Grow up

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.

1. Bubble gum
2. Cartoons/Animated movies
3. Chocolate milk
4. “That’s what she said” jokes
5. Winnie the Pooh
6. Loud belching (thumb to forehead for extra points)
7. Fairytales
8. Dr. Seuss
9. Cap’n Crunch and Apple Jacks
10. The Muppets
11. Bendy straws
12. Footie pajamas
13. Licking the spoon after making cookies
14. Swings
15. Playing in the rain
16. Couch cushion forts
17. Bedtime stories
18. Crayons and coloring books
19. Naps
20. Hunting for four-leaf clovers

What are you unwilling to give up as you grow older?