What makes an adult?

I turned 27 this year and I often joke about how I still don't feel like an adult. I got to thinking today about adulthood, and what that invisible line is when one has gained enough [wisdom, education, maturity, life experience, wrinkles] for most people to look at you as an adult instead of a kid.

On a side note, my black cat Moggie (who is not known for being exceptionally affectionate) is bathing the inside of my elbow as I write this and it is beginning to hurt. She must have missed me while I was in Augusta for the past 3 days.

Back to the topic at hand. What makes an adult? When you turn 18 you are legally able to smoke, buy pornography, and die for your country. These are some very adult decisions. However, when these young people listen to this:

Most of the time I see this:

I just don't think you can look at an 18-year-old, even one choosing to put their life on the line, and say that person is an adult, regardless of the decisions they are making. And frankly, I think the average 18 year old is spending most of their time thinking about school or work, parties, and sex, and not necessarily in that order.

Ok so if 18 doesn't work, how about 21? You are getting close to finishing college or you are already working, and you can now legally drink. That must put you over the line into adulthood. Hardly! Robbie and I were at the pool yesterday and there were three young 20-something girls next to us talking loudly and with rude language and unnecessary detail about things nobody cared about besides them. We were wondering later if we were that annoying at 21 and my guess is that we probably were. Twenty-one-year-olds are like 18-year-olds on steroids -- still worried about parties and sex with legal drinking thrown in, and the misconceived notion that you are amazing and everyone wants to hear what you did last night.

That's really the last age milestone I've hit and thus have any real perspective on. What about life milestones? I did finish college (still felt like a kid), survived four years of graduate school (the big joke there is that grad school is like middle school all over again complete with cliques, gossip, and blatant immaturity), and am now a DOCTOR. As a DOCTOR you would think that maybe now I finally feel like an adult. But no, as I alluded to earlier, the vast majority of the time I still feel like a kid. I will say when I am at work playing a professional role, I do feel more like an adult most of the time. There are still some days where I feel like this, though:

I am sure that will become less of an issue with time (and more wrinkles). Outside of work, though, I still feel like a kid who happens to be living alone and making rent, car, and student loan payments. I haven't hit any of the other major life steps yet, either. I'm not married and I don't have children. However, knowing people who are in one or both of these positions, I can tell you that I don't think they feel like adults most of the time, either. Heck, my 35 year old boyfriend has children and was previously married and he is the biggest kid I know!

This brings me to the only logical conclusion. I don't think anyone ever gets to the point where they really feel like an adult. I think we go through life and eventually reach a point where we feel like we are supposed to be adults so we act like what we think an adult should be, worry far too much about work, and kind of stop having fun. I don't really want to be like this. As I have told my boss, I want to do a GREAT job taking care of pets at work, but when I'm not working that time is mine. If I want to read teen vampire fiction, or play Super Mario Brothers, or wrestle around on the floor and get carpet burns I am damn well going to do it and not worry about whether I am being unadultlike (I am using this word because if unladylike is a word then unadultlike should be one, too...).

I hope that when I do get married and have kids this doesn't change. I hope my children grow up with two parents who have a lot of fun in life and don't bring work home with them. When I have to act like an adult, I will, and if I don't feel like one at the moment I'll do what I think everyone else is doing - fake it.