Must be 18 to ride this ride

Do you know why adults can’t go back to childhood? I’ll tell you why – it’s because they would take all their adult knowledge with them, and they wouldn’t fit into the child stage of life. When you are at a certain stage in life, everything fits – in elementary, you’re learning, expending energy at recess, eating properly at lunch so you can grow. In college, you have classes, but you have a lot of free time to learn to discipline yourself, with which you’ll ultimately be drunk most of the time and learn your lessons the hard way. As an elder, you have wisdom from all your previous years, but most likely you will tell younger people in a roundabout way what they should be doing because you’re also wise enough to know that no matter what you tell them, they have to experience certain things for themselves to be able to understand them.

Although all this is true, and adults can’t go back to being children, they can always take the spirit of a child with them. They can learn, and grow, and even grow-up, but they can be childlike at anytime they choose. Most often it pops out in the rarest of moments, and usually one person unleashing their inner child will allow others to do the same. You can see it in the way adults interact and joke with each other, and even in the petty ways they hold grudges and compete with each other.

Me, I’ll never fully grow up, and I like it that way. I’ve been an adult for most of my life, so when I get the chance to be a kid, I seize it, no questions asked. I’ve had to grow up in ways that other children haven’t had to, and I’m not bitter about that at all, but don’t judge me when you see my younger version. When you look at me, you see a young adult, driven and purposeful, trying to make something out of herself, take care of her family, please her friends. However, if you look a little closer, the glimmer in my eye reveals the sunshine on the playground, the night light by which I read many chapter books, the smile of the first boy I ever had a crush on. The young me keeps the older me from losing sight of the joys sometimes. She keeps me innocent and fun-loving. It is that glimmer that fights off the shadows of the adult world.