I once thought that when I turned 18, I would be an adult. But then I turned 18 and I still worked at KFC and occasionally had minor run-ins with the law and went to parties at the end of long, dirt roads in the middle of nowhere that had bonfires and Natural Ice beer and boys who beat each other up.

Twenty. When I turned 20, surely I would be an adult. No longer a teenager. Living on my own. Except I lived with a boyfriend who couldn't keep a job but could buy me alcohol (with a fake ID) and I worked at places like Denny's and Super 8 Motel and Borders.

At least when I turned 21, I didn't have to rely on anyone else to make a trip to the liquor store. But I still worked at Borders and was a college student so I had to buy Natural Ice beer anyway because it was all I could afford.

I got married when I was 23. You have to be an adult to do that, right? Not so much. When you have to do chores for your mother-in-law in order to make some money to pay the bills and sometimes at your regular job there's a keg of beer in the break room and the smell of weed coming from your boss' office, and fights with your husband occasionally result in not talking to one another for days, you realize you might possibly have some more growing up to do.

Twenty-seven = baby. Responsible for another human being. Adult? Well, she survived. I eventually started operating our lives on a regular schedule. I got a real job. I started contributing to a 401K. But I still feel like I'm winging it.

The first thought that popped into my head this morning: I am 30. What does it feel like?

I've been married for almost seven years. I have a two-year-old daughter. We live in our own home in the 'burbs. Am I an adult?

I'm older, for sure. I feel it in my back when I pick Lillia up out of her crib and in my eyelids when 10 p.m. gets close. I can see it in the mirror. I can see it in my bathroom cabinet: Anti-aging this and anti-wrinkle that. I always thought I would grow old gracefully, but that was when I was 18.

To be an adult, in the literal sense, means to be fully grown. If we're going to take things literally, which I almost always do, that would mean that at some point, we would have to stop growing. And I don't know about you, but the going without, the loser boyfriends, the crappy jobs, the fighting - I grew from all of those things. The day I am fully grown, can learn and change no more, will be the day I drop dead. And that is fine by me.

(The never being an adult part, not the dropping dead part. That's no good.)