Criteria for determining whether you are an adult

Photo by Daniel K Cheung on Unsplash

I’m 46 years old, but I’ve never really felt like an adult. I still feel mostly like a kid who has to do adult things like not have recess time on some days and make money to live. Meanwhile, there are people who seem very adultish to me, like doctors, who are saving lives, or people who govern and make decisions that affect millions of us. Maybe I’d feel more adultish if I had kids, so that there was a very real, daily reminder of the difference between an adult and a child. In the meantime I’ve created an (incomplete) list of criteria that seem to indicate adulthood, which I’ve organized into pro (for adulthood) and con (against adulthood).

An incomplete list of adult(ish) criteria

Pro: You’ve moved out of your parents’ house
Con: Your primary residence is now your car

Pro: You have your own health insurance through gainful employment
Con: Your primary form of health insurance is echinacea, St. John’s wort, and tape. Lots of tape

Pro: You’ve created life and welcomed the responsibility to care for the life you helped produce
Con: You forgot to feed your fish and they all died

Pro: You put 15% of each paycheck toward a qualified retirement plan
Con…