Daily Prompt: All Grown Up
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
First time I felt like a grown up, that was so long ago. I think it was the first time I bought something for myself. By this I don’t mean picking out something to be included in the purchases my parents were making at the same time. So it would have been when I was seven years old. We had a neighbour who had the cleanest yard I knew of, and this was because every spring through fall he would pay one of the younger kids in the neighbourhood to pick up all the litter in his yard. Now this wasn’t hard work, as it was done a few times per week. The reason he did this is he had Caragana bushes around the front and one side of his house, which was on the corner lot.
I did this for the summer I was seven. To me I felt all grown up when I got my first pay, which was a whole dollar. Now before you younger ones think I was being exploited at this rate, let me explain what I could have bought for a dollar then. A brand new comic was 10 cents, mojo’s were 2 for a penny. A bottle of pop was 10 cents, a matinée kids movie was 25 cents. So I was rich, and was making plans on how to spend my first dollar. I thought I earned it I could decide what I would do with it. Well that lasted feeling until I talked to my parents, and that’s when the word budget was introduced to my vocabulary.
Budget, but I’m only seven or some such words must have come out of my mouth. My parents informed me, I had to give them 25 cents of each dollar, to be put into my savings account. Just as I had dreams of buying something cool, my mom said the one I couldn’t touch till I was eighteen years old. Then my dad told me that another 25 cents was going to my regular savings account which I had some say in.
Well after the discussions, I went out to spend my fortune thinking, something along the lines if this is what it means to be grown up, I’m going back to being a kid. However I stuck with the job for the summer till school started in the fall. My parents helped me to learn growing up, means making good decisions.
So I hope you had a more enjoyable first experience as a grownup, but now I am thankful to my parents for the lessons they passed on to me.
ahh the days where a dollar got you a bunch of stuff! I don’t really remember the first time I felt like a grownup but I remember being in my 30′s when someone at work was finally interested in one of my ideas!
Well glad to see you still have great ideas, and even better you share some of them with us through your blog.
Oh Mr. Keith, you are so kind!
My parents did the same thing – though I can’t say that is when I first felt like a grown up…I’m not sure I do now..;-)
The kid in me still lives, so does that mean I still have to grow up, not in my books. Having a child’s ability to take pleasure in the simplest of things helps keep me stress free.
Agreed..I often tell my friends that I’m very in touch with my inner child, it’s my inner adult I have a hard time finding!