I Knew I Was An Adult When...

One of my nieces turned eighteen recently, and while she's officially now an adult - she can be in the Army but can't legally drink a beer - I don't know that she's yet had an experience that brings her newfound majority home to her.
   It didn't take me long to know I was an adult. I wasn't even eighteen yet, as a matter of fact. In the summer between my Senior year of high school and my Freshman year of college I was out driving in the Green Machine, my '72 Chevelle. I was about two miles from my home, getting gas at the convenience store, when I noticed one of my car's tires going flat; there was a big-ass nail right through the sidewall. I got on the pay phone (no cell phones back then) and phoned home. My father answered and I told him my plight, that I had a flat tire and I was not too far away. I was hoping, of course, that he would come and rescue me. There was a moment of silence on line.
    "What are you going to do about it?" my father asked.
   I hesitated. "Uh... change the tire?"
   "See you when you get home," my father said then he hung up.

I became an adult that afternoon, changing my own flat tire on a scorching Texas summer day,sweat dripping in my eyes, the sun burning my neck and the backs of my calves. I figured out how to work the jack and I figured out the right and wrong way to turn the lugnuts and I figured out what a miserable, thankless job car repair is. And I not only figured out how to curse just like my Dad, I finally understood why he sometimes found it necessary.
   Scraped my knuckles bloody too. That's man stuff right there.