Transition To Adulthood

Many people believe that eighteen is when a child turns into an adult. I believe that a child turns into an adult after a significant event. An event that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. This event for me, was my first job. It was summer going into my junior year and I finally got a job. The job was working at the Orange County fair. I realized that being a carnival worker is not the most glorious job, but my parents were starting to get on my case about not having a job. First day of work, I took off in my blue 1990 Volvo station wagon and headed south on the freeway. I parked in the employee parking lot, a solid mile away from where I needed to be. I showed up, fifteen minutes early because it was the first day, and was taken away by the other people working here. These were

This started to bore me, so I started to make attempts to talk to my fellow co-workers. After a while they started to pity me and they talked back to me, and not just one worded responses. Then the day before pay checks I asked one of them, Jose, what he planned to do with his money. He gave me a sad look and then said he was not going to buy anything. Me being the pushy, naive, sixteen year old boy, I asked him why is that. He told me he had to help pay off his mom's chemotherapy because she had lung cancer. That is when it hit me that these kids were working at the fair with me not because they wanted some money but because they had to help out their families. My co-workers were the same age as me, but they already were experiencing hardships that neither me nor any of my friends were facing. Realizing that my co-workers were spending their summers standing at a gate for six hours a night just so they could help out their families blew me away. That day I came home from work as a man and not a child because I understood that life is not about all play and