A Place Where a Kid Can Be A Kid...

Sometimes it’s fun to be a kid.

Do you ever look back on those carefree days when you were a kid? You didn’t have anything more to worry about than your future plans for Saturday night. You didn’t worry about rent/mortgage, bills to pay, time off of work, etc. At the time, all you wanted to do was grow up and be your own person – get out of wherever you were and start doing things on your own. Never did it cross your mind that there would be a time when things like having to be at work each and every day just to pay the bills would stink. Never in a million years did you think about how expensive buying new clothes was. Your parents covered all of those things. You didn’t think about how much it cost to go out and eat pizza for a family of four, you asked for more $$ for the arcade.

Now as an adult, I see things differently. I think about how much it costs to go to Gattitown because it’s not just the buffet that’s expensive but all of the games. And if you give one child $10 for video games (which really doesn’t go that far, believe me!) then you have to give each of them $10. It’s those types of things that add up over time.

Man, did I have it easy as a kid!

So, sometimes, it’s fun to go back to those carefree days of being a kid. That’s what my fiancé and I did this weekend. For an early Christmas present, I took him to Six Flags Holiday in the Park on Saturday. We had a great set of friends donate their unused, extra tickets to us – thanks BH – and we headed off to be kids again. Without our own kids! I know, that might seem mean to some of your parents out there, but let me tell you, we had a blast.

We were able to ride the rides that WE wanted to ride, eat the food that we wanted to eat, do whatever we wanted to do. As a parent, there are a lot of times that you give up what you want to do in favor of doing whatever it is that your kids want to do. And that’s ok – that’s part of being a parent. But I have to admit, with an evil little grin on my face, that it was SO much fun to be a kid again! We ate junk food all day long, and I didn’t even think about how unhealthy it was to have that second funnel cake at the end of the night when I couldn’t find any cotton candy…

Now, I’ll also be honest and say that there were more than a few times that we looked around and thought of how much that we missed the kids. Or how much they would enjoy whatever it was that we were seeing or doing at that moment. But we didn’t miss them that much…

There has been a lot of heavy stuff with work and personal lives going on right now for both my fiancé and myself. So this day was like stealing a little slice of pie out of the fridge when Mom wasn’t looking. We didn’t tell many people where we were going or what we were doing – we just went and did it. And it was just what the doctor ordered! We both felt refreshed and relieved to be away from everything else for a while. It was nice to go out and play and ride roller coasters over and over again until I had to call a break to walk around and lose the queasy feeling…

Then again, it wasn’t totally like being a kid. Mom and Dad weren’t there to pay for my food….