A recent WordPress prompt asked when the first time was that I felt grown up.
Hmm.
- I felt grown up when I played hookey in second grade in Australia and bought ice cream from money I made myself by collecting glass bottles on the beach.
- I felt grown up when I first took the bus and the train to school in the Netherlands at eleven.
- I felt grown up when I had my first beer at a class camp-out in ninth grade. (Yep, those were the 70s in Holland.)
- I felt grown up when I graduated from library school.
- I felt grown up when I reached thirty.
- I felt grown up when T and I bought our first house. (Well, he had bought it as a surprise when I emigrated.)
- I feel grown up when I give my children really good advice.
But guess what?
- When the teacher asked for a note from my parents when I came back to school after a week or two of playing hookey, and I claimed to have had the mumps, it turned out that grown-up handwriting was extremely hard to fake.
- That first year or so on the train me and my friends swung from the baggage racks like monkeys.
- The beer, which was disgusting but which I thought made me look cool, just made me sleepy, so I ended up being one of the dorks who went to sleep early.
- When I entered the workforce as a librarian after graduating, I threw many a tantrum because my profession wasn’t taken seriously, and by extension I wasn’t, either.
- And thirty was just another number. (Although it was the year I met T, and therefore the beginning of being settled, if not grown up.)
- Having to keep a whole house clean was not the kind of grown-up feeling I’d had in mind.
- I do give my kids really good advice. I just wish I could act on it myself.
However . . .
- I don’t play hookey anymore, or cheat in other ways.
- I manage to behave myself most of the time now.
- Drinking still makes me sleepy, so partying hard–such as it ever was– is a thing of the past.
- I don’t take myself that seriously anymore. And since my library degree wasn’t recognized here,
the ignorant bastards can bloody well shove the whole damn profession up their asswell, it’s their loss and I just laugh about it now. Haha. - I no longer believe that I will be a grown-up at any certain age.
- As for cleaning the house: it’s overrated.
Now if only I could be as wise about myself as I am in my children’s eyes . . .
Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 
Never mind cleaning, I think that being grown-up is itself wildly overrated, as is behaving oneself (point 2) , and both should be undertaken with no greater frequency than the drinking of alcohol (point 3). But this is perhaps why, unlike you, my family seldom seek me out for good advice…
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Haha! Well, when I say behaving myself, that includes putting my foot in my mouth. It happens less often than in my twenties, so I suppose that’s progress…
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You just made me feel so much better! Now I’m never going to grow up! 😉
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Even now, with a grown up child of my own, I sometimes think to myself “When I’m a grown up I’m going to …..” 😀
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It’s okay. There will come a time when you can sit back and give up. On growing up. 😉
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