I am 33, I’ve been married for 14 years :eek: and have 3 kids. I am the breadwinner, taxi driver, homework helper…you name it, I do it. I haven’t figured out when I’ll feel like an adult. I do feel old sometimes, like when a kid I used to babysit gets married, or has a kid of their own, but grown-up? No, not me.
Oh, and I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. 
I keep getting glimmers of feeling like a grown-up, but it promptly goes away on those lazy days I spend watching cartoons in my footy PJs.
I have a car, a condo, a mortgage, a credit card and a 401K retirement account. I have graduated from college. I have even had to buy a new water heater.
I still feel like I’m fooling everyone. Any minute now, someone’s going to reveal to the world that I’m not really an adult.
I theorized when I was a kid that it happens when you stop eating ice cream in cones, and only eat it in bowls. Since I still eat it in a cone when cones are available, perhaps I was right.
The first time was when my parents took me out to dinner for my 18th birthday, and at one point my mom said: “Just remember, you’re no longer a minor, so if you get arrested we don’t have to come pick you up from jail anymore”. (Note: I had never been arrested prior to then and haven’t had anything worse then a traffic ticket since).
The second time, I had just graduated from college, and was moving to a new city to start my first ‘career’ job.
I show up to work the first day, and get handed a check for my sign-on bonus (this was back in 2001, and signing bonuses were actually given to entry-level IT people back in those days). That check was for a dollar amount higher then any amount of money I’d ever had paid to me at one time. And my first reaction was: “Cool, now that check I gave the landlord will actually be good”.
Now, it’s almost 6 years later. I’ve got a 401k, and IRA, a house, a decent car, and a couple of fun hobbies. I suppose by most people’s definition of ‘grown up’, I definitely am one. But very rarely does a day go by when I still wonder if this is what adulthood is all about.
I don’t remember where I first heard it, but there’s a little saying that’s stuck with me for a long time: “Life is what happens when you’re sitting around waiting for the good part.”
When I got my first apartment. Noticed right away that there wasn’t any toilet paper.
Walking 6 blocks to Safeway to buy toilet paper was the official dividing line.
March 18, 1996 12:34 AM
The second I saw my little boy for the first time I grew up, and I don’t regret it for a second.
Sometimes I’m still amazed that I survived long enough to grow up, but the 28 years up to that night in March was just practice.
When I was in elementary school, they told me middle school was going to be rough, I was going to have to get serious, the teachers were going to be more strict and will not really care about you, and the material was going to be hard. In mid school, they told me the same thing about high school. Ditto for college. But, to me, the only difference was instructors in college don’t bitch at you for not turning in papers. It’s not that they don’t care, but it’s no longer their job to make sure you pass (other than by providing proper instruction, of course).
I’m in grad school now, and although it’s alot of work, the material isn’t harder, the teachers still care about my knowledge of the material, and I’m still not very serious about the whole thing.
So what am I going to do with my life? Who knows? But I ask myself that question every day. That’s why “grown-ups” are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow-up. They’re still looking for ideas!
I guess I’m weird. I felt like a grown up when I was about 15, and found it endlessly frustrating that I didn’t have the full autonomy that I wanted. I had an idyllic childhood, too, so it wasn’t that. I’ve just always felt more mature than my peers. I’m twenty-six now, and still feel like a grown up. I know what I’m doing with my life and have met major goals. I LOVE being an adult, and wouldn’t go back to being a kid for a million dollars.
I’m skipping grown-up and going straight from little kid to grumpy old fart.
So far I’ve few qualms.
I’m 22 and I started to feel grown up when I was, uh… 19? 20? One of those two. See I’d been a royal screw-up for my teenage years, and 19 was when I decided I needed to get away from home and go to trade school for a year.
While I was there I had a minor breakdown and that was really the turning point for me to start growing up. Since then I’m still basically the same carefree person, just more responsible, even when I’m watching Scooby Doo and eating Cookie Crisp cereal
So right now I’m sort of half grown up. If I could just learn to manage my money, I’d be set: Responsible, but still basically a goofy kid.
I dunno that I ever really did. I’m 45. I remember some milestones that made me proud: Paying off my first car, paying off my student loan. Once I pay off my house that will be one. But I’m not sure I really feel like I’m all grown up.
I started feeling grown up when I had my first hot flushes a couple of weeks ago.
Let’s be very clear about this: it NEVER goes away. And yeah, it kind of sucks.
Or, as Buddha said “Life is Suffering”
Or, as Jung said “wisdom is being able to accept greater levels of paradox”
I still feel like a kid, in that I can be goofy and immature and generally feel like I am making things up as I go along. But now, in my 40’s, at least I can recognize some feelings as familiar, so I can say “oh - it’s THAT kind of what-am-I-doing-with-my-life issue, not one of the other 27 varieties I have seen before.”
That’s about the best you can do - recognize the warning signs and choose to take certain actions or to feel a certain way about what is going on.
I suppose, taking that into consideration, that I have felt like I understand this basic approach since my mid-30’s. But I still get blind-sided regularly…
I fwelt like a grown-up when my father died. I’m 25. Of course, I still feel like a kid whenever Mom’s around. But I mostly feel grown-up.
The first time I ever felt like a grown up was when I got a sweater for Christmas, and was genuinely grateful to get it.
Having a kid has definitely made me feel more like a “grown up”. Nothing like getting up for a 2 am feeding, feeling grateful to sleep all the way to 7:00 on the weekend, and having new things to worry about like daycare, wills, life insurance, 103 degree fevers, etc, to make you feel more like an adult.
On the other hand I still don’t have the confidence that I thought would just naturally come with age (31 now) although I am finding myself less and less apt to put up with other people’s crap. I still look like a nut singing by myself in the car and will on occasion still get into wrestling matches with my younger brothers. I annoy my wife by sneaking away for some computer game time and stopped making time to watch the “Simpsons” just a few short years ago.
I knew I was officially an adult when I no longer had “Christmas Break” off for 3 weeks in December, and had to actually work on “holidays” like Columbus Day and President’s Day. Also not sitting at the kids table on Thanksgiving Dinner.
I don’t feel “grown up” but I definitely feel like an adult. But that doesn’t mean I don’t act like a kid alot of the time!
I knew I was really and truly a grown-up the first time I filled out the full 1040 tax form (not the EZ or A), with Schedule A itemized deductions. This would have been in my late 30s.
The older I get, the more of these I get off. I used to work Christmas, New Years & Thanksgiving, not so now - I even get Presidents Day off!
I’ve been totally on my own for 28 years–working my job, paying my bills, taking care of my three room apartment.
I still don’t feel like a grown-up.