Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Hump Day Reminiscings

It's Wednesday and I was up too late last night (doing the things in item #2 and #4 on the second list below) so this is coming from a place of pure laziness and resentment for being indoors (it's 90 degrees and sunny!?).

Five things I miss about being a kid:
  1. Being able to pick my nose in public. Actually no, I was never able to do this and still have friends. (Which is why I didn't have friends until High School-save for Roommate, again.)
Let me start over.
Five things I miss about being a kid:
  1. Being able to eat mass quantities of whatever without feeling sick. (I just ate 4 Hersey Miniatures and now have a stomach ache. Ridiculous).
  2. Tormenting people, or at least thinking I was. Once, Roommate and I knocked over all the deck chairs belonging to a neighbor of mine and left him a note written in red Sharpie, you know, to look like blood. The note started off with, "Beware!". It's really no fun to do things like that now, because you'll get arrested.
  3. My mom making me dinner. I really miss having dinner cooked and ready for me every night. It was always good and always healthy. Granted, at the time I was upset that we didn't go to McDonalds, like EVER, and we weren't allowed to eat Macaroni and Cheese unless it was the kind my mom made herself. What I would give to guiltlessly eat a bowl of mom's macaroni and cheese right now (well, not right now because of that stomach ache, but maybe in a few hours).
  4. Not being stressed out, ever. The worst part of having to grow up is having to have responsibilities. The worst part of having responsibilities is getting stressed out about them. Sure, when you're young you're worried about finishing your math homework, you're upset because you can't figure out how to do long division, hell, you even scream and then cry when you try to do algebra (no? just me? fine.), but you don't get stressed about it. Not like you stress about things now. Now, the ramifications for not getting things done are way worse, the stakes are higher! You don't pay your rent-you get evicted. You don't pay your taxes-you go to jail. You don't take out the trash-your roommate has to look at old condom wrappers for six weeks.
  5. Being EXCITED! When you're a kid you're always excited about something. For me, from January until June I was having daily excitement seizures about how many days were left until I got to go to CAMP! Seriously, it's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack from anticipation. Come to think of it, I still get really excited about things, it's just that there's fewer and fewer things to get super excited about. ::crickets:: or ::violins:: (whichever you prefer...)
Just so I don't cry over my lost days of youth, I'm going to add this:

Five things that are awesome about being an adult:
  1. Even though it isn't nearly as gratifying as it would have been when I was 10, eating dessert in substitution for a meal (especially breakfast), is totally allowed. And sometimes, it's really cool to be able to do that.
  2. Sex. (I really don't need to elaborate on that, do I?)
  3. Money. Not that I have any, but I can totally do whatever I want with it. For example, if I want to make myself only eat peanut butter and tuna fish for 2 weeks so that I can go on a trip to Colombia in July, I can. No one is saying, "That is unacceptable. You can't do that." Well, actually they are, but I'm ignoring them.
  4. Drinking. Not just the specific act of pouring alcohol down ones throat, but just the freedom to do it. That and "going out on a school night". I went out last night. I got to work on time this morning. I'm not a trainwreck today. I knew I could handle that. Suck on that, parents of the world.
Yeah, I only have four. Because it really is awful to be grown up. All of the things that you grow up being excited about aren't that exciting when you actually start doing them. Relationships are hard. Living in an expensive city and paying your rent is hard. Having a job that you care about is very difficult to get, and even harder to retain (retain-keeping and retain-caring about). And all the things you dreamed about doing as a kid are far less attainable.

And that was the most depressing thing I've written in a really long time. I'm not going to delete it though, because I need it to remind myself why I care. Because I do, really and truly, believe that the things that we dreamed about as kids are possible as long as we remind ourselves just how sure we were of what we wanted to be like "when we grew up" when we were 10, and if we try to be those people that we wanted to be.

Your humpday musings, brought to you by the letter H and viewers like you,
A

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