Adventures in Bennionland

When did we grow up?
I remember when I was young that I thought about growing up and what that would be like. I’m now working on 32 and I am wondering when the grown up switch was flipped. I didn’t flip it. I was sitting at dinner today and I was correcting the behavior of my oldest son and it popped into my head that he would see me as I saw my father. So tonight as I have gone about the various activities I have been involved in I have been a little preoccupied by that.
I don’t feel like my father. My father is in his mid fifties. Even if I think back to my earliest memories of my father, he is still someone that is twenty-five years older than I am. So then I take a close look at myself and realize that I am the man my father was 25 years ago (almost… I am not gay and/or questioning my sexuality, though I support everyone’s right to do that), I am making big decisions that affect the lives of at least three other people. I have a wife who I dearly love and want to help her be happy, and as crazy as it may sound I want to wake up next to her fifty years from now. I have two little boys that I can’t wait to see when I get home and it makes my day when I hear them call me Daddy.
I don’t know who flipped it, or when the grown up switch was flipped, but it has; and though it will be hard at times for me to deal with I am glad it has because I like being a Dad/Husband/Man.