Are You Grown?

Today I have reached the age of 21, and each year some old person asks me, “How does it feel to be whatever age that I am?” Each year, I feel the same as I did the 364 days prior to that day. However, 21st birthdays are highly anticipated amongst people in America. This is for the obvious reasons of being able to drink, get your gun license, gamble, etc. But today, I feel the same that I did 364 days prior to today. I thought that I would feel a little bit more independent or whatever, but I don’t. I don’t feel more like an adult. I drank when I felt like it prior to today also, so there’s not much difference. The law has put a false idea upon us of when we’re actually adults, so my question to everyone is, WHEN DID YOU BECOME AN ADULT?

I’ve been dancing around the aforementioned question for quite some time, because I told a friend of mine that I was a man on the day that my son was born. My friend said to me, “That doesn’t make you a man.” At the time, I was being naïve and figured that he didn’t know what he was talking about, but that was an eye opener for me. I wasn’t a man at the time, but truly becoming a father made me quickly become a man. I was forced to put away many childish things in my life and learned that there are more important things in life than I what I previously thought was important.

I believe that I truly became an adult, when I learned how to shut up, listen, and pay attention to what was around me. This helped me learn many lessons that I missed out on in the past due to my own ignorance. So, I’m going to take a page out of my friend Corey Carrington’s style of blogs and ask you, “WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS THE PROPER TIME THAT YOU CAN BE LABELED AN ADULT?”