Adulting in Michigan: 39 Things You Can Do When You Turn 18

If you thought turning 18 still means the same thing it did when you officially became “an adult”. Gone are the days of driving to Ohio on your 18^th birthday or buying a pack of cigarettes or tobacco. So what can you do when you hit this milestone?

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Everything You Can Do in Michigan When You Turn 18

When I turned 18, some friends and I went to Cedar Pointe. When I told my parents this they chuckled and I honestly couldn't figure out why. My folks assumed that my buddies and I were heading to Ohio because they thought the legal drinking age there was still 18. Turns out it was until the state conformed with the national age to curb drinking and driving in 1984. This was the mid-90s, so sadly we had missed that right of passage but, had we known I assure you we would have been border bound and not to enjoy "America's Roller Coast".

I thought then, “How could my parents be so out of touch with something like that? It had been over a decade since the law had changed and they were clueless about it. Why? It didn’t matter to them. Not that they didn’t care if I was consuming alcohol, but they lived in a world where milestone birthdays were a thing of the past. Their annual trips around the sun were measured by decades.

At 17 my thoughts were dominated by being considered an adult, amongst other things. “I’m going to be old enough to make my own decisions!” I thought, which was followed by the ‘choice’ to live in my parents' home because I wasn’t anywhere close to being an adult.

Maybe when you turned 18 you could purchase alcohol, or tobacco, but a lot has changed. This is why when my kids told me that the legal age to purchase those items was now 21. Suddenly I was my parents laughing ignorantly at my buddies and me going to Ohio on the first day of 'adulthood'. How could I not know?