This is a huge event in most people’s lives, I think. Certainly in mine. I had an older, married cousin who liked to sit up late at night and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, and when I’d stay over at night at their place, her husband (my blood cousin) would go upstairs to bed, and their kids would be asleep, and she’d just talk to me for a few hours, not like I was a kid (I was probably 17 or 18 when this started) and not lecturing me or giving advice or trying to teach me things, but just talking and taking what I had to say seriously. She’s been dead for a few decades now (young–cancer) but I always think of her with great fondness, though we didn’t have a lot in common, really. It was my initiation into being an adult, and it made a deep impression on me.
Most notably my 3rd grade teacher. She set me up with a desk by myself out in the hall so I could work at my own pace and then read Nancy Drew books, and she discussed with me the behaviors of the kids who were picking on me, and the general tension between the desire to fit in / blend in and the desire to be special or to excel, to be different.
My brother, who was 11 years older than I.
When I was 17, I was out riding around with a group of friends/classmates. There was a rumor that a classmate had gotten served at a bar, so we drove there. There were four of us and nobody wanted to be the one to go in and buy a couple of six-packs.
Somehow, everyone decided I was the oldest looking one in the car. I walked into the bar and went up to the register area. I told the bartender (with a wavering voice) I wanted two six packs of Strohs. He reached into his cooler and grabbed two six packs!
Then the guy told me the bottles were too warm, so he was going to run downstairs and get me two colder sixes. He poured a Strohs draft and set it in front of me to drink while he ran downstairs. I took my time enjoying the draft, then took my bag out to the car.
When I got into the car my buddies were astounded. I’d been in the bar a good fifteen minutes and they were certain the cops were being called. We went back to that bar regularly after that and I always went in. We thought I had fooled the bartender (owner), when in reality he’d sell to absolutely anybody.
My oldest friend I met in the 8th grade. His mother was White and his stepfather was Black. He was a very large man, he had played football for the Vikings in the 60s, O-line I think. Everyone called him “Big Rob” and he was a big teddy bear.
Anyways, after graduating high school I didn’t see my friend or his family for at least a year or so, and the next time I saw Big Rob he was sitting in his kitchen and called me over. I walked over to him, said hello, and waited. After an awkward pause, he was just like, “I just wanted to say hello, I hadn’t seen you in a while.” We chatted for a minute then I went back to whatever we had been doing. It wasn’t until later that I realized what had happened; he was the first of any of my friend’s parents to treat me like an adult, an equal, and I guess I wasn’t ready for it.
Big Rob passed away suddenly a few years back. I miss that guy.
I’d say it would be a tie between the owner of the first place I rented after moving out of my parent’s house, and the employer of my first “real job”.
I spent a number of my formative years in a band made up of music teachers working in a local music store. We weren’t all that great, and a “gig” was going to the bar across the street where the others would play for drinks and I would play for Mt. Dew.
But, they treated me as an adult, even to the point where one of them offered me a beer when they came by with a round for the band, before remembering that I was a minor.
After I finished HS at 17 1/2, I got a job as a lab tech in the university. They treated me as an adult and that’s how I worked my way through college. I never gave it much thought.
An older step-sibling. Despite our parents divorcing long, long ago, we are still close. Closer than I ever was with any non-step sibling.
The adult members of my chess club - when I was 16 they asked me to captain a team.
Fifth grade English teacher. He (kind of a rarity in those days) had taught in a military school and you might have expected him to be stiff and a stickler for discipline, but if you behaved yourself and talked to him like an adult, you got respect in return. Plus, he was funny at times. A class act, all around.
Victor.
I was boarded out in a house with a variety of folks. I was in grades four and five at the time.
Victor lived in the basement along with a university student. The university student informed me of small bits of philosophy and poetry. Victor was a precision machinist. He took quite a while to even talk to me. I suspect he was observing. I guess he thought it was maybe worth his while at some point to interact.
He then just seemed to take me on as a friend. Of course he had to explain so much to me as we interacted, but it was never as an adult child way. He would just fill in information as needed. Answer questions as best he could or very precisely if he knew. At age 16 I worked in a machine shop. They were quite surprised at my basic knowledge and skill.
He also took me 5 pin bowling once a week. I managed to beat the best score at the lane for my age. Never bowled after that time in my life.
But it was just a casual friend sort of relationship. Of course I had little to no life experience to talk about with him. He never talked about personal stuff to me.
But I still recall him as a man of good character, pride and skill in his work. Kind, patient. I never experienced one moment of negative from him.
It might be the grown-ups who always invited me to the table when they played Hearts or Spades, but more memorable to me was my 6th-grade librarian, Mrs. Nelson, who sneaked me grown-up books (Day of the Jackal, Three Days of the Condor, and The Odessa File among others) & then asked my opinion of them (which she then used to pick out more books). God bless the post-hippie freedom of the mid-70s, I’m not sure any school librarian would dare do that these days.
My paternal grandmother. Nothing specific, but she’s the one I thought of when reading the thread title. When I was a teenager, she was in her late 80s. I always made a point of dropping in whenever I was driving through her town, because she was fun to talk to, and interested in what I was doing.
She died age 99. Pretty sharp, almost to the end.
(One day when she was in the nursing home I dropped in and was reading the local newspaper to her. When I got to the article about a woman in town who was celebrating her 90th birthday, she said: « Ninety. That’s a grand age! I wonder if I’ll reach ninety? »
I said, « Grammie, you’re 97! »
Pause.
« Oh yes, so I am, » she replied with a little grin. )
When she died, her pallbearers were all of her grandsons. The last service we could do for someone who meant a lot to all of us.
This question really through me, I had to give it some serious thought and still not sure how to answer it. At 14 yrs old I went to work for a an old dutchman who made sail boats. My primary job was sanding sailboat masts. and then over the course of the first summer I was doing the entire process on my own except for running the router down the pole for the riggings. My boss was unforgiving, never paid even the most subtle compliment but he did treat me like an adult. The other workers were his family and always telling me how much he liked me but I never felt that in the slightest. I worked for him part time and whenever he needed help well into my adulthood and the man never changed from the day I met him. He may have had some kind of disorder because he would cuss endlessly and his face would glow red when he was angry which happened often. I never saw him act on his anger beyond cussing.
It was Richard Nixon.
Well, he was President when my number came up in the first standby draft.
I have absoutely no idea. My mother treated us not quite as adults but we weren’t coddled or treated like “children” either. I guess as I aged I just expected to be treated that way. Or it could have been because I hadn’t been raised to be childish, adults reacted differently to me? Dunno.
I was a teenage ham radio geek. I started hanging out with the local ham radio club. The club’s membership varied greatly by age. Most of were maybe 30 or 40 years old. There were a few underage members and I was one of them.
I was always treated as a full equal at club events such as Field Day
With any event it was a given there would be a post party. My head didn’t explode when the guys broke out the beer and 8mm skin flicks. Being included with that group made me feel like an adult. I still keep in touch with the few of us who are still alive.