Growing up really does suck

[Overwritten Tapes]

Growing up was cool, being maladjusted was the shit part.

 

[RMQualtrough]

I'm 31, I never really wanted to have a job. School was shit as an experience, not because of social things but the fact work and homework was a thing... I'd enjoy an eternal childhood summer like Ed Edd & Eddy.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

What I miss about being a kid is how it seemed the world was a magical place where anything was possible.

Now it seems it is a bland world where physics are extremely limiting, and "supernatural" may be fiction.

 

[demonbarberdorsia]

I think what I miss most about childhood is the mind state you're in, experiencing everything fresh and having those raw emotions that you eventually become blunted to as life wears you down and you become jaded. I want to be genuinely excited for something again. When I smile, I want to really feel it, just like I did back then. Even the sad times I miss because they felt real. You become numb. That's what I hate about being an adult.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Just wait until you find yourself wishing you were 30 again...

 

[The Ugly One]

Having a family is awesome. Raising little lunatics to be adults is great. 10/10.

What sucks about growing old is the former privileges of adulthood have been pathologized by foreverchildren who, like the OP, wanted childhood to last forever. People who resent families, resent marriage, and resent having to put away the GI Joes. I do, in fact, deeply resent the fact that there is nowhere any more for adults to be adults.

Programmers should dress like this.


You should be able to take your wife somewhere like this.


This should be how you dress when you hang out with your best bud

 

[Ken Barlow]

How utterly pathetic.

Pay your bills, go to work and have fun. Not hard.

Every woman's dream. We won't have sex with you.

 

[skykiii]

What I miss about being a kid is how it seemed the world was a magical place where anything was possible.

Now it seems it is a bland world where physics are extremely limiting, and "supernatural" may be fiction.

Yeah, totally agree with this.

@thread in general

I love how half the responses are people saying "Hmm, a third of the post is complaining that everything is about sex. This totally means OP should get laid. I'm totally not proving his point at all."

 

[Vulpes Mulpes]

I feel you brother.

Here's a YouTube-channel I imagine you might fancy; hopefully as much as I do:

https://www.youtube.com/@thinking-ape6483

Stay sane, fren.

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

Being young is retarded. I don't ever want to turn back and become young again unless I get to remain old in my head and my body younger.

Why the fuck do you want to figure out what you are and what you do ALL OVER AGAIN for 20 fucking years.

I AM GOOD. I LIKE MESELF.

 

[skykiii]

Being young is retarded. I don't ever want to turn back and become young again unless I get to remain old in my head and my body younger.

Gonna be honest I actually agree with this, but with some caveats. There's some aspects of my modern brain that would absolutely have to be shut off if I were in a kid's body.

One of them is obvious: the libido. Because the last thing I want is to be a nine-year-old who is eerily interested in seeing other nine-year-olds naked. Also as per the OP, this would kinda defeat the whole point of being a kid again.

Nowadays I also think that it would not be enough to be a real-life Detective Conan--I would also want to re-live the actual years of my youth. While I have no kids of my own, I've seen other people's kids and I know how it goes: the most they have to look forward to is binge-watching TikToks and the cartoons they'll be "nostalgic" for later in life are garbage propoganda that makes Captain Planet look subtle.... not to mention (and sorry to harp on this point), modern media likes to teach kids that life is all about sex, so they don't even get to have a period of innocence.

What would even be the point of being a kid again if I don't get to revisit the places I loved as a child, and if all the joy is immediately gonna be sapped out of it by Clown World?

Fantasizing about this, one fear I do have is that this re-living of childhood would end up being a big exercise in gaming the system. "Oh, I know this game turns out to be super valuable later, so I better ask my mom for it!" and stuff like that. I almost wonder if it wouldn't be better to have blind spots in memory because of this.

 

[urr13 account]

I would not want to be a literal child forever. When you are a kid you exist at the whims of others and have very little agency, as an adult you have some level of control over your life.

When I was a kid my friends and I would play hide and go seek/tag at night in the neighborhood and hide in different peoples yards and shit, the last time we played we were drinking and probably too old for it. I can only imagine how much of a retard I would sound like asking old friends if they wanted to go play hide and seek and how not-understanding people would be catching a fully-grown man hiding in their backyard.

skykiii, you dismissed the people talking about getting married and having kids, but you miss that one of the myriad of reasons people have kids is to on some level relive parts of their childhood, teaching their kid how to play baseball, getting to go trick or treating again, its part of being a parent its part of the circle of life in a lion king sort of way.

I look forward to playing hide and go seek throughout the house with my theoretical future children, assuming they don't hide in the dryer and die of course.

By the time you're an adult, nothing you liked will be around anymore.

