Nina and my niece were talking the other night ... and the conversation moved on to working out when one becomes an adult (my niece talking about how mature she thought she was now compared with a couple of years ago ...).
They both seemed to settle on the age of 18 years ... with Nina saying that this was when she felt she became an adult.
I didn't say anything, but I though quite differently. There were perhaps two signs of adulthood to me - beginning a career (maybe) and becoming a parent.
I've never really felt like I can call myself an adult, but I've always been relatively mature - right back since I was in my mid teens - and I've always looked to older people and thought of them as being adults ... but not me - I've never passed some magical test, never proved myself through some adult initiation ceremony.
More than anything else, I think that the mark of adulthood is the visible ownership of responsibility ... and the one life milestone that signifies that more than everything else combined is becoming a parent (and yes, there are a hell of a lot of people who should have never be allowed to become parents).
Being responsible for the upbringing of another human child is the greatest and perhaps only mark of adulthood that I think there is. Having a job, even managing a company, is just pretend in a way - a script out of "Lord of the Flies".
Maybe I see this as the measure because it is one that I'll sadly never achieve. Maybe it is a way I choose to use to justify my own sense of failure and insignificance in life - the absence of any purpose or lasting legacy ... to be cursed to die a child at whatever lofty age I reach ... and to have wasted all the years and opportunities that I've been given.
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