When Are You A Grown-Up?

By Susan Campbell


We ask children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and we expect them to name an occupation - fire-fighter, teacher, the president.

We never ask them - "And how will you know when you're a grown-up?" - because we don't know ourselves, and our confusion might scare them.

When I was a child, I formulated my own definition of "grown-up". Grown-ups were so dependable that they drove cars through the night, and you, the child, were safe enough to go to sleep in the back seat.

But after a certain age, you realised responsibly driving through the night is not the be-all you once thought it to be.

So when are you a grown-up? When you get your first credit card? Your first pay cheque? When you first have sex? At age 21? When you have your first child? When your parent dies?

We worry about the stress we place on our adolescents, our almost-adults, without ever asking whether introducing the idea of adolescence opens the door for an adolescence that never ends. Ours is one of the few cultures in the world that want to have a space between childhood and adulthood, where the young person is given a shot at adult behaviour without adult consequences.

Is this good? Maybe not, because if you look around, it would appear that adolescence get stretched further and further into one's 20s, 30s and 40s.

But who am I to talk? Through no fault of my own, I am a baby boomer. We who vowed never to trust anyone over 30 can only see that age through the rear view. Yet many of us look a tad arrested, developmentally speaking.

Look at Enron. Criminal behaviour, sure, but shockingly, childishly selfish, too. Listen to the sabre-rattling from the US president, which sounds like nothing so much as seventh-grade "mine's-bigger" locker room talk. A day of reckoning, indeed.

Things being so confusing, I humbly offer the following list, randomly selected, tried and true by its author, as a way of knowing when you've achieved grown-up status.

You know you're a grown-up when you accept the following:

• The smoke alarm will start chirping precisely at 2.38am. Every time. And you will get up bleary-eyed and fumble through a drawer for a new battery and take care of it, but not before you've wandered through the house wringing your hands trying to ascertain precisely which alarm is chirping. And you will be back in bed by four, at the latest. Every time.
• When the phone company sends you a bill, it is serious in its desire that you pay it.
• Same with the credit card company.
• One day, you will stand at Blockbuster and endure some young pup's snide comments about "your music" or "your movies" that place the entire boomer culture in a dusty denim-covered box that smell slightly of patchouli. And rather than fire off a retort, you will smile and think, "Keep on living, sweetheart."
• Conversely, your movies, your music and your clothes will eventually be recycled as high fashion, and the most you will be able to muster is bemusement. Of course! Dennis Hopper is God! So is Peter Fonda! And Americans all smoke marijuana, marched against the war in Vietnam and went to Woodstock to roll around in the mud! That's precisely how I remember it, too! Now, if I could just remember how to make a peace symbol with my hand...
• Someone will always be the first in line. That someone will rarely be you.
• You will come upon a 20-year-old picture of yourself and think two things: 1) My God, I've been alive long enough to have 20-year-old memories, and 2) I have aged.
• You'll find yourself relying less on those unguents that promise you youth in a bottle and more on good old Ivory soap and Noxzema.
• The day will come when you know fewer than 20% of the people on those magazine end-of-the-year list of famous, sexy, interesting people. And you'll care even less.
• You will wander through the house searching for your keys, only to discover they were in your hand the whole time.
• Same with reading glasses.
• Along those lines, you will walk into a room and forget why you bothered, but you will notice something in the room that amuses you, and you won't feel too bad about the whole adventure.
• You will cultivate the ability to say "I'm sorry" and mean it.

From Starmag