The world I enjoyed and want to live in is gone forever and I'm not a particular fan of how things are these days. It sucks knowing the best is behind you and you probably aren't going to enjoy things as much going forward.

It's no wonder people fall so hard into nostalgia in a desperate attempt to emulate "the good years".

This is an interesting point, the culture shifts so rapidly that the world you were raised in may as well be a completely different country with different values and social norms. It does paint the muhstalgia-obsessed manchildren in a slightly different light, grew up in the 90s they are only prepared to be an adult in the 90s.

For most of human existence every generation was basically the same and things changed very gradually, your life wouldn't be much different from your mothers or grandmothers. Now every decade is like moving to a new foreign country.

sex

The sex/puberty part of this feels unrelated, outside of extreme cases of degenerates I read about on the internet I do not think sex/puberty ruins people. I also feel like I had sexual thoughts before I even hit puberty, maybe not explicit, but I had crushes in school/found myself drawn to certain characters in tv and film. I think all of that is just part of being human. You recognize beauty, you have curiosity about members of the opposite sex, etc.

If your real desire is to be asexual or live in a world where sex isn't a thing that's a far grander wish than just being a kid again and could be achieved by screwing up the test to deca ratio on a steroid cycle, will shut your libido down both physically and mentally.

 

[Sweetie Kitty]

Being responsible, independent, and self assured are all pretty great about growing up and having matured. Comparing your past to your present won’t help you feel better- you need to stop deliberating on what was and focus on what you can do now to make your life as fulfilling as you can. There are pros and cons to every stage in life. It is up to you to make the most of the pros.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

There should be some kind of research into nostalgia obsessives and what leads to their stupid, gay condition.

I think part of it might be a result of a poor and media-oversaturated upbringing.
A lot of what I liked doing as a kid was running around in the yard messing around with bugs and animals or building stuff with legos/knex/whatever. I still like doing those things, it's just that now I build things using actual tools and materials.
Even in the 90s shows were stupid and boring compared to other options. Videogames were better but they were still just ok.

But I can understand how someone who didn't get much parental engagement and spent most of their time inside would fail to integrate the stages in their life.

I'll admit not physically aging would be cool though, the constantly ticking clock creates a rather unpleasant sense of pressure.
Other people had to get old for us to be here though, it's only fair that we play by the same rules. Just try to be healthy to reduce the impact as much as possible.

I love how half the responses are people saying "Hmm, a third of the post is complaining that everything is about sex. This totally means OP should get laid. I'm totally not proving his point at all."

...but not even a single response said that, a few said that the fact you're rejecting the stages of life by refusing to have a wife or kids is contributing to your sense that there's nothing of value in being an adult.
Other people have already explained the children part, and you do more with a partner than just bone (for example: show them weird bugs).

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

In terms of nostalgia, I do reminisce about the ease of making friendship, the trial and error that comes with the relationship and the bond that very same trial creates. Once you grow old and have done it all, you become less inclined to take risk and choose relationship.

 

[Maurice Maine]

I absolutely do not miss being a kid. Especially growing up in fucking Brazil.

 

[The Hardest R]

My thirties have kicked ass compared to my twenties, which kicked ass compared to my childhood where my parents were broke as shit and did things that sound pathetic to whine about now but still had a yuge and bigly impact nevertheless. A family is pretty nice if you have the right waifu.

 

[PaleTay]

I grew up as a smart kid in the ghetto and hated it, until middle school where I could spend less time at home.

One thing that gets me as an adult is everyone is ugly, fake, and dumb now.

 

[Cardinal Cardinal]

Gonna be honest I actually agree with this, but with some caveats. There's some aspects of my modern brain that would absolutely have to be shut off if I were in a kid's body.

One of them is obvious: the libido. Because the last thing I want is to be a nine-year-old who is eerily interested in seeing other nine-year-olds naked. Also as per the OP, this would kinda defeat the whole point of being a kid again.

Nowadays I also think that it would not be enough to be a real-life Detective Conan--I would also want to re-live the actual years of my youth. While I have no kids of my own, I've seen other people's kids and I know how it goes: the most they have to look forward to is binge-watching TikToks and the cartoons they'll be "nostalgic" for later in life are garbage propoganda that makes Captain Planet look subtle.... not to mention (and sorry to harp on this point), modern media likes to teach kids that life is all about sex, so they don't even get to have a period of innocence.

You do seem to be hung up on sex a lot. Other than that get a hobby. I recommend Blackjack.

 

[The Ugly One]

If childhood sounds good, you have a gay, retarded adulthood and need to prioritize not being a gay retard.

Also dress like Humphrey Bogart.