Was there a moment when you knew for sure you were a grown-up?
When you got your driver’s license?
When you graduated?
When you became a parent?
Do you still wonder?
Special thanks to our friend, Earl Hipp, for inspiring this question.
Photo courtesy of Mayr
Chances are I never reach a moment in my life when I can say that I’m a man (depite identifying as one) because I think its not only a matter of attaining certain goals but also about maintaining certain things. In light of that though I do have a few notable goals that I’ve attained. 1. Driver’s License – When I was in driver’s education I was proabably the worst driver to get behind the wheel. I mean like the instructor used some of my actions as an example of “what not to do” for the next few years after… Read more »
Maybe when I first purchased life insurance? Realizing, if I wasn’t here, it would affect many indirectly, and some people very directly.
That’s a reality that motivates me to keep walking when it seems impossible. 🙂
My dad had a sign company and I loved to drive those big old trucks with the cranes on them. I must have been about 19 and he and I were coming back from an 80 mile trip, each way, and I was driving. This was before air conditioning and it was hot. Dad said “I’d like to have a Pepsi”. I said (being cool and all, having already spent a year in college and having learned to like beer) “I’d like to have a beer”. We stopped and went into a little restaurant and Dad ordered two Budweisers. He… Read more »
Great story.
That always catches me, I find it weird that theres places in the world where you can be a legal adult but not competant to do adult things.
We’ve had at least one US President who was legally old enough for the job, but still not competent to do adult things.
True, but the law at least recognised that he could be held responsible for his own alcohol intake. Unlike, say, an 18 year old marine manning a gun on the side of an aircraft that can spit out a few hundred rounds a second.
Not exactly, but it was sometime between 24, when I realized I was male, and a year or two ago. When I was 33 I thought, this is how old Jesus was when he died. That really takes a lot of pressure off, to be honest. I’m not going to save the world faster than Jesus. Then I was old enough to be President. I can’t think of any more manhood milestones to achieve that don’t actually represent decrepitude, though I look forward to those, too. Not the AARP membership, but having completely white hair, my own hermitage on a… Read more »
I was 32. Hungover from a July 3rd party, and trying to sleep it off. My next-door neighbor/landlord threw an awesome 4th party every year. As he and his wife and assorted houseguests set things up outside at 8:30AM, the woman I was dating and I managed to stay asleep. Then the dribbling started. A 5-year old nephew had found a basketball and begun bouncing it on the concrete. The sound echoed like pin balls between the tall/skinny, closely packed homes. I bounced to the window and, in a raspy voice, said, “I’ll give you $5 if you stop playing… Read more »
Ha 😀 Awesome!
Not precisely a man, but I still recall when I realized I was enough of a complete human being to allow myself to be cool. I was walking down Hawthorne Boulevard, a pretty hip part of town, rerunning all my adolescent demotivational tapes in my head. You know the ones, “I’m so awkward, I’m so uncool, I’m so gross-looking, nobody likes me…” You get those implanted in your head in high school and your brain just replays them over and over, the tape getting increasingly hissy and faint, but never quite stopping. (They were on cassette when I was in… Read more »
awesome.
Agreed.
My Dad passed when I was 27 and that’s the exact moment I realized that I had a lot of growing up to do. The transition from boy to man seemed instant, to me anyway. Kids have slowed that progress a bit because i love playing with toys as much as they do, haha.
Unfortunately I didn’t realize it until I got sober at 29. So wish I knew sooner… But can’t look back now.
I wish I had a deeper answer than ‘no’.