Being a 22-year-old woman, I can pretty much say with certainty that being a kid is the best! My fondest memories are the times I was a kid playing with Barbie dolls with my female cousins. We would sit around the living room with all of our dolls in a pile in front of us. We would make up complete worlds and situations for them and spend hours lost in our made up world.
I remember turning on the radio and having fashion and dance shows with my cousins. We would constantly put on skits and demand our parents watch us. I remember playing tag with my friends at recess on the playground at our school. I remember the multiple field trips to the Liberty Science Center and being able to see all the different gadgets and scientific machinery. I remember sitting in front of the television watching Saturday morning cartoons. "Baby Looney Tunes" was one of my favorite shows.
Those times felt like they would last forever -- me feeling happy and safe around my friends and family. I didn't know things like having struggles and problems. I didn't have a care in the world. Now I sit here and wonder where those times went. I feel like I blinked, and now I am a college student worrying about classes and what I am going to do after graduation.
Somewhere in between those happy times as a child and becoming an adult, we forget to make real memories. Once we reach around 13 or 14 years old, we spend each year of our lives wishing we were a year older. We lose our ability to create imaginary worlds where we can get completely lost. We forget to really cherish the small moments.
Now we reach adulthood, and we realize it was NOT what we thought it would be. When you are an adult you are in charge of everything about yourself. YOU have to make the doctor appointments. YOU have to schedule meetings with professors or advisers. YOU have to keep everything organized. YOU have to remember important dates and appointments.
You are now held accountable if you do something wrong or make a mistake. Your parents won't always be there to get you out of trouble or show you how to do things. You must manage your own money responsibly, or you may not be able to eat until your next pay day. You have to do your own grocery shopping, and you must prepare your own food. As an adult, you start job hunting and quickly realize how frustrating that is.
Life isn't just one big party like you once thought it was. Your life now consists of keeping multiple planners and calendars, having all-night study sessions, managing your money, paying bills and rent and waking up early for your job at the mall or a fast food restaurant.
Being an adult in your twenties is also an overwhelming time emotionally. This is the time when you are officially stepping out of childhood and into adulthood. The real world is a scary place that you must now face alone. You also do a lot of soul-searching to see where you truly belong in this world. The decisions you make now actually do affect you in big ways. You no longer have the comfort of high school to keep you safe from the real world. You learn that you do not stay friends with all of the people that were your best friends in high school. You may look around one day and notice you have no friends at all. People drift apart, or life gets so hectic that you forget to keep in touch.
Life as an adult may have seemed appealing as a kid, and I will admit there are great things about it, but being a kid is something special. The ability to see the world through innocent eyes and have an endless imagination should be something we all cherish in ourselves and in the little kids in our lives. You are only a little kid once, and before you know it everything changes so live every moment for as long as you can.