In the past years I have often asked myself the question when the exact point in time is when someone becomes an adult. And I never found a satisfying answer.

Some events which do not necessarily coincide with growing up:

• understanding of mortality, attending a funeral
• sexual maturity
• breaking of the voice (for males)
• majority be it at 18 or 21
• the first drink
• the first drunken stupor
• the first relation with the opposite sex (non-physical)
• the first sex
• the first job, money earned by your own hands
• your first apartment
• first car
• first trip on your own without parents/friends
• when you don't listen to rock music anymore (just joking)
• seeing someone die
• marriage
• first kid
• death of your father
• death of your mother

Something deep inside me has been revolting against the inevitable fate that I'll be an adult one day. But instead of not growing like Oskar Matzerath in Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) I opted for growing taller than most people in my environment. 1 meter and 95 centimeters. Too tall for many doors and beds, not tall enough for a basketball star.

In any case I think I know now that there is another important event which can mark the passage from youth to adulthood. It is called coming-out. Not necessarily the coming-out referring to sexual attraction to the same sex. I mean a sudden realization that something is different with you than with most other people. I for myself knew this before but I never drew any conclusions. This has just changed. That's what I hope at least.

I end this slightly mysterious and incomprehensible personal post with a line from Joni Mitchell's Strange Boy which states the charm of not becoming an adult succinctly:

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