cynicism, realism, resignation, whatever...

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult who is overly nostalgic about childhood.

I have decided I wouldn’t like to accept the “responsibilities” of an eight year-old again. I always thought McDonald's was more of a punishment than a treat. I never spent endless summers playing in the mud – I was too busy reading indoors, complaining about being bored, falling out with friends, or arguing with my brother. I hoarded my pocket money, counted it obsessively and pestered my parents as often as I could for a “raise”. The trees on our road were all dead from Dutch Elm disease, and the closest I got to altruism or a bake sale was a Blue Peter “Bring and Buy” – and only then because I fancied Peter Duncan and wanted to get on TV.

I don’t think there was a time when life was that simple. I knew my colours, times tables, and nursery rhymes, but there were the things that I didn't know that did bother me – I once asked my dad why they couldn’t just print more money to stop people being poor. I was all too aware of all the potential for things to make me worried and upset – my brother being hit by a car, some of my family emigrating, the cat getting run over… I wanted to think the world was fair (but I knew better because once my whole class got held in detention for something that one girl did). I wanted to think that everyone was honest and good (but my mum was a magistrate and I quite often sat at the back of court waiting for her, so saw quite a lot of loss and punishment). OK, I did believe that anything was possible (but I still think it is). I want to be continually aware of the complexities of life AND be overly excited by the little things too.

I don't want my day to consist of easy nostalgia about how life was better back then… and in the time I’m waiting for the somewhere over the rainbow to arrive, I recognize that I’ll have to settle for computer crashes, piles of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, gossip, illness, and the loss of loved ones… Life’s like that – it was when we were eight, whether we knew it or not… But I do still believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, humankind, and making angels in the snow.So I’m keeping my cheque book, my credit card bills and my pay slips, if that’s alright. I am not officially resigning from adulthood.

(Without apology to this.)


technorati tag: adult resignation