Memers love to wax on and on about what idillic bliss childhood supposedly is.
We're here to put a kibosh into that nonsense with some reality checks.
a pretty good response to one of those "Childhood is idillic bliss" glurges was originally found at http://www.angelfire.com/geek/arvay/resignation.html
I changed the order around so you get to see the meme debunked expertly, piece by piece. with a few minor edits. I added in my own meme-mangling as well, debunking this chain twice over.
🧐Meme: I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Good luck with that... Just prepare yourself for all the perks and power you'll relinquish as well.
☺️Breaker: I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as a child. I am pleased, proud, thankful, and honored to have gotten where I am today, and am excited to see where I might go tomorrow.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hahaha! Yeah!
🧐Meme: I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I never did think of it as a 4star restaurant when I was a kid, and couldn't care less what star any eatery is as long as I like the food there. That has never changed.
☺️Breaker: I am thankful that I afford to eat whatever I like and not worry about paying for BOTH good food AND rent.
🧐Meme: I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So who's stopping you, other than maybe dry weather or something?
☺️Breaker: I am thankful that I can walk past a fresh mud puddle and understand, with the intimacy of an engineer, how the water molecules are held together, how the dirt particles are suspended within, and what life might be teeming inside, thanks to education that I have fought for and won.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I've always liked the squishing feeling of walking through mud puddles, though never appreciated the drawback of it getting my shoes or bare feet dirty. Oh well. That hasn't changed since I was a kid.
🧐Meme: I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You can still think that if you want, nobody's stopping you. But even as a child I understood that in order to get the M&Ms in the first place, or anything from the store for that matter, you needed, wait for it *DRUMROLL CRASH!* MONEY! Oh, and if you want edible money, try those yummy chocolate coins. I'm sure you'll find them somewhere.
☺️Breaker: I am thankful that I can, of my own volition, choose whether to buy a bag of M&Ms or save the dollar for some other small treat.
🧐Meme: I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer's day.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You can still do that if you have an oak tree to lie under, and the makings for lemonade. The friends bit, well, as you get older, that gets a bit trickier, but oh well, go it alone then, and relax on your own. Honestly, that's just as much fun anyway. In fact, even a hot lemonade is tasty and relaxing while sitting at a computer, zapping this meme. I enjoy it, or sitting on my deck as much as I ever did as a child. And I'm not a child any more, so am not emotionally needy and easily bored, therefore, do not require other people around me, paying attention to me to have a good time or relax.
☺️Breaker: I am thankful that, when I wake up of a Saturday after a hard week's work, I can freely choose to lie under a big oak tree and sip lemonade with my friends, or by myself on a hot summer's day. Truly there is no relaxation finer than that that comes after hard work.
🧐Meme: I want to return to a time when life was simple; When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You have got to be kidding me! Just because I only knew first the nursery rhymes and some colors, and later on, learned math, sure doesn't mean I didn't care about what I didn't know. Fear of the unknown was very real to me, and still is today. That hasn't changed except for being confronted with it a lot less often now that I'm an adult.
☺️Breaker: I am pleased with the level of education I have achieved thus far and look forward to pursuing even more advanced degrees, because I am tickled with what I know, mystified with what I don't know, and excited, tingly, and thrilled to pursue the latter!
🧐Meme: All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: What - seriously!? As a child, I was generally happy, but constantly in a state of fretting that I might do something that might displease some adult, and that part of me was always at war with the part that just wanted to hang out, let loose and do whatever, regardless. The let-loose part of me always won out, many times resulting in a blast, but sometimes with disastrous results, mainly me misbehaving in some way and displeasing someone who scolded me, or grounded me, or both. And that was not only a huge blow to my freedom, but to my pride every time it happened. I would not go back to that again for anything.
Not to mention my childhood insecurity issues, which I have outgrown and wouldn't want to revisit ever again -separation anxiety, worrying about who liked me, who was trying to take friends away from me, you better believe it, these were big deal dramas to a little kid who wasn't emotionally equipped to get all reflective and unreasonably nustalgic about every little thing. I was just trying to figure out where I fit into the scheme of things, working out my own character and how to improve on it, what was right, what was wrong, what other people thought were right and wrong, how to manage to swing it all so I'd get by with as few scrapes as possible.
Yes, childhood was definitely full of cares and worries, along with the colors and multiplication tables. I would not go back to being a child emotionally again, not for all the money, candy, mud puddles, and lemonade in the world!
☺️Breaker: All I know is to be happy because I am painfully aware of so many tragic, heartbreaking, ugly things that can happen in this world, but that I am lucky and blessed to have escaped most of them, with both my own strength and with lots of luck.
🧐Meme: I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I've known even as a child that the world is anything but. Is it fair when other kids bully and tease you? Is it fair to have to be in the same classroom with other kids you come to despise eventually because they are jerks? Is it fair when teachers make the whole class stay after school because of a few brats' behavior? Is it fair to always have to do what other people tell you because you are the kid and they are the adults? That last one is practical of course, because