The Good Ol' Days

At one time or another, we were all children. Take a minute and really try to remember what it was like to be a kid. I’m not talking about high school, or even the Middle School. This is strictly pre-teen, so Kindergarden through 6th grade. I would say that most adults would think their childhood was pretty easy. There were no bills, you didn’t have a job, school was much simpler, and probably the biggest worry was whether or not you could afford that new Pokémon card pack. As we age, everything gets harder. Assignments switch from writing half pages about our weekends to 2500 word essays discussing the history of the Ottoman empire. Math changes from counting on a number line to equations with letters, negative and imaginary numbers. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any harder, we are dumped into “the real world” full of taxes, mortgages, angry bosses, long hours and no free time. Of course we know that this is a part of growing up, and after a time we learn to how to survive. So when adults look back at their childhood with hardships of adulthood in mind, they find themselves wishing for the past, when things were easy. But was it really?

The major problem I remember about being a kid is not being in charge of anything. School decided my schedule five days a week, nine months a year. Weekends were dominated by my parent’s schedule, and anything I wanted to do needed to be discussed, approved and planned. Parents can set just about any rule they see fit, no matter how much I disagreed. If I put up a fuss, then I would get punished and the bigger person would get their way. Nobody wanted to listen to me, everybody knew better than I did, and no matter what the topic, I was always wrong because I “didn’t understand.”

When I was a kid, I spent the entire time wishing I was older. So many times I remember being angry that I was little. I told myself that when I grew up, I’d be understanding and fair, I would listen to what kids had to say and make sure to explain things to them so they could understand too; I wanted to be the best adult ever. But in the meantime, I remained jealous of adults and their freedoms. Adults could drive, they could go see movies by themselves, they decided what they wanted to eat, when they wanted to go to bed, what they did in a day, what their job was, who they talked to and how they lived their life. I dreamed of the day that I could make all those decisions for myself and I thought that all adults appreciated their ability to do so.

Adults might envy children for their youth and energy, but as we age we value our freedoms and rights to have control over our lives. Being governed by a parent is hard, and life hardly seems fair when being told what to do all the time. Just because you're older doesn't mean you can't have fun or enjoy life the way you did as a kid. In fact, you can have more say in how you spend your time than ever before. Being a kid is hard, but being an adult doesn't have to be such a terrible thing either.