Your "I'm a grown-up now" moments

Walking into a fast food restaurant and a group of high school age kids were doing goofy things to make each other laugh, I walked by and, shaking my head, muttered “teenagers”.

The first one though was when my child came to me with a problem and fully expected me to fix it.

I get excited over appliances and such too. I also now wince, badly, when I see a foot of snow outside. I need to dig that shit up. If not today, then tomorrow - it won’t melt by the time I have to go to work.

Two of my uncles and my mom both died in the last three years. I’ve been thinking a LOT about this. It really won’t be much longer until that generation is gone…I’m 35 now, and time is a ticking. I wonder how long it will be until it’s just my generation?

Flying never did it to me because I flew alone at seven, ten, and fifteen, overseas the last two times.

Of all things, opening a safety deposit box at the bank really struck me as a moment of adulthood. That responsibility of needing a place to store birth certificates, naturalization certificates, gold from our grandparents, etc., really hit home.

Oh, my, yes. I was utterly weirded out the first time I was called “Mrs. Shoe” at work. I was like, “Who? Oh, you mean me?”

I’m not there yet. Not sure if I ever will be. Being together for nearly a decade before getting hitched in the 1st place might be part of it, I guess. Wives are things that other women are, I always thought. (Sweet shedding cats, we’ve been together thirteen years this upcoming summer! :eek:)

I’ve just spent all my money. I can’t decide whether I’m a grown up for buying a new car (instead of an old banger, which is what I’ve always driven) or not a grown up because it took all my money to do so.

I’ve had a lot of them. I guess I keep forgetting I’m a grown up :D:

  • At age 16, signing the authorization forms for a procedure for * my son *. I hadn’t signed any official documents for MYSELF at that point because I was a minor child. But now, I was a mother, and therefore a grown up.
  • Realizing that my siblings and cousins and I are one uncle away from being the oldest generation in our family.
  • I have grandchildren in high school. One of them is older than I was when his father was born.

For the second time in as many months upon espying my One Direction accoutrements: “Are those your kids?”

Zing!

I like to waste a few bucks a month on scratch tickets. The other month I won 100 dollars, and my first thought was “I can make an extra payment on my student loans!”

Going to the bank to deposit my paycheques. I mean, the bank is where mom goes! To do grown-up stuff! While I wait in the car with a comic book!

Getting into my first car accident, and being really shaken up, and my parents not immediately coming to see me because they lived a couple hours away. But you’re my mommy! You’re supposed to comfort me!

Company I work for now has a financial advisor as a perk to employees - he comes to discuss with us options like making a contribution to an RRSP that employer will match. But-but-but I don’t know! Mom and Dad always told me what to do with my money! I don’t know if I want to do this!

Whenever I try to go back and read a book I loved as a child, like Howl’s Moving Castle, and I find the prose too simplistic to be engaging. I feel sad whenever I think about it, yet I keep trying.

That’s the spirit! :slight_smile:

huh?

I’m 54, my gf is 53. All of our parents, aunts, uncles are dead or dying. Many of our friends are dealing with serious health issues. C’est La Vie I guess.

The first time I was mortified…the second I was flattered (and baffled) people thought I could create offspring that good-looking.

Keep trying, you’ll get it.

No, I know what you meant. My “huh?” was more like a “Huh? Does he think he’s clever by taking some words out to make me say something else?”. I don’t get the point of it.

Oh, I didn’t realize your “huh” was saying all that. Yes, my post was silly I admit that.

Well I appreciated it. Now you two get a room.

Oh, god yes. I have a fourteen year old cousin. The other day when I called home, and he picked up, I swear for a minute I thought I was talking to his father, my uncle. But then I remembered that my uncle passed away a few years ago. It’s crazy to me how his son could bring back his memory in an instant.

Really? I find a lot of sly fun in Diana Wynne Jones. Of course, I’m a public librarian and try to stay up with YA lit (and can enjoy the stuff I liked again without shame, because professional) and a lot is bad now, but the “classics” (even at the time young classics) hold up, and I’d consider her some of that. Yeah, it’s for a younger audience, but I don’t feel like it’s too dumb for me - a nod and a wink, rather.