Kirstiecat | Blog

Growing up is hard work. Because you always want something more-mostly having to do with independence. You want to be able to be older, stay up later, buy your own things. You want to be able to eat macaroni and cheese and lucky charms for weeks on end without anyone saying no. You want to be pretty and admired and smart too but at the same time you feel like you’ll never be smarter than the adults.

It’s also hard because you have to learn all the basic facts of survival and academics for the first time-like how when you subtract ten from nine, you come up with a negative number. Even Sesame Street doesn’t tell you these things. And it’s scary because you feel like there’s monsters in your closet or hiding under your bed all of the time but everyone thinks you’re just making it up to stay up later.

Still, there’s a magical time in childhood before you get into adolescence when you don’t have to worry about your worth as a human being constantly. You don’t have to worry about war or genocide, either. You have no idea what AIDS is or how the World Bank really affects developing nations. Your sadness is based on smaller day to day things that only affect you personally, like your great grandmother passing away or a cat being sick.

I have to say (and I don’t say many nice things about myself) that I was an adorable little girl. I wanted to be Annie. I made up dance routines and sing alongs to Beatles songs. I played “waitress” and served my parents hot dogs in our “restaurant.” I hated Barbies and I only liked Cabbage Patch Dolls. I made bookmarks instead of lemonade and sold them for a penny or (if they were really good) a dime. I loved the Muppets and Fraggle Rock. Ghostbusters scared the crap out of me.

I came across the two above pics of myself as a child when I was cleaning my apt. sunday. They made me feel happy and sad at the same time, like a Tim Buckley album.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 5:19 pm and is filed under rambles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.