Shane Watson
The 15 signs that show you’re a grown-up
This week’s big scientific news: we don’t become fully adult until our 30s (not 18, as the law has it) and everyone matures at different rates. Well that makes sense, but only up to a point. In our experience, some people are grown-ups at 25, while others are just about turning the corner, making the final adjustments, well into their 50s. We might even include ourselves in that category...
Also – and this never ceases to surprise us – you can be happily chugging along being an adult in most respects, but then you’ll suddenly be hit with the realisation that whoops… still 10 per cent off the full package! Something will happen (eg you throw a strop in a tennis lesson when you can’t get your serve right) that reminds you that there is still work to be done. You haven’t got your Full Adult Wings yet.
If you’d like to know whether you’re a Full Adult, or you just look like one, take our simple test (and you must be able to tick the lot…)
When you open the dishwasher and discover that it is rammed with clean stuff, you never surreptitiously close the door and tiptoe away, leaving the next person to deal with the unloading.
You have stopped doing that thing when you look at someone else’s life and feel throat constricted with envy and end up face down on your bed muttering “why haven’t I got an extra large George Sherlock sofa?”, “Why haven’t I got a boiling water tap?”, “Why haven’t I got really thick shiny hair and a sports car?”.
Are you a Full Adult yet or do you just look like one?
How to tell if you’re a real grown-up ‘When you open the dishwasher and discover it rammed with clean stuff, you never close the door and tiptoe away’
You are reasonably comfortable with the idea of a few people not liking you. You’re not trying to win them over, anyway.
You have stopped buying clothes and then ringing round your five best friends and forcing them to look at pictures of you in said clothes, before you take them back.
You have got over the idea that your legs are too good to hide away This does not apply to Yasmin Le Bon. It does apply, however, to a lot of so-called adults – no names mentioned – who have got acute body self-love and refuse to get out of their exercise gear ever.
You are never too intimidated to pipe up at the hairdressers. Challenge the builders. Tell the person who knows more about the topic under discussion than you to “Hang on a minute…”
You don’t have to win an argument even if you are, without question, in the right (although you may have to bring up your rightness at a later date).
When learning a game, or losing a game, you don’t have a throwdown or resort to cheating.
You are no longer automatically impressed by cool people, posh people or famous people (worth mentioning because many adults never get to this point and are putty in the presence of any old goon off the TV). Also, you are aware that intolerable people sometimes have to be tolerated, for the sake of others.
You have a washbag (Sainsbury’s carrier bag that doubles as a washbag does not count); a first aid kit; a file marked House Stuff; a will; and some of those plug adapters that switch the lights on and off when you’re not at home.
When having an argument you don’t flounce out, slamming the door. Or engage in lots of nearly-but-not-quiteout-of-view eye rolling. Or stand behind the fridge door flicking the V sign.
You wouldn’t dream of throwing a sickie. Even when sick, you have problems taking a sickie.
You don’t think it’s clever to not eat.
You don’t get Fomo. At all. If anything you have SOHTMO (So happy to miss out).
You’re just as interested in talking to an old lady at a party as you are to a fit man (which back in your 30s was Grown-up or what?