have any of the posters in this thread ever fired a subordinate worker?
That is when you know you’re not a kid any more.
It’s not about whether you still go to rock concerts.
It’s what you do when you come home from the concert .
I was well into my 40s before I stopped thinking of myself as a college kid. The fact that I was working on a second degree is irrelevant…
When I turned 20 I still didn’t feel any different than I did at 18. For that matter, I still didn’t feel any differently when I was 25, either.
I’m 34 now, and I really don’t think I started to feel any differently until I met my wife and I started settling into that regular routine of having a full time job and worrying about bills and rent and all that other fun stuff.
Actually, I can’t say it was even that, though that was a contributor. I think it really started when I started making a lot more money than I used to, not only allowing me to cover bills and rent and food and such, but also giving me the freedom to actually start buying toys and stuff for the wife and stuff around the house. It was that freedom – especially “buying stuff for the house” – that I think really made me go, “Damn. I’m buying crap for the house. I’m really grown-up now, aren’t I?” For some reason, the necessity of purchasing not just odds and ends but things like vaccuum cleaners and bathroom fixtures just punched home the fact that I’ve really left adolescence behind.
Then too there’s the fact that conversations with my friends often has a more grown-up tone – discussions of office politics and life issues that I would have completely tuned out in my younger years when in the presence of adults who were talking about the same things.
I guess it comes down to this: When you start having epiphanies about how right the older folks were when they lectured you in your youth; when you start understanding the importance of things you blew off back in the day; when you start wondering if maybe it’s time you got some new shower curtains and perhaps a new toilet seat – that’s when you can safely say you’re most assuredly all grown-up.
I think I’m finally becoming an adult. Which is cool. When I was a kid I was always in such a damn hurry to grow up. Then I got to college and decided, hell, what’s the rush? Then came grad school. I felt a bit like I was in suspended animation. My friends from college were buying houses, having kids, talking about investments (eek!). As grad school dragged on for me, even my grad school friends moving on while I was still stuck in this larval stage.
Now I am finally finishing my degree and moving on to a real job. I’m getting a nice apartment, not a student hovel. I’m tired of dressing like a slouchy teenager and actually want to look like a respectable grown up—and not just at work.
The biggest thing that makes me feel like a grown-up, though, is that I’m tired of hanging out with immature people. I’m sick of giving rides friends who can’t get their shit together enough to keep their car in repair and constantly whine about how they just can’t make ends meet, yet drop 50-100 dollars a week on comics and games. I’m finding it harder and harder to listen to smart, capable friends kvetching about their crappy jobs delivering pizza, driving cabs, and ringing up groceries when they have no ambition whatsoever to find a job that isn’t a pointless, soul-sucking dead end because that might require pushing themselves out of their comfort zone. I’m weary of having to tell myself, “Now, don’t get upset. Fred didn’t say that to be hurtful, it’s just that Fred has no social skills.” I’m actually looking forward to moving so that I can make new friends. Or, rather, I’ll be forced to make new friends. I guess I could use a shove out of the ol’ comfort zone m’self.
Oh, and I’m (counts on fingers) 32.
I only feel grown up when I hear a teen or young twenty say extreme things or have an extreme reaction to something, and I think–but there is another side to that or she’ll see that in a few months that won’t matter etc. Then I realize that I have gained some perspective on life–still astigmatic and limited, but some–and that feels good.
Other than that and the beginnings of crepey neck–I got nothing. I’m 44.
When you have kids. When teenagers start calling you sir. And I’m only 35.
I’m 61, and have grown-up children. My children’s grown-up friends (well, some of them) address me as “Mr ----”, and that just feels weird to me. I’ll let you all know when I feel grown up myself.
I agree with the folks talking about responsibility. Two good examples, the first time your kid gets hurt and it’s YOU that has to get them to the emergency room, or your parent/relative older than you, needs help and a ride to the hospital. If that doesn’t make you feel like a grown up, nothing else ever will.
41 is when it hit me . You ever seen that picture of Atlas holding the world on his back ?
As far as I know, inside most of us is a 10-year-old wondering what happened.
