I was recently trying to beat the Texas heat by hopping into the pool with a cold popsicle when I caught myself giggling at how much I felt like a kid again. Then, almost immediately, a Katy Perry song popped into my head. You probably know the one. It involved California girls, summer heat, and a popsicle that apparently didn’t stand a chance. I couldn’t help but laugh. Partly because it felt particularly appropriate for a ridiculously hot Texas afternoon, but mostly because there’s something wonderfully silly about being a grown woman floating around a swimming pool with a popsicle while Katy Perry plays in your head.
We’re told to act our age our entire lives. When we’re little, it usually means stop doing whatever ridiculous thing we’re doing. When we’re teenagers, it means grow up. And eventually, without anyone really announcing it, we’re apparently supposed to become sensible adults who behave accordingly. I’m just not entirely sure what “accordingly” means.
Obviously, getting older comes with responsibilities. We have mortgages and bills and jobs and people who depend on us. We make appointments to have things checked that never needed checking before. We spend an astonishing amount of time maintaining houses, cars, bodies, yards, appliances and all the other things adulthood has somehow put us in charge of.
But somewhere in all that responsibility, I think it’s easy to accidentally become a little too serious.
Kids never need a reason to get in a swimming pool. They don’t consider whether they’ve been productive enough that day to deserve it. They don’t wonder if there’s something more useful they should be doing. Someone says there’s a pool, and five minutes later there are wet towels everywhere. Adults could probably learn something from that.
Growing older doesn’t mean we have to slowly surrender everything that once made life fun. We can be responsible and still be ridiculous. We can be wise and still be playful. We can know better and occasionally decide to do it anyway. Maybe acting our age shouldn’t mean becoming a more restrained version of ourselves. Maybe it should mean we’ve finally lived long enough to know which things actually matter and which things never deserved quite so much of our concern in the first place.
I have no desire to be younger. I’ve worked far too hard for everything I’ve learned to start over now. But I also don’t want to reach some arbitrary age where I decide I’m too old to be silly, flirt, play, laugh too loudly, jump in the pool, or have a completely inappropriate Katy Perry lyric pop into my head while doing it. If anything, getting older has made me appreciate those moments more.
So yes, I’ll pay my bills. I’ll make the appointments. I’ll handle the responsibilities. I’ll do all the painfully grown-up things required of me.
And then I’m getting in the pool.
Apparently, that’s how I act my age.
🍭 Charlotte