And I’m not counting things like what you do or get when you grow up like having a bank account or getting a real job. Nor am I accepting the whole ‘I just grew up’.
My sign of my childhood ending or accepting that it has ended is when all of the nu-metal bands I was introduced to and listened to a lot of us just ended up fractured. They all didn’t endure the passage of time and it was really just a matter of you had to be there to know how popular they were or the scene was.
The bands I used to have listened to have gone the way of Classic Rock on the radio. Spammed tracks from some bands because that’s all the DJ knows or that’s all they’re allowed to play.
I’m not sure when my childhood ended but I’d say my adulthood began the day I bought my first lawn mower
Having to explain things you grew up with to your niece because they’re not part of the world anymore comes at you without warning.
I mean she found a cassette tape in her grandmother’s TV cabinet and asked me what it was but yeah that too.
When your favorite sports team’s stars are younger than you.
For me, it was being able to recognize that my parents were well-meaning but imperfect people and not getting angry about it. There was the normal childhood period when I looked up to them and just assumed they could do no wrong, then the reactionary teenage anger phase of, “Fuck you, old man! You don’t know me!”
It wasn’t until around 26 or so that I had calmed down enough to say/feel without malice , “I am going to live my life the way I want to live my life, you may not understand or agree with some of my decisions, and that’s OK. I’m not required to justify or explain them to you.”
For me it was more general: I think I became an adult when I finally understood that adults were just kids that got old. I don’t feel more adult, but at some point the adults in my life went from feeling like superiors to feeling like peers, so now I guess I’m one of them.
At one point when I was in my mid to late-twenties, my workplace’s neighbor had their sprinkler system fail and flood their business. It was so bad that a bunch of water seeped under the adjoining wall and we had about a half an inch of water across a third of our fairly large store. There were maybe a dozen or so of us working there at the time, and we all got called in to rapidly move merchandise out into a big truck so that it wouldn’t get spoiled by the damp air before the remediation guys could do their thing.
So there’s all of these people, most of them younger than me, but not by a lot, running back and forth with crates of merchandise, and I looked around and immediately saw how chaotic and inefficient it was.
So I said, “Okay, you stand by the truck. You stand by the front door, you stand just inside. You stand a little further in than that. The first person just picks up a crate, and we bucket brigade it all out to the truck.”
It was an obvious solution, and it made the work go by so much faster and easier, but apparently I was the only one who thought to do it. I realized that in that moment, in a moderately large group, I was the most responsible adult in the room.
And I’m pretty sure that was when my childhood ended.
When the aliens who secretly physically resemble demons show up to help your entire species reach their next phase of evolution, ascension to a higher plane of existence.
When you give yourself a bed time
When you turn 18 and suddenly the government starts sending you paperwork to fill out.
I left for college at 18, but that wasn’t it for me. It was one month later when my parents announced a divorce and I realized my home life would never be the same. College still felt big and scary, but I couldn’t even go back to the comforts of my childhood ever again.
Christmas becomes a deadline.
I feel this every year man
A teenage girl in distress came to me and my friend for help and protection even though we were total strangers. We found her other friends and got them all home safe and sound.
I guess knowing that other people are you as a responsible adult, helps you feel like one as well.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and was a “Latchkey Kid” so sometimes I feel like my childhood first got the breaks applied when I started having to carry a set of house keys with me all the time.
When one of your parents dies when you’re only 6 years old.
When I don’t understand what young people say. Worse: when they don’t understand what I say.
you can learn the lingo it really doesn’t change that much from generation to generation, but they will never learn the decades of Simpson references you have on lock.
you can learn the lingo it really doesn’t change that much from generation to generation
That’s not the problem: if I talked to a kid with that kid’s generation’s talk, they would look at me with an air of pity. Just like I looked at adults trying to be hip when I was a kid. Older folks who don’t stay in their place aren’t well received, and I’m one of them now, so I abstain.
if you don’t lean into the fellow kids meme then being hip with the lingo will be uncomfortable for everyone involved, but understanding and participating are 2 different things.
When I realised I can’t go crying to my parents anymore and started crying into my pillow instead.
