And I’m not counting things like what you do or get when you grow up like having a bank account or getting a real job. Nor am I accepting the whole ‘I just grew up’.
My sign of my childhood ending or accepting that it has ended is when all of the nu-metal bands I was introduced to and listened to a lot of us just ended up fractured. They all didn’t endure the passage of time and it was really just a matter of you had to be there to know how popular they were or the scene was.
The bands I used to have listened to have gone the way of Classic Rock on the radio. Spammed tracks from some bands because that’s all the DJ knows or that’s all they’re allowed to play.
I left for college at 18, but that wasn’t it for me. It was one month later when my parents announced a divorce and I realized my home life would never be the same. College still felt big and scary, but I couldn’t even go back to the comforts of my childhood ever again.
A teenage girl in distress came to me and my friend for help and protection even though we were total strangers. We found her other friends and got them all home safe and sound.
I guess knowing that other people are you as a responsible adult, helps you feel like one as well.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and was a “Latchkey Kid” so sometimes I feel like my childhood first got the breaks applied when I started having to carry a set of house keys with me all the time.
I don’t understand what the fuck the kids are saying anymore. The slang is so incomprehensible that urban dictionary is necessary.
The popular music is garbage and Garbage is forgotten.
I can say “back in my day” without it being funny.
I can reference my ex-wife without it being ironic because I am not youthful and without grey hair, so I may have an ex-wife.
I can say “when I was a little girl” without it being irreverently funny because I am a clearly a guy.
The popular music is garbage and Garbage is forgotten.
I did that line
The popular music is garbage and Garbage is forgotten.
About that:
I realized something many years ago: people of a certain age always tend to think music from their time was better. But they all fail to see that whatever music from their generation is still around is the good shit from that time. For example, this still plays on radio but this thankfully doesn’t.
Whatever young people listen to now is everything: the good and the bad, and mostly the bad. Their shit hasn’t had time to decant yet.
So yeah, to an older listener, today’s music is mostly shit, because it is - just like the music from their past was mostly shit when their past was today 🙂
dancing in the street still gets played on the radio
Anyone who thinks new music is shit stopped looking for new music. Which is also a sign.
and anyone who thinks popular music was ever any good has overdosed on nostalgia.
Oh come on! When rock music was mainstream there were no shortage of actually good popular music.
Don’t take this thought from me!
Having to explain things you grew up with to your niece because they’re not part of the world anymore comes at you without warning.
I mean she found a cassette tape in her grandmother’s TV cabinet and asked me what it was but yeah that too.
When I became financially and legally responsible for my own choices.
When one of your parents dies when you’re only 6 years old.
I don’t know, but it might be the time when I ran out of ideas of what to get for christmas. As a kid I always wanted something like cars, lego, sport stuff, bike, whatever came to my mind. I rarely got those things, but my mind was always in “I want that” mode. But growing up I realized I don’t need most those things and also that my parents tried hard to get me at least something so I just “gave up” and asked for actually useful stuff (clothing, socks, etc).
Adding to that, I actually started appreciating a pair of good quality socks.
I have become that cliche where I genuinely look forward to getting socks under the tree on Christmas morning.
I’m a grown ass man who can at any point in any day decide to get in my automobile and go to any store and buy a mountain of socks, or order a pallet of socks to be drop-shipped to the door of my grown up house on a whim.
But I prefer to suffer holy toes and see through heels in anticipation of starting fresh on Christmas morn.
When I realized this in my soul, I was no longer a child.
I feel you, I get exited to get a fresh sponge for dish wasing
People say that everything before becoming a parent yourself is just extended childhood. Can partially confirm. If the kid is with someone else, you can also be a child again.
When I don’t understand what young people say. Worse: when they don’t understand what I say.
you can learn the lingo it really doesn’t change that much from generation to generation, but they will never learn the decades of Simpson references you have on lock.
you can learn the lingo it really doesn’t change that much from generation to generation
That’s not the problem: if I talked to a kid with that kid’s generation’s talk, they would look at me with an air of pity. Just like I looked at adults trying to be hip when I was a kid. Older folks who don’t stay in their place aren’t well received, and I’m one of them now, so I abstain.
if you don’t lean into the fellow kids meme then being hip with the lingo will be uncomfortable for everyone involved, but understanding and participating are 2 different things.
I become 20 next year… Yeah, that’s probably a good indicator
You still have a few years.
20 sounds so old though
I’m only 29 but if I think back to being 20, I was not the same person. I don’t know your life, but responsibility piles on fast.
20 sounds so old though
Treasure that moment in time my friend, because tomorrow you’ll wake up and you’ll realize you’re 60 and you haven’t see those 40 years fly by. Take it from me, now you think you have the time but you really don’t: time accelerates the older you get. And that scary shit is for real.
I’m not sure when my childhood ended but I’d say my adulthood began the day I bought my first lawn mower
At one point when I was in my mid to late-twenties, my workplace’s neighbor had their sprinkler system fail and flood their business. It was so bad that a bunch of water seeped under the adjoining wall and we had about a half an inch of water across a third of our fairly large store. There were maybe a dozen or so of us working there at the time, and we all got called in to rapidly move merchandise out into a big truck so that it wouldn’t get spoiled by the damp air before the remediation guys could do their thing.
So there’s all of these people, most of them younger than me, but not by a lot, running back and forth with crates of merchandise, and I looked around and immediately saw how chaotic and inefficient it was.
So I said, “Okay, you stand by the truck. You stand by the front door, you stand just inside. You stand a little further in than that. The first person just picks up a crate, and we bucket brigade it all out to the truck.”
It was an obvious solution, and it made the work go by so much faster and easier, but apparently I was the only one who thought to do it. I realized that in that moment, in a moderately large group, I was the most responsible adult in the room.
And I’m pretty sure that was when my childhood ended.
When you are more excited to go to sleep than to wake up.
On the other hand, the older I get, the more excited I am to greet the next day.
I also enjoy an earlier bed time than I used to, usually.
Work
My parents always worked, my older siblings always worked … every adult around me always seemed to be doing something. As a kid it was just normal that everyone everywhere was working at something all the time.
I played and had fun on my own and with my friends but somewhere around the age of ten, I started joining my dad and brothers in all the work they were doing. As soon as I did that, I played less and stopped acting like a kid … I started canceling play time because I was working.
It was sad or disappointing for me … I loved doing all that work and learning so much from my dad and brothers, it was fun in its own way. But when I think about it, the day I started doing adult work, or adult type work, my childhood basically ended.
I think I can even think of the actual moment. Dad and my brothers were renovating the garage and I spent the day just watching them and I really wanted to be part of it all. I picked up a wheel barrow and started moving gravel because dad had asked for material to be moved but everyone was too busy with other work. No one asked me, no one ordered me, I just started shoveling gravel into the wheel barrow. I lifted the barrow and it was too heavy for me, so I unloaded some until I could lift it and move it. As soon as I figured out how much I could carry, I started moving gravel. Then did that about a dozen times until I had moved several yards of gravel.
I was 11 and a big kid for my age. I haven’t really stopped doing things since then.
If you enjoyed it, your childhood didn’t end.
