My Life is a Jane Austen Novel

Just the other day in English we were talking about the good old days of childhood--when board games were life's ultimate adventures and the pot of gold was only a few rainbows away. It really got me thinking about how I've changed so much since I was a kid! I guess for me it brought me back to the biggest climax of my life --2nd and 3rd grade! Isn't it wierd how you remember yourself being someone completely different as a kid, in kindergarten maybe, and how you're someone completely different now? I was the naughtiest kid who ever set foot on this planet--most people wouldn't even believe it--but I would bite other kids at school and pull their hair and be really, really bossy! I got in trouble a lot by my teachers! For me, the climax of my life came at the age of about 8, a turning point that pretty much spun my life 180 degrees around, and turned me--well almost--into the person that I am today. This climax was...(drumroll)...peer pressure. Being completely honest, I'd never really understood that people had, well, expectations of me --this comment being mostly directed towards my peers. It was hard for me to figure out why the "cool" people wouldn't want to hang out with me, why they'd always ignore me whenever I came around--was it because I didn't dress like them, talk like them or-- I even thought--looked like them? Just the same old elementary school drama I guess! This exclusion really turned me around.
By the end of third grade--I was THROUGH! I didn't need those people anymore. They didn't need to laugh at me becuase I was different, but I needed to laugh I them becuase they were all the same. I joined a new group of friends in 4th grade and life has just snowballed from there. Today, I have an awesome group of people that I hang around with--I don't need to be cool around them. I don't need to cuss--or look good--or put on a facade becuase I'm not looking for a way in anymore. I've been in the whole time. My experiences have taught me to always look above and beyond the situation--to find all the positives. I don't know where all that old Shamita went (or even where it came from...anyway), but even though I sometimes miss my childhood self, it's given me the biggest gift I could ever want--the guts to say "Yeah that's right! I have an independent mind, and a free-spirited body! Just try and take that away from me!"

So what I've always wondered is, what is the biggest turning point in others' childhood? What is it that changed you from the kid you were to the person you are today? Or you can just share any story that evoked a realization of emotional maturity, etc... Or you can just write for fun--I always like that!