If you are anything like I am, you grew up watching "High School Musical," "Hannah Montana," and "Wizards Of Waverly Place." Some part of you, at some point, thought that love would be like a Troy and Gabriella moment, you and some guy would click over a song and then she would run off into the night and show up at your high school (and it still baffles you because this whole thing happened over New Years and Gabriella was just starting school).

If you didn't think some version of that, you imagined that at some point you would also have a Jake or Jesse problem as Miley did, or do anything for love like Mason and Alex did (c'mon, she was dating a werewolf, how cool). Growing up, we didn't totally acknowledge that we knew that this was not what our teenage years would entail. However, it was still nice to think that we could eventually grow up to have romances like these.

Aside from romance, the way that Disney painted it for us was that we would only ever encounter one major bully (awkward) and that we would be able to come and go from home whenever we wanted. Growing up with parents who strongly believed in teaching and then expecting us to set our own boundaries, I was allowed to come up with my own curfew. But, if I came home even a second later, game over. (I actually learned to be home ten minutes before.)

Kids on TV seemed never to have homework, and they all seemed to only ever have one bad grade that was the end of the world. They also always seemed to have perfect skin and nails, though they didn't think so, and we were never fully prepared for what changed we were about to go through; even though we were more prepared than today's kids because OG Disney did talk about real-world problems.

I also went to a smallish private school in Manhattan so there weren't those big lockers that we could decorate, but the girls did wear crazy expensive outfits like Sharpay Evans. I guess I knew that growing up would never be as easy as Disney made it seem, but I wish that it would have been maybe slightly a little bit easier.

I hated the whole princess situation. I never thought that I was one or that Prince Charming would come and rescue me. Despite this, at some point, I did wish that someone would show up with roses at my front door (yes, my high school boyfriend did do this, and yes, it did annoy the living hell out of my parents). I guess that it was nice to think that life would be somewhat like a movie, but also know that life was not that easy. I was mentally prepared for that part where it wouldn't be exactly like a movie, yet still had the dream.