I'm fairly sure I will always be a kid at heart - I still seriously enjoy watching Disney movies and don't know if I can ever actually get rid of my dolls - but there are some things that inevitably change as you become an adult. I sometimes wish that these ideas, some of the most fun and treasured memories of being a kid, could remain socially normal when we grow up.
1. Birthday parties
Yes, birthday parties still exist when you're an adult, but they're not the same. The birthday parties I went to and hosted when I was a kid are still some of the most entertaining events I've ever attended. Surrounded by family and friends with carefully chosen themes, games, food, and decorations, they centered around making the birthday girl or boy as happy as possible. And these were the days when presents were toys, which were anticipated with so much more excitement than the clothes or gift cards you receive as an adult. All in all, children's birthday parties are something to be cherished for as long as possible before everyone begins to think they no longer need to be celebrated in such detail.
2. Snow days
Again, as a college student or even an employee, the weather is sometimes so bad that a snow day has to occur, but it is nowhere near the same as those of your school days. In college, you usually use your snow day to catch up on the homework you haven't yet finished. When you're a kid, a snow day becomes a holiday - the gift of no school, no work, but instead, sleeping in, playing in the street with friends, and curling up under a blanket with hot chocolate and watching a movie. It was a day free of the responsibility of work, not the cause of added worry about how you were going to drive to the store.
3. Playing pretend
In a time when looking at an electronic screen is quickly replacing any time spent playing pretend, this pastime is utilized for even shorter amounts of time in our lives. The hours you spent using your brain to make up a game, assign people characters and dress up in costumes, create homes, cities, castles, forts, are taken up by other more important things when you grow up. These were the moments when you got to be creative and collaborate with others with no pressure of what others might think of your ideas.
4. Making friends
There was just something about not yet being so self conscious that made it infinitely easier to make friends when you were a kid. You didn't have to have some deep-rooted commonality or character similarity. If you and the girl with the blue dress at the playground both liked to slide down the slide, then you made a friend. It was so quick and easy that it was effortless.
5. Singing
For me, one of my favorite things as a child was to sing entire songs over and over with anyone who would join in. My friend and I would sit next to each other on the school bus every day and sing the entire ride home. My mother and I used to sing as we walked down the sidewalk to the library or the ice cream shop. An adult who sings while walking down the street is slightly more alarming than a child doing so, and therefore it isn't really socially accepted anymore, which I find disappointing.
Mostly, I've realized that adults don't look forward to things and believe in things as intensely as kids do. Kids hope without abandon, love things without self consciousness, and act without hesitation. It makes me realize, whenever I'm still seated at the kids table at family gatherings, that though we always strived to get to the adults table, we never knew that the kids table will always be where it's at.
