At some point in your childhood development, someone – perhaps a parent, perhaps an older sibling, most assuredly a high school nemesis – has flung those fateful words at you, “grow up!”
Whether we displayed immature decisions or actions, fashion or opinions, someone deemed our choices inappropriate for our chronological age.
Now that I am 50+, I take offense easier when I’m told what to do. I’m a grown-ass woman, and you’re not the boss of me.
Take comfort in knowing that I wear clothes befitting my generation. I won’t be seen in bedazzled, hand-painted velour track suits any time soon, but neither will I be borrowing any of my 20-something daughter’s clothing.
I enjoy much of today’s millennial music – rap, hip hop, alternative, electronic, punk – but I also sing, loudly, to songs I find vulgar, just to provoke my son into turning the radio station. (It works better than telling him not to listen to that “devil music,” and often ruins the song for him forever. Hence, freeing me from listening to the tune ever again… “Backseat Style” by Kendrick Lamar has been permanently ejected from my car stereo.)
There are some things though, that I refuse to outgrow… and you can’t make me.
- Bubble gum
- Cartoons/Animated movies
- Chocolate milk
- “That’s what she said” jokes
- Winnie the Pooh
- Loud belching (thumb to forehead for extra points)
- Fairytales
- Dr. Seuss
- Cap’n Crunch and Apple Jacks
- The Muppets
- Bendy straws
- Footie pajamas
- Licking the spoon after making cookies
- Swings
- Playing in the rain
- Couch cushion forts
- Bedtime stories
- Crayons and coloring books
- Naps
- Hunting for four-leaf clovers
What are you unwilling to give up as you grow older?
Thin spiral notebook 
Well, let’s see….almost all of yours, plus fart competitions, LOL.
LikeLike
Those would be my dad and his barking spiders.
LikeLike
Hahahahaha!
LikeLike
Or my sons and their purple devil contests.
LikeLike
I said to another Blogger recently that we act our shoe size in our house. Agree to most of your list (ie. I don’t like chocolate milk), but Hubby likes to clean the bowl as well as the spoon after making cake, and I’m not handing over my jelly babies to anyone! And yes, I DID by The Incredibles, Ice Age, Brother Bear, Over the Hedge and Flushed Away for me, and still cry at Up! Childhood is so wasted on the young!
LikeLike
LOVE jelly beans (except the licorice ones – belch). I even have a bag of cinnamon Hot Tamales in my purse right now. I can’t get through the first 10 minutes of UP without doing the ugly cry. I watch it every time it’s on TV, I should get the DVD.
LikeLike
Love Doug!
LikeLike
If our newest adopted dog was male, I would have named him Dug.
LikeLike
I definitely won’t ever let go of my coloring book and crayons (huge “grow up” red flag……. I buy my own and buy my girls’ separate because at 37 years old, I still hate sharing crayons). This is a great post.
LikeLike
I pretty much agree with your entire list. To add a few of my own; video games, dancing around my house when I’m alone (and sometimes when I’m not), fart jokes, and the possibility to go to Narnia. I’m going to find that wardrobe eventually.
LikeLike
Whenever I go in an antique shop, I look for THAT wardrobe too. Narnia would be heaven.
LikeLike
There’s a small closet door in our house that my husband calls “Narnia.” It’s not quite a wardrobe, but it goes far back into the house and one of these days it will open into a winter woods. =)
LikeLike
I refuse to give up: riding my bicycle (I’m 70+), reading way past bedtime, skipping when I feel like it, “flying” on playground swings, having tea parties with my grandchildren
LikeLike
I miss tea parties! Maybe one day I can have them again with any future grandkids.
LikeLike
Dragons, unicorns, rolling off a hill through the grass, dancing in the rain, handstand in the water, too much to mention 😀
LikeLike
Yes! to all of your list too.
LikeLike