When Did This Happen?

When did I become a... a...

It's just too horrible for words.

I'll have to spell it.

A... g-r-o-w-n-u-p.

I don't know how it happened. I don't know when it happened. All I know is that I looked in my refrigerator today and saw... The refrigerator of a grown-up. No beer. No three-day-old pizza. No six months-past the expiration date milk. Instead, there was real food. Vegetables. Yogurt. Condiments - for the love of G-d, there was piccalilli!

At some point, I went from being a kid, to a teen, to a college student, then a graduate student, then... an adult. That was tough. Having rent to pay and groceries to buy and car payments to make, well, those were all signs that I had become an adult. Getting married was a step, but countless teenaged brides and bridegrooms can attest that a marriage license doesn't automatically confer adulthood. Building the house was a cornerstone in becoming a grown-up, that's for certain - grown-ups don't tend to live in ratty apartment complexes next to drug dealers.

And it wasn't just having kids - any idiot with the proper body parts can reproduce, given a sufficient amount of Natural Light and the back seat of a Chevy Lumina. Merely providing the genetic material necessary to start the mitosizing ball rolling doesn't grant one the "grown-up" appelation any more than pumping one's own gasoline makes one a car manufacturer.

It was becoming a dad.

Being there through the ups and downs. Sleepless nights during colicy infancy. The pangs of regret and fear and uncertainly the first time dropping off at daycare. The tentative first steps. The sheer ecstasy of hearing "Dada!". The same doubts and questions on the first day of pre-school. Then kindergarten - enrolling in public school, even a good one, was a risky move. What if he meets a bully? What if the other kids don't like him?

At some point, the trials and tribulations of another human supersede your own. I think that's really when you become a grown-up - when you can subordinate your own ego for that of another. When lessening the pain of another becomes more important than helping yourself. When making someone else happy is more important than your own happiness.

When you honestly and truly care more for someone else than you do yourself.

That's being a grown-up. At least in my book.

That is all.