I loved playing dress-up when I was a second-grader at the Dobson country school. My best friend, Karen, and I spent many Saturday afternoons in her farmhouse attic donning her mother’s cast-off clothes and high-heeled shoes. We pretended to be young women out on the town, smoking candy cigarettes and drinking Kool-Aid cocktails with imaginary boyfriends. I could hardly wait to grow up.
Today it seems to me people don’t want to be mature. I see statements on Facebook, “You may grow old, but you don’t have to grow up,” and “I’m tired of adulting.”
Was it really so much fun to be a youngster a teenager or a young adult? When I was a child, my white English bulldog, Tuffy, soaked up a lot of tears when my parents wouldn’t let me do what I wanted such as spend a week during the summer with my friend, Sandy. As a teenager, the hinges on my bedroom door took a beating every tine I slammed it in frustration when my strict folks said “no” to such things as dating or driving the car alone at night. My whine was, “EVERYONE ELSE CAN!”
Turning eighteen and getting a job quickly taught me that as an adult I still couldn’t do as I pleased. Everything was expensive when I had to dig in my own purse to pay for it. I also had to deal with society’s rules for ladies during the 1950s. Even when I “flipped the bird” at being a lady, there were just so many things a female wasn’t allowed to do.
I married and had kids–a whole new set of responsibilities, but also many rewards. As a grandmother, I enjoy our adult children and grandchildren. Looking at my memories from the vantage point of an older woman, I wouldn’t relive or change any of my life.
If you could, would you go back to being a child, a teenager or a young adult?