When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

I’ve never really thought too much about growing up. It comes to you whether you think about it or not.

When I was very young and in my 10 years I think I looked forward to growing up. But having grown up and now growing old I don’t recall ever having thought about a time that hallmarks when I had grown up.

For many years I have thought there are four phases to life.

One-getting born.

Two – growing up.

Three – becoming old.

Four – going dead.

Again, I don’t recall too much about the growing up bit when I thought I was growing up. Quite obviously I’m somewhere between three and four at the moment and ahead of me, I’m not sure how far, are the golden slip rails that hallmarked the end of life.

There are some qualities in me that have never really grown up. I like good jokes particularly if they’re not hurtful or demeaning. Humour and good fun are important.

What often happens for adults is that they lose their sense of humour and become quite stayed and predictable. I have never lost my imagination and as a school educator always put it on children to retain that sense of imagination by feeding it, but circumstances and situations, throughout the whole of their lives.

About three or four years before I retired, one of the year six students at the school of which I was principal said to me one day – and this was in front of the whole class because we were involved in the conversation I have a particular issue – “Mr Gray, you have the mind of a child in the body of a man.“

I took that as a compliment and an affirmation of the fact that I

Was still blessed with a fertile mind and imagination.

I do remember saying to the class (a different group at a different time) when we were talking about the age that when I was a child, I wished for two things.

One – I wished that I had to wear glasses.

Two – I wished that I had grey hair.

One of my students put up her hand and said when I acknowledged her, “Mr GRAY, You must be mad.“

I accept that because she probably was right; after all who wants to wish their lives away?

So upon reflection, I can’t configured to any particular point in time when I thought I was “grown up“. I sometimes referred to it as “chronological enhancement” Growing up is a phenomenon or a state that has just grown upon me and defining when I felt ‘grown up’ is just not possible.