The Method:

First of all, having children of your own does not make you an adult. Any two jackoffs with functional reproductive organs can produce children. And there is no magical line when it comes to age, not even a ballpark.

No, it seems to be a balancing point between when you stop depending on other people, and become the person other people can depend on.

For instance, the most mature guy at my last job was 16-years old. He went to work because his mom was morbidly obese to the point that she couldn't work. She collected disability, which wasn't enough to support her family, so the kid picked up the slack. Each week, he would sign his check over to his mom, who would deposit 100 percent of it in the bank. He never saw a dime, and that was fine with him, because he was helping out his family.

Compare that to the other guys there, many in their 30s, who would spend half of their check on mods for their car stereos, and whatever was left over on their three children. Instead of school clothes for the kids, they'd replace the back seats with giant subwoofers. I'd watch these guys scream at their girlfriends for bringing their lunch late -- the lunches that those guys could have made themselves and brought to work with them. They might have married those girls by now, and now those guys have a new mother. They are 35-year-old kids.

I mentioned my years spent crashing on friends' couches earlier, people taking me in because they knew my only other option was living on the street. Do you think I ever thought about how much work they had to do to provide me with a place to stay? Or how wrong it was that as an able-bodied man, I wasn't the one providing a sofa for somebody else in need? Or that I was always taking instead of giving? No, because that's how an adult thinks. And I wasn't one.

You know you're an adult, not just when you're able to put the needs of others above your own, but when you're able to do it without giving a single thought to what they "owe" you in return. You realize that, at some point you weren't even aware of, you became the tap instead of the bucket. And then you look back and hate your younger self for living under the delusion that somehow a world full of buckets could function.

It sounds obvious to the point of being insulting, and it is ... to an adult. So, as with everything on this list, the answer is that when it happens, you'll know. Give or take a decade or two.

Connor McKane wrote:Happy Birthday mate. Hope you have a good one.

remilia_scarlet wrote: Yes, happy birthday.

Polonius wrote:I have no kids, no wife, no long term girlfriend.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!