On 'Growing Up'

Today, the family and I spontaneously decided to drive up to London and visit Oxford Street. (We were later to learn that this was a genius ploy for dad to buy more clothes from John Lewis, but that then gave us the excuse to have lunch there. Side note directed at Oxford Street John Lewis: why have you taken away the crêpe maker? I almost felt personally offended – and disappointed – that I could not chomp on a sugar-lemon/Nutella/dangerously-delicious hybrid that I used to enjoy so much. But, we’ll have to come to that another time.)

After lunch, we slalomed our way to Hamleys because my younger brother – ok more so me – wanted to visit. And here is where I struck the question: when am I supposed to act mature and grow up?

While most late teenagers (take me back to being twelve!) would trudge around the floors, occasionally glancing at a toy of nostalgia, I was full-on hyped the whole way around: posing with life-size stuffed toys (when I was younger, I always thought of the royal family and how I was sure their children would have dozens of these realistic creatures in the various playrooms… If only I could own a five foot, bear-hugging-grizzly) and soaring the plastic animals high into the air (these are so underrated, as they’re one of the only toy animals you can take into the bath with you) and wanting nothing more than my own miniature Steiff zebra. And that was just the first floor. I was especially tempted to repurchase the create-your-own stickers on one of their demonstration stores, but I sensed mum feared my mental capacity.

In fact, I was more excited gliding around Hamleys than the majority of children in there – let’s remember the average age constituted of under ten years old.

Trying to find my maturity

Should I have been acting like this?

For one, my absolute turn-off-don’t-speak-to-me-don’t-even-try-to-apologise-pet-hate is people telling me to ‘grow up’ or ‘stop acting like a child’. But then, I do something like this.

So the question is, are they correct? Am I just pretending to be a youngster again? Is there even anything wrong with that?

For the past week, I’ve felt rather stressed (I literally had a minute breakdown last week) due to university choices and predicted grade exams and the general torrent of life desperately hurling me off the waterfall of life. So, it was nice – almost relaxing – to step into the opposite direction of childhood. Does this therefore mean I’m not being childish? Or does it prove my mind is split into academic maturity and practical juvenile naivety?

Before writing this piece, I had little notion of which way I was going to condemn my actions of today: praise for being open and acknowledging we all must unwind somehow; scorn for my infantile self-indulgence.

But, I have decided that I guess this is just me. (I’m sure many were waiting for me to deploy myself to the corner of a metaphoric room in shame.)

I am naturally reflective of the past and like to indulge in what I loved as a child; when I first went to Disneyland Paris - at the age of fifteen - I almost had palpitations and that was before we went through the gates (take me there anytime, honestly, it is a magical place). I am not like other girls (which isn’t a statement to try to convince you to date me, not in this context anyway…) as in I don’t want to be old enough to slosh alcohol on my face while missing my mouth entirely, lazily bopping to a song that sounded the same as the previous ten before it. Nor do I really want to be self-dependant and streetwise and grasp the secrets of adulthood, at the age of seventeen.

However, I also don’t want to play around in school: in class, I’m attentive and basically a complete teacher’s pet.

I’m an oxymoron.

And so, I think that, yes, if you want to squeal excitedly at a puppy on the pavement, or the fact that you’re having pancakes for lunch (I’m staring at you, John Lewis…) then you go for it. Yet, if you also want to study hard and discuss trivial social topics, you do that too. I think at the teenage age (and afterwards too), we’re allowed to quench our childhood cravings, as well as swan around like the mini adults that we are. Because it’s all in the name I suppose: teenage.