Huh? When did that happen?

"That" being becoming an adult.

I remember the first time it occurred to me that maybe I was leaving adolescence behind. I was 21 years old and was visiting a friend of mine who had moved out of her parents' house after a monstrous spat with her mother. We were both in college at the time. Not a fancy private school, or even a state school with a dorm -- no, we both went to Queens College, of the City University of New York. A commuter school. Which meant, for most students, living at home and coming to the campus for classes -- in other words, a lot like high school, only with more advanced classes and fewer rules. Oh, and also with alcohol, because back then - December 1980 - the drinking age was 18, so the student union building had a pub.

My friend -- let's call her Josie -- had rented the basement of a house up the block from the college's parking lot. She shared it with another girl who wasn't around all that much. The basement was just a big room, with a kitchen area on one side and a bathroom. I seem to remember she also had a television. I have no idea what the landlady charged Josie for the room, nor do I have any clue how Josie paid for it. I did like her company quite a bit, though, so I used to visit her a couple of times a week. A side benefit of these visits was that I got away from the prying eyes of my mother. At age 21 my patience for parental supervision was wearing very thin.

A few weeks into the semester I started going out with Karine. She was a petite little fireball, intense and strong-willed, head-turningly pretty. Naturally I brought her over to Josie's place, and the two of them hit it right off, which pleased me to no end. One day we were sitting around and laughing, just having a good time, when Josie pulled out her bag of weed and a packet of rolling papers. "Shall we?" she grinned at us. Karine gave a slight shrug. She used to be in art school and had taken acid at one point. Conventional wisdom in her art school was that it opened up the mind and increased creativity. After a few encounters with lysergic hallucinations she had decided that she was already quite creative enough. But by then the acid was already in her system, and too much grass gave her flashbacks. She didn't want to be a party pooper, though. So she looked at Josie and said, "Sure, I'll take a hit or two." She leaned against my shoulder and I reached over to take the joint that by then Josie had lit and smoked. I inhaled, deeply, and handed the joint to Karine. She took a hit and passed it back to Josie. We went around a couple of times, then Karine decided to stop. Josie and I finished the joint.

Josie's taste in music was folkier than mine, so she put Crosby, Stills & Nash on the turntable. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" poured into the room, the falsetto harmonies settling on our heads. I felt the familiar heaviness of the high crowd the interior of my head, nudging gently at my temples from inside. I looked over at Karine. She was relaxed against me, nuzzling into my shoulder. Josie was smiling, swaying slightly to the voices and acoustic guitar. "Chestnut brown canary, ruby throated sparrow........" The warmth of friendship and camaraderie was palpable.

But the inside of my head was heavy and my thoughts were coming slow and tangled. This was what always happened when I got high. Not that I did it too often. I was more of a social toker than anything else: I did it with friends, just to party, not to be left out, not to be thought a drudge. And I had always told myself it was fun, never let myself think it possibly wasn't. After all, I would be a drag, stodgy and square, if I said I didn't really like it. I had to fit in, didn't I? Or so I thought. Or so I required myself to think.

Until that day. The heaviness still was in my head when I heard myself thinking "You know, you don't really like this. You don't have to do this just because other people are doing it." Karine's breathing seemed warm and deep as she leaned against me. I heard my thought again, then pondered it. "You don't really have to do this just because other people are doing it."

What a concept. I knew it was true. I just had to adjust to it. I had never thought of refusing to go along with the crowd before. Maybe it was time.

After a while the high passed. We bid Josie good night and I drove Karine home. That was the last time I got high. And it was the first time I realized that I was leaving my teenage mindset behind - I didn't have to do things I didnt' really want to do just because they were "the thing to do." If the mark of adulthood is makng your own decisions and not just running with the pack, that was when my adulthood started.

What's interesting, though, is that even today I don't really feel like the proverbial "grown up." Oh, I certainly do have the job, the family, the responsibility. I sit behind a desk and speak on the phone, make decisions, give advice, write important-looking letters and do all those other adult things. I even look like an adult. But in my head I'm still 22. The slight paunch, receding hairline and increasingly creaky joints have done nothing to advance my mental age. I'm 22 in my mind and so far nothing has happend to change that.

I wonder, though, whether I'll have another moment like that one in Josie's apartment, when it will suddenly dawn on me with crystalline clarity that yes, I'm almost 50 years old and that life isn't in the future -- it's here, right now, every minute passing by precious and irreplaceable. Would I even want to understand that other than intellectually? Isn't the 22-year-old's prospect of future possibilities and things yet to be discovered much more exciting, even if it means less respect for the passage of time? Not that there isn't much to be said for savoring every moment, but perhaps doing that also brings with it the end of optimism, and some resignation about where one is in life and how much it can change.

I'm not sure I want it.