Last night I went to a wedding for two friends of mine. It was the first time I had been to a wedding where I wasn’t simply there with my parents. When I was sitting with all my friends in the church, and we saw the bride coming down the aisle and saw 6 more of my friends lined up in tuxedos by the altar, I was just beaming, and I’m not sure why.
The reception was arguably the most fun I’ve had in months. We were the ones leading the fun on the dance floor, picking the songs, etc. FINALLY, a wedding without the goddamn Chicken Dance or Hokey Pokey. When the first song everyone can dance to is Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady,” and all the groomsmen are wearing black Chuck Taylor All-Stars (just during the latter part of the reception), you know this isn’t your parents’ style of wedding.
But I only had a creeping hint of the significance of this last night (the open bar probably had something to do with that). However, as I was driving home today, it hit me, and I was just like, “HOLY SHIT.” For awhile now, I’ve sensed some adult yearnings and perspectives in myself, but today I realize I’m really on the way there now. And I have a crazy desire to find the perfect girl and get married.
I may still have a kid in my heart, but I’d definitely not a kid anymore. I’m not sure yet how I feel about that.
When I was a kid all I wanted to do was ‘act grown up’, but now that I am an adult, I get the greatest pleasure from doing ‘kid stuff’.
Yes, I jump in puddles, have a great time at the water theme park near here, watch cartoons and I like digging in the dirt. I could go on but I think you get the idea!
I don’t plan on ever ‘growing up’…maybe I haven’t had the ’ holy cow, I’m a grown up’ experience yet. I don’t think I’m missing out!
I would say it was the first time I called the cops on the idiots in my dorms with their stereos turned all the way up. This is the Air Force dorms, btw, not college dorms. The problem was, most of the people out there partying were cops, so needless to say, that was yet another sleepless night.
Guess I should answer the question. When I was walking down the aisle on my wedding day and cutting the circulation off in my dad’s hand. I realized I wasnt daddy’s little girl anymore.
My friend (not my parents’ friend, MY friend) got married last week. I graduated from college yesterday. This summer, I’m flying 2000 miles to go to the wedding of another friend. This is kind of a painful process. I’ll soon be moving out and making my own life, away from my parents. It’s hard to believe, and harder to deal with.
Excellent question, SNenc. I had to think about this a while. For me, I would have to say it was when some friends in high school got killed at a state park near here, the same park we had just been at a short time before for our senior trip.
Although, now that I think of it, it may have started when my Grandpa died suddenly when I was 11.
Life was no longer just a game; reality had reared its ugly head.
Still a kid at heart, though. Plan on staying that way for the rest of my life too.
I knew I was a grownup the first time I had to clean out the drain in the sink for myself. I was still living with my parents, prior to college, but there was this “stuff” in there, and… ugh, I still don’t like to think about it!
After that and strangely enough, I got my childhood back when I had my first child. It was when I realized that it was ok to watch Sesame Street again, without feeling silly.
I guess the first time I really thought I was one of “them” (that is, an adult) was at a friends Mermorial Day B-B-Q two years ago. Me and my buddy Wayne had “snuck” off to smoke a joint, and we wandered back to the house when the host’s 6 year old kid asked us why we “smel’t funny.” I remembered being that kid when MY parents would drag me off to adult get-togethers and I had NO idea how they were having any fun there. My ten year HS reunion is next week, BTW, and wild horses couldn’t drag me there.
You know, I never really had a sudden point where I realized it. It just was. I try to remember at what point I stopped thinking of myself as a child and started thinking of myself as an adult, and there comes no clean break. It was a transition over several years I think. From when I started my first job as a paperboy at 13 towards my first girlfriend at 21. Perhaps that is why I’ve never been comfortable when people act a bit overly immature around me, and why I am so easily embarassed with strangers in an RL social situation. I grew up knowing that I was responsible for my own course, and as that became more appearent to me, that as when I started to make the shift.
I mean sure, I have the occasional moment where I say to myself, “holy shit, I guess I’m an adult now.” Like one night, I was sitting in my apartment, and I looked around myself and realized that I would never live with my mom and dad again. The time that really got me was when I watched my little sister have a baby. (I’m an aunt? I can’t be an aunt! “Aunt Mishell,” it just doesn’t sound right.) But, for the most part, I still feel like I’m 12 years old, and I hope that doesn’t change. I hope I can still blow an entire weekend playing Nintendo when I’m 90. grin
This is a good question. I suppose I felt truly like an adult when I moved into my apartment and was alone for the first time. Previously, I had lived with my long-term boyfriend (over 5 years) and then had roommates. Now my BF lives there with me. It is really quite wonderful. Overall I don’t really feel that old. I still play games and love to have fun.
Doesn’t being an adult make you feel despressed at times? All that responsibility, going to work, taxes, bills, etc.
Yes, I yearn to be a child again, having a loving parent to worry about all the above on my behalf. In fact, I watch my 3 year old daughter and realise that her carefree existence is coming to end in a little over a year, when she starts school. It makes me feel sad when I realise that the time goes so quick.
However, I remember a fellow ambulance officer gesturing towards a group of intellectually disabled adolescents one day, saying much the same things as I have said above: they don’t have to worry about work, taxes, money, food etc, because someone else does that for them. Another older and wiser ambo just looked at him and said, “Would you like to be one, son…?”
Maybe returning to one’s childhood would not be such a wonderful idea after all.
I can’t pinpoint the date. But, I know that at some point I realized that some of my friends were acting like idiots and I wasn’t anymore. The weight of responsibility had been thrown my way, and I caught it, dammit!
I, too, have caught myself in mid-rant about how the music today is crap, realizing I sounded exactly like my parents. The only difference is, of course, when we say it, it’s true. (Ahem.)
I would point to a couple ot different events:
When I was named the editor of a small weekly newspaper at the age of 27. My private reaction was similar to Jack Nicholson’s in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” when he found out The Chief could actually talk: “You fooled 'em, Chief! You fooled 'em all!”
Within the past two years, I joined the board of a local land conservancy, and I’ve participated in a couple of career days at my local school. That totally made me feel like an adult.
It’s kind of backward for me. I was always the responsible kid. I hung around older kids and adults. In fact I was more comfortable with adults than with other kids.
My “realization” came when I was 34 and my mom died. It was only the second time in my adult life that I’d had to deal with death, the first being my best friend’s death back in high school.
Now things are different. I’ve never had children of my own to help age me so I act younger than my age and will for the rest of my life.
Let’s see. I drove by a local high school and noticed that they all… even the seniors, looked like babies to me. I think I was 25 or so.
I think when I actually had to do some fast growing up is when my daughter was born. But I still act like a big kid
