom had been dead for over 3 years, and I have no siblings. I was responsible for my wife and two kids and for handling their estate and for continuing to be gainfully employed. No more deferring the hard questions to Pop. No Mom to help handle the kids. Practicing medicine was easy, but living life on life’s terms was hard.
Judging by what little I know of **elfbabe ** from her posts, I’d say you did more than fine. 
I think it would have been around 17, when I left home for the final time and severed ties with my family. Greyhound-bound for a city I’d never been to, where I knew no one, with no money, and a lot of trepidation. While it was scary, it made me realise that I was truly on my own. I had been for most of my life anyway, as my parents were a complete wash, but this was really it. Nowhere to go if I fell flat on my face, no one to kit a couple of bucks from if I were desperate. In the words of that old song – “This ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around.”
Besides that, I’d say the first time my wife had a serious relapse of her multiple sclerosis, and it truly hit me that marriage and love aren’t so much illustrated by the flowers and candy and sweet times, but more by the times when you have to walk your best loved to the bathroom because she can’t manage it on her own, or sit and colour in the Snork colouring book you bought her to help regain her fine motor skills, or dress her and half-carry her to the sofa after her shower because the warm water has utterly drained her muscle strength. That wises you up real quick as to what goes into loving someone, I guess. Not only the doing of those things, but the fact that you do it gladly and smilingly, instead of with teenage resentment and selfishness.
Besides those two things, uh… I got nothing. I’m going to play Halo now and talk trash to some random, anonymous 16-year-olds while I hump their corpses. Pwned!
First time I felt like an adult was when I was 19. I had fucked up and found myself standing before a judge. Even though I knew that nothing too serious would come of it (misdemeanor plead down to an infraction; had to pay some fines, take some classes), the realization that this was entirely on ME was pretty intense. My mom and friends would have been willing to help with anything if I’d needed it, but at the end of the day it was MY mistake and MY ass on the line if I didn’t take care of everything.
The other noticeable time was about four months ago, shortly after my 21st birthday. I was at a bar and ran into my 12th grade English teacher and we had a brief conversation. Something about being able to use my teacher’s first name made me feel very grown-up.
I think those are the only times though. I work two jobs, am head supervisor at one of them, had to bury my father, go to school, own a rental property and am getting ready for a trip to Germany, but don’t feel “adult” at all. Check back in 20 years maybe.
I’m 24, and I feel less grown-up now than I did when I was 16 and thought I knew sooooo much about the way things work. I was delusional, obviously.
I don’t feel like a child as such though… I feel more “semi-teenagerish plus a bit of emotional maturity” than “adult.”
I suspect I’ll start thinking of myself as “adult” when I go to work overseas, which I plan on doing within the next 18 months or so - because then it will all be down to me - no parental safety-net.
Or maybe only when I find myself banging on my teenager’s door and telling them to turn that f#$*king music down, I can’t hear The Bill! 
When some one tells you to “shut up” they mean stop talking. If they tell you to “grow up” I think they mean to stop growing. (apologies to Tom Robbins) I will NOTgrow up I will never grow up! You can’t make me! I may be picking up speed something fierce, but it doesn’t mean I’m a grown-up.
I think a corollary is that inside most, if not all old heads is a 20 year old wondering why the heck he/she can’t run up the stairs.
But wait… that means you had to act like a grown-up, not be one. Come on, you’d still slide down the bannister if you thought you could land without breaking anything, right? 
I’m 42 and still feel about the same way I did in high school. I’ve decided that “feeling grownup” just isn’t going to happen. Thank God.
I’m 35 now, in my 20’s my Mom died and then my Dad a few years later. I have one brother halfway across the country. So the first holiday I spent alone was sobering.
Having three teenage boys next door to me is fun in a way. I’m the “cool” adult who shows them how to do a donut with a fieldcar when their Mother isn’t home. I yell at them to put their helmets on when they are on their four wheelers and they don’t roll their eyes like they would to their Dad. I showed them my scars and a smashed to shit helmet I saved from when I was a teenager.
14, after I took the shotgun out of my mouth and realized what a foolish baby I was. By 17 I had myself more or less figured out. 22 now, still filling in the cracks. But yeah, at 14. That’s when I started to get it.
I’m 28. I’ll let you know.
Briefly, a week or two ago, (I’m 20) when I was worrying about my investments, calling a meeting at work, and wondering if I could afford to give myself a dishwasher as a birthday present.
But then my Mommy made me dinner and I got over it. We’ll see when (and if) it happens again.
I’m 28, and I think I’m halfway there. See at work I have to be a grown up, and answer questions that my subordinates have without yelling at them that it’s the same as the last 30 times they’ve asked; meet deadlines; train people in a competent manner and generally be responsible.
At home I still collect Barbies and sleep with a stuffed animal.
Maybe I’ll be all the way grown up when I find someone to marry. Maybe.
The age I’m at, 26 I would have to say.
Got my first full time job, got into the company pension scheme and got my (now ex) pregnant :eek: