Things Will Be Different When I Grow-Up

Thanks a lot BrownSuga! I was all set to write a scathing social commentary on something mildly important, but I got side-tracked thanks to your stellar work! *laughs*

After reading BrownSuga’s ode to our youth gone by, I realized there a quite a lot of things that have changed since being a kid. As my days move forward, I do find myself saying, “Do you remember when?”

Life seems to move quicker everyday. Gone are the times when our biggest concern was how to kill time on a summer vacation day. When we were kids, we always said that things would change when we “grew up.”

Well, here we are…all grown up. And yes, things have changed, but probably not the way we thought. Instead of being filled with days of play and recreation, most of us work at our jobs only to drive home and work there as well. With all that on my mind, I did ask myself a number of “Remember When’s?”

Remember when imagination was a good thing? In my fabulous childhood, I was everything from an Olympic figure skater, to a globe-trotting super spy, to the first female baseball player in the MLB. Thanks to all that reading I did, I switched careers more than Barbie! My favorite thing in the world was inserting myself into popular movies or stories as the hero’s perky sidekick, becoming a hero by proxy. In childhood we’re allowed to be legends in our own mind, but as the teenage years start to set in, we’re trained to start settling those wild thoughts down. Imagination isn’t something that we’re allowed to let run free anymore. Those of us who indulge in a little fantasy now and then are normally called flighty or stuck in the clouds. But it’s a shame really. Adults can’t imagine very far anymore – we’ve stuffed it all away. Our imagination is stifled into stupid clichés like “Think outside of the box.” Why think of the box at all? Why can’t adults be a little like James Thurber’s fantastic Walter Mitty? Would that be such a bad thing?

Remember when the only job you had was to get good grades? OMG…I remember when I used to complain about math worksheets I used to bring home. I’d cringe and leave for the last minute research reports and science projects because they’d interfere with my cartoon filled afternoons! When I look at the typical 40-50 hour work week, I often tell myself: I’D KILL FOR 6-HOURS OF SCHOOL AND 1-HOUR OF HOMEWORK! I think that most of us can agree that we work entirely too much. And some of us mix school and work! But how cool would life be if you earned our money for getting good grades. A’s net you top shelf pay/bonuses, F’s mean you get the boot. That would be more straight forward than those lame ass corporate annual reviews! If all I had to describe my performance was “Consistently Meets Expectations,” I’d give into the 3% pay raise too.

Remember when you could trade lunches? “Are you going to eat that bag of Funyuns? I’ll trade you my fruit roll-up and Oreos for it!” Man, lunchtime trading was so much fun. You could take your sad looking bologna sandwich/Rice Krispy treat combo and turn it into a box of Cracker Jacks, Capri Sun, and a fruit snack if you were skilled enough. It’s not the trade up quality of this activity I miss. I mean, it was a tasty proposition, but I think I miss the spirit of it. At what other point in our time would we treat each other’s belongings fairly. Where we would actually weigh the value and (hopefully) give back equally. The cooperative instinct starts at the lunchroom table…but where did it disappear to?

Remember when you believed anything was possible…and people believed you? When I started getting a $5 a week allowance, I thought I was rich. In fact, I thought I could save enough of it up to buy the world! When my Dad told me that he could tell how much the Tooth Fairy would give me BEFORE I went to bed…I didn’t question it when the EXACT amount appeared under my pillow in the morning. I didn’t think there was an angle, because the world was boundless. Remember that feeling and how free it felt? No one questioned you when you asked why couldn’t pigs fly?! I wince at that memory every time I get told “no.” What I’d give for a kind smile and a “You know…that’s not such a crazy idea.”

Adulthood has its perks…but (as always) hindsight shows us how cool our childhood was. Now if we could somehow balance the kid in us with the mature adult, maybe this world wouldn’t be so bad.

And then maybe we’ll stop saying, “Remember when…”