A friend peered into my room the other day and saw the old, semi-tattered, black stuffed dog sitting on my bed near my pillow.
“And who is this?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, that’s Blackie dog.”
“Creative name.”
“Well, I got him when I was two.”
“…and you still sleep with it?”
Yes, that’s right. I’m almost 30 years of age and I still sleep with a stuffed dog that I received/named in 1989. As I looked around my house, I realized that Blackie dog was only one of the many indications that I am an eternal nine-year-old. Here’s some signs you might be too.
- You still keep figurines and action figures on display. Donatello keeps watch over the neighborhood on your windowsill.
- You wish that after a really hard day at work, someone would give you a gold star. Something about those stickers really made a difference in morale.
- You have a playlist full of songs from your favorite Disney movie. “A Whole New World” still hits you right in the feels and you secretly wish you were Jasmine.
- You get super hyped when you hear the Bill Nye the Science Guy intro song. BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! Will the world ever see such a cool science teacher ever again?
- You still really dig coloring books. It’s relaxing to color some Lisa Frank kitties at the end of the day!
- You have every Goosebumps/Nancy Drew book ever written. Night of the Living Dummy STILL scares the crap out of you.
- You wait until you’re down to your very last pair of underwear before you do the laundry. When you pull out that last pair, you swear you can hear your mom or dad yelling at you in the back of your head.
- You still skin your knee, like, once a month. Being a klutz is a full-time job.
- You’re the first one to volunteer to set off the fireworks on the 4th of July. Sparklers! Smoke bombs! Black snakes! Let’s blow some stuff up!
- The Goonies is still one of your favorite movies. When Andy accidentally kisses Mikey in the caves, you still get some very real secondhand embarrassment.
- You can’t wait for Halloween so you can go H.A.M. with your costume. You really still want to go trick or treating, but you’ll settle for dressing really scarily and terrifying the neighborhood kids instead.
- You still step over cracks in the sidewalk. Don’t want to break your mother’s back and all.
- Seeing a fresh box of markers/colored pencils/chalk makes you really excited. There’s nothing like a brand new box of school supplies to make you feel enthusiastic about things to come.
- You wish “Santa” would bring you toys again. Or rent money. Or food. Or socks.
- When you get the flu, you really still want someone to wait on you hand and foot. Nobody could fluff a pillow like your parents.