However, I do feel like an adult, and I quite like it. Sure, I have these terrifying responsibilities (keeping children alive), but I also get to feel–most of the time–like a resonably competent person who can handle whatever I set my mind to. No more teenage drama, but also quite a bit of fun times. (I just got back from a 3-day road trip, me and the two kids, to visit my brother, see old friends, and stuff.) Life is pretty good.
A reasonably competent person who can’t spell reasonably, that’s me. 
Nope. More often than not, I think young folks have it right, rather than people my own age. I think we ought to listen more to what youth are saying. Their minds tend to be freer of gunky bullshit buildup.
If “feeling like an adult” means that you feel secure and certain, I’ll never feel like one. But if it means feeling centered and strong, adulthood has come in stages and I continue to grow.
I don’t think I felt any feelings of adulthood until I was twenty-five and then, only a glimmer. Somehow my thirtieth birthday was enough of a milestone that I felt no one could intimidate me into thinking I wasn’t an adult anymore. It took that long for me to be physically certain. But I was sixty before I really learned how to cut strings when they needed to be cut.
Feeling like an adult doesn’t mean that I’m not playful or child-like often. Two different things.
I don’t feel any different, but I have noticed that the maturity level of the average 18 year old has declined remarkably. Or could it be that I’m the one wwho’s changed :)?
I’m looking forward to being old. I want to be a cranky old bastard.
[QUOTE=1920s Style “Death Ray”]
I don’t feel any different, but I have noticed that the maturity level of the average 18 year old has declined remarkably. Or could it be that I’m the one wwho’s changed :)?QUOTE]
No, it’s the children who are wrong! 
My best friend and I realized that we are now ages our mothers were when we first met. That sort of freaked but still didn’t make me feel like an adult. Another friend just turned 50 and I asked her if she felt like a grown-up yet and she said “Hell no!”
And 1920s Style “Death Ray”, you don’t have to wait - you can be a cranky bastard anytime. The “old” part is optional! I have embraced my crankiness and revel in it. But old? No way!
Now, get off my lawn!
Nah. I don’t want to just be cranky, I want to be cranky and old, or at least if I have to be old, then by god, I WILL be cranky!
It’s not that you automagically become an adult at your eighteenth birthday, it’s that at any time after your eighteenth birthday you are expected to be able to act like an adult when required. The corollary is that when no one is looking you can act any damn way you please.
Well, I was referring more to the things you did when you were a kid that you later stopped doing (or the things you didn’t do that you later started doing) that you now understand better than you did back then. Taking better care of your stuff, for example, so that it lasts longer. I for example was pretty rough on my things back in the day, but these days I treat stuff a hell of a lot more gingerly than I used to because I want to keep it looking good and working perfectly – I’ll spend money to do this, in fact. As a kid I’d just shove things in pockets, drop things out of carelessness, treat things with ham-fists, always to the accompaniment of parental admonishments that I ignored then byt are now precisely the same sort of thing I’m likely to tell any child I may have in the future.
Now, as for resisting fresh new ideas, political, social or otherwise, that may result in a better world than our crumudgeonly tight-arsed mores have made so far, then sure, I am in complete agreement. The greatest disservice we can do for ourselves is to dismiss new ideas simply on the grounds that they come from sources we deem lacking in the wisdom of age.
The first time I really felt like an adult was when my grandfather was dying. I was 23. My mother, father, and I would take turns going to the nursing home and sitting with him. I was sitting there, stroking his hair, and it struck me, “This is what women do. This is what women have always done, take care of the dying.” (I know that men do that, too, but those are the exact words that went through my head.)
I’m 28 now, and I definitely feel like an adult. I have a husband, a mortgage, and aging parents who I’m trying to convince to move closer. Right now I’m the main breadwinner in my household. Plus, I work at a college and the students can make me feel old. But I wouldn’t go back to being a kid for all the money in the world. I’m more sure of myself; I can get things done; and, as dangermom said, I don’t have to put up with the drama that filled my teenage and college years. And as an adult, if I want to have ice cream for breakfast or spend all night watching movies, no one’s going to tell me not to.