in defense of growing up
you can be a kid whenever you want
Welcome to Congrats, You Played Yourself, a newsletter about growing up and celebrating all the mistakes made along the way. I share stupid stories and encourage you to not take life too seriously. Life is dumb, and that’s the best part about it.
There’s something uniquely wonderful about all the corny, stupid things that make you feel young again, like this perfect concoction of dumb and fun and exhilarating that makes you feel alive in a special kind of way that nothing else does. Sure, you could bungee jump off a cliff, but is anything as scary as that first time you dive headfirst into a pool? or anything as delightfully magical as a Dairy Queen Blizzard that you can flip upside down before enjoying? or anything as stupidly competitive as a round of mini golf? or as deeply satisfying as nailing the Hoedown Throwdown dance in the middle of your school hallway? or as terrifyingly free as that first solo ride with your friends after you get your driver’s license?
Remember how enchanting sprinklers used to be? It’s a mini water fountain! right! in! your! yard!!! Mouth open, eyes closed, screaming in excitement with a touch of fear attempting to dash across to the other side and beat the sprinkler’s journey around, then being able to fully open your eyes without the water cutting into your eyeballs and temporarily blinding you.
This past weekend was a bit like that sprinkler dash: a low-risk, high-reward moment of time that gave me the headspace to enjoy things without a means-to-an-end except the pure fun of it all. Besides a bit of binge-drinking, I spent the holiday weekend doing dumb, fun-as-hell kid stuff. Go-Kart racing, mini-golf, handstand contests in the pool. Ping pong battles, eating entire boxes of Goldfish, jumping onto blow-up whales. Watching re-runs of Friends and eating Blizzards like I have the metabolism of a 12-year-old again — which, to be fair, is not much different than how I generally eat.
My manager returned from vacation the other day, wherein him and his family took a trip to Disneyland. I’ve always been a Universal Studios girl myself, if you will, for both obvious reasons (The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is there) and non-obvious reasons (the lines are always shorter because Universal is the less-loved stepsister of Disneyland). I also have the patience of a fruit fly, so not one built to wait in line for an hour for a ride that’s only a few minutes long.
But he nailed the simplicity of what makes Disneyland so appealing to so many people. “It just makes you feel like a kid again,” he told me, referencing the silly but ultimately comforting and universally accepted traditions of wearing Mickey Mouse ears, meeting the Disney characters, and eating like you don’t have IBS (I added this last one for myself, shoutout to anyone else whose grown up to have some sort of dietary or digestion issue). No one is going to look twice at a grown-ass adult who’s in full-on Cinderella costuming because you’re at literally the only place in the world where that’s socially acceptable.
But even in typing out that paragraph, I realize how stupid it is that we reserve things like that, things bring us such easy and carefree joy, for such specific locations and events. Why couldn’t you wear Mickey Mouse ears to the grocery store? Why couldn’t I keep my Zac Efron “High School Musical” posters up forever? What’s the benefit of growing up if not being able to do what you want to do, whenever you want to, with no one to tell you otherwise? Of doing things simply because they make you happy?
Within reason, of course.
In his book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, Chuck Klosterman says,
“When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago — and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail — it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name.”
So no, there’s no such thing as the real glory days — at least not what we have come to know them defined as. But we can reach our own version of them when we let the kid in us do its thing, letting nothing matter except the exact moment you’re currently enjoying, life’s responsibilities temporarily on pause or at least briefly forgotten. A suspended reality that begs you not to leave, pulling tight at your heartstrings of nostalgia and — if you’re doing it right — maybe also your heartburn. Life is dumb and short and doesn’t make much sense, and the best part of it all? It doesn’t matter.
Wear the ears. Get your hair wet. Eat 42 mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in one night. Throw your pride away and attempt one more pool handstand fearlessly, even if not flawlessly. Play ping pong like a tennis pro would and lose spectacularly. Run through the sprinklers with your eyes open like some sort of psychopath who is willing to have their eyes burn for a few seconds, just so you can actually witness yourself reaching the other side.
Get reacquainted with that person you used to hang out with all the time ten, twelve, 15 years ago. There’s nothing like a late-night drive, summer air warm enough to have the windows down, singing out loud in the car to an Usher song that doesn’t matter with a feeling and people that do.
What makes you feel like a kid? Think about it over the weekend. We’ll do another comment thread next week and I want y’all to sound off.