When I was little, I would spend hours playing house with my expansive baby doll collection, child-sized kitchen set complete with hundreds of pieces of plastic food, and imaginary husband who inevitably resembled some celebrity who was very inappropriately older than me. All I wanted was to grow up and have my own house and babies and fall in love with some rich stud. I pictured adulthood as this amazing time when you have all the money in the world and no rules. Good god, I was so wrong.
Although I am only twenty years old and relatively new to this whole “responsibility” thing, in the short time I have been expected to live on my own and be held accountable for myself, all I have wanted is to just be a kid again. I don’t want to have to eat things like salad for lunch; I want my mom to make me a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread with potato chips. The gym is smelly and sweaty, and I long for the days when exercise meant running around in the backyard with my dog.
Within the past two years, I have been thrust into a lifestyle in which I should be able to take care of myself emotionally, mentally, and physically. My experience with taking care of something to that extent is the hamster I had in middle school that ran away and found refuge in a drawer under the oven. But unfortunately, here I am, doing my own laundry and making my own bed. It’s all just made me realize how awesome it was to be a little kid. I would give anything to go back and relish in these totally underrated privileges that come with childhood:
The Snacks
Coming home from school to snacks made with love by your mom was basically the most amazing part of the school day. My mom’s best creation was strawberries dipped in sour cream and rolled in brown sugar. But there were the lame snacks, like crunchy granola bars and orange slices, courtesy of the mom who offered to bring the snacks for your basketball game and totally bombed on the call of what eight-year-olds want to eat after they spend an hour not making a single basket. Then there were the holy grails of snacks: gummies, cheddar whales, Dunkaroos, and so much more. Unfortunately, my adult self can no longer properly digest these chemical-laden joys, but that never stops me from sneaking a bite from my little brothers’ supplies.
Dunkaroos: what they eat in Heaven
The Naps
Let’s be real: I totally still take naps on the regular. But when I was little, they were scheduled into my day. That is amazing. Every afternoon, my mom would tuck me into bed and tell me it was time to lie down for an hour. I never wanted to actually sleep because there was so much life to be lived, but given the chance today, I would sleep the hell out of that hour. These days, when I take a nap, I wake up, unsure of the time and year and who I am, and immediately begin a steep moral decline as I ponder everything else I could’ve done in the time I was asleep. Beyond the fact that naps were a necessary part of my thriving existence, I went to bed at 8:00, like, every night, because I could. I don’t recall the last time I went to bed before 11:00, and I considered that bedtime early. Honestly, thinking about this is making me tired, and I will probably go avoid responsibility by sleeping in the very near future.
Taking "cat nap" to the next level
Rec Sports
Every fall, my mom would sign me up for the soccer program offered through my town’s Parks and Recreation department. I absolutely slayed on that terribly maintained soccer pitch. I was approximately six inches taller than most of the other hellions tearing it up on that field, just because of my freaky childhood growth spurt that basically caused me to stop growing in the fifth grade at five foot seven, so my sheer size alone made me a tyrant on the field. In retrospect, I was a total bully who really sucked at sports, but the days of sports teams being a matter of your mom filling out a form are far behind us and, quite frankly, I miss them. In college, if you want to be considered an athlete, you have sacrifice your social life, your body, and the soul of your firstborn to get a spot on even the JV team.
The Toys
“Toys” has a very, very different connotation when you’re an adult, but as a kid, toys ruled our worlds. Personally, I was a baby doll fanatic. I once spent months saving up $100 to buy this baby doll from FAO Schwarz that supposedly was the same size and weight as an actual six-month-old baby. I bought outfits and bottles and pacifiers for it, and I brought it everywhere with me. I was obsessed with it until the age of ten, when my pubescent self began to look too old to be playing with dolls. But today, the toy selection for children is incredible. The Lego industry has expanded their monopoly of balling on all other toy companies with the awesomeness of their products. Legos were the ‘ish back in the day, and they have continued to destroy the toy game well into today. I’d much rather spend my days constructing massive Lego villages with my siblings as opposed to constructing budgets and paper outlines.
The Clothes
Take a step back, Suri Cruise. There is no such thing as “trendy” when it comes to children’s clothing. There is only “adorable.” Have you ever explored the Crew Cuts collection at your local J. Crew? Because if you have not, let me tell you that the selection for the little ones of the world is WAY better than the overpriced options for adults. It’s basically polka dot and paisley everything that would match perfectly with a gap-toothed grin and pigtails. And pigtails aren’t where the hair stops. Little girls rock the blunt bangs better than any hipster ever could, and a summertime buzz cut for a little boy is too cute for words. I’m stuck with the same monotonous haircut that I’ve had since my junior year of high school, and I spend far too much money on clothing that will go out of style in the next five minutes.
Matilda knows what's up when it comes to style
The Innocence
Growing up means being slapped in the face with the realities of life. Babies don’t come from the stork, a credit card doesn’t mean free money, and Kraft mac and cheese is not nutritious in any way. Little kids maintain this beautiful innocence about the cruel realities of life. You can see it in their bright eyes, as though the harsh truths of life haven’t yet clouded their vision. You hear it in their voices as they ask incessant questions, like somehow, because no bad has yet come from their mouths, there’s no deep pitch to their words, because what they have to say carries no negative weight. I have two incredible little brothers, and one of them is a month away from his thirteenth birthday. He’s learned all about sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, and is becoming a teenager in all the worst ways. But he hasn’t quite lost his childlike wonderment yet. I still feel it there when he reaches for my hand when we watch TV together, or when he asks me to go to the zoo with him on a summer day to watch the sea lions play. He makes me realize that even though we have to grow up, it’s OK to sometimes forget about the fact that we have jobs and school and responsibilities and listen to the kid that’s still in all of us.
