six-word memor:

Signed ’dotted-line’. Became Mother’s legal guardian.

-Joe Molinari

I was in my early twenties, working at an Alzheimer/Dementia unit during my undergraduate years. I always worked until 11pm. The nurse worked until 5pm, leaving around 20 residents in the hands of three unqualified, college-aged kids. It was close to 11pm when I heard shouting down the hall, which was not uncommon, but I ran down there–also realizing the other two were outside on a cigarette break. Walking in the room, I was greeted with a woman on the floor splattered in blood (from a fall, we later realized) and four other residents standing around her, concerned. I looked at them for a possible explanation when one pointed at me and said, “Why would you hurt this woman?” convincing the others that I was to blame. As I tried to console the woman on the floor, the others started pushing me away. It was me against four adults, all in their late sixties. I quickly realized, OMGIMTHEADULT.

-Nicole Lane

I was one year out of college and on a date with an older guy. He apologized for his empty living room. Explained that his ex-wife had gotten all of the furniture in the divorce. I was stunned into silence, but not because he was a divorced man. I was stunned because I WAS OLD ENOUGH to date someone who was divorced, who owned a house, and who used to have living room furniture that hadn’t been pilfered from an alley or his parents’ basement.

-Jeanmari

After nearly a decade of being a university student in some form or another, I applied and landed a position as a sessional lecturer in Engineering.  The course just so happens to be an agglomeration of all of the industrial and academic experience I’ve had thus far, exactly my cup of tea.  My students are in the first term of 3rd year, and so this is 99% completely new material to them.  I’m the adult here.

~Liz Gusta

Today I rode my Schwinn Stingray past an elementary school as it released it’s student body. The little kids hollared “LOOKIT HER BIKE!” and “I LIKE YOUR SOCKS!” I shyly ducked my head the same way I do when drunk frat boys and Midwestern dads yell at me out of the windows of their SUVs, and then I remembered, “hey, I’m the adult here!”

-Lorena Caiazoo

I just wrote the intern a Letter of Recommendation. OMG I’M THE ADULT HERE.

-Alena Cason

I was subbing in a middle school and all of the students were waiting outside for permission to come into the room. Then I realized **OMG I’M THE ADULT HERE and they’re waiting for /me/ to let them in.

-Chris Osborne

I was working as a cashier in a glorified farmstand and a woman said to her child, “Give the lady your candy so she can ring it up” and I thought, “I’m not ‘the lady’–omg, I AM.”

-Lisa Michaud

The first time I had that moment I was 19, and with an 18-year-old, and the two of us had been given a dozen kids, six canoes, and some food and had been assigned to take out an overnight canoe trip in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. While the two of us late adolescents were helping a couple kids figure out a set of tent poles, another faction of kids headed down to the bluff over the river, got another kid into a mummy bag, zipped him up, pulled the face drawstring shut, and began rolling him down the bluff into the river, where he would have helplessly flailed as his sleeping bag filled with water. We caught this just in time, raced down to the water’s edge, released the kid in the mummy bag, and delivered a severe lecture to the other kids.

But at some point I realized, Jesus Lord. I have a whole bunch of other people’s kids and we’re in the freaking wilderness and it’s about to go Lord of the Flies on me. And I’m the Adult Here.

-Miko via Metafilter

When a woman asked her to move aside at the store, by saying, “Let that man through.”

-M. Ahmad via email

Kid in the classroom I’m working in just asked me if he could go to the bathroom. OMG I’M THE ADULT HERE.
-Jessamyn West via Twitter