Ask Lemmy

Nothing ages you like talking to an actual young person.

I worked with a software engineer several years ago that was about a decade younger than me. A few of us were talking about first games, and he mentioned playing his dad's PlayStation and his first game being on the PS2. Our first games were all Master System, NES, all 2D. He said, and I quote, "I wasn't born when graphics were shit".

Oof

When you turn 18 and suddenly the government starts sending you paperwork to fill out.

I don't know, but it might be the time when I ran out of ideas of what to get for christmas. As a kid I always wanted something like cars, lego, sport stuff, bike, whatever came to my mind. I rarely got those things, but my mind was always in "I want that" mode. But growing up I realized I don't need most those things and also that my parents tried hard to get me at least something so I just "gave up" and asked for actually useful stuff (clothing, socks, etc).

For me, it was being able to recognize that my parents were well-meaning but imperfect people and not getting angry about it. There was the normal childhood period when I looked up to them and just assumed they could do no wrong, then the reactionary teenage anger phase of, "Fuck you, old man! You don't know me!"

It wasn't until around 26 or so that I had calmed down enough to say/feel without malice , "I am going to live my life the way I want to live my life, you may not understand or agree with some of my decisions, and that's OK. I'm not required to justify or explain them to you."

A teenage girl in distress came to me and my friend for help and protection even though we were total strangers. We found her other friends and got them all home safe and sound.

I guess knowing that other people see you as a responsible adult, helps you feel like one as well.

Christmas becomes a deadline.

When you give yourself a bed time

At one point when I was in my mid to late-twenties, my workplace's neighbor had their sprinkler system fail and flood their business. It was so bad that a bunch of water seeped under the adjoining wall and we had about a half an inch of water across a third of our fairly large store. There were maybe a dozen or so of us working there at the time, and we all got called in to rapidly move merchandise out into a big truck so that it wouldn't get spoiled by the damp air before the remediation guys could do their thing.

So there's all of these people, most of them younger than me, but not by a lot, running back and forth with crates of merchandise, and I looked around and immediately saw how chaotic and inefficient it was.

So I said, "Okay, you stand by the truck. You stand by the front door, you stand just inside. You stand a little further in than that. The first person just picks up a crate, and we bucket brigade it all out to the truck."

It was an obvious solution, and it made the work go by so much faster and easier, but apparently I was the only one who thought to do it. I realized that in that moment, in a moderately large group, I was the most responsible adult in the room.

And I'm pretty sure that was when my childhood ended.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and was a "Latchkey Kid" so sometimes I feel like my childhood first got the breaks applied when I started having to carry a set of house keys with me all the time.

My childhood never really began. I was a toddler, then i was a mini adult, having to "watch your brother!¡!¡!" everytime my parents wanted to have fun.

I was one of those kids that adults said was "mature for your age". Except, it wasn't maturity, it was fear of my parents.

So for me, childhood ended the first time my parents told me to become a third parent for their child.

Yes I'm still bitter about it, so i won't call out the down votes on this one

For me it was after my baby penis fell off and my adult one finished growing in.

The kid that wants to hold his mom's hand and to have his dad tell him he's proud of him will always be in there somewhere. The kid who's scared of the basement with the lights off. The kid who just wants to play GoldenEye with his brother. He never went anywhere. He's still in there and comes out when my kids need him.

My childhood ended when I could finally understand the Hobbes' quote "Homo homini lupus est", when I could finally understand the existence of these shadows inside humans (including myself), when I could finally see those shadows right away. My childhood ended when I realized what humanity and society are, when I realized how simpler would it be if humans had stuck being hominins. My childhood ended when this thing, called "sentience", powered itself on inside my brain, condemning me to understand things that I wished I couldn't understand. My childhood ended, the kid inside myself is long dead, and now I'm a zombie, a Mortuus-vivens.

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. -C.S Lewis

following this i would say when you stop wanting to be grown-up. and that certainly tracks for me

I'm not sure when my childhood ended but I'd say my adulthood began the day I bought my first lawn mower

I remember when I just couldn't play with toys anymore. Making a story about Barbie & Co. suddenly just didn't happen anymore.

Also, some radio said they were putting on a "classic" and it was "Crazy in Love" by Beyonce.

When your favorite sports team's stars are younger than you.

I don't have the energy to play video games anymore

I left for college at 18, but that wasn't it for me. It was one month later when my parents announced a divorce and I realized my home life would never be the same. College still felt big and scary, but I couldn't even go back to the comforts of my childhood ever again.

When, given a choice between doing something fun and something necessary that can be easily put off, you default to doing the necessary.

When the aliens who secretly physically resemble demons show up to help your entire species reach their next phase of evolution, ascension to a higher plane of existence.

I become 20 next year... Yeah, that's probably a good indicator

I'm about 15 years from retirement and I'm still a child. I don't see it changing any time soon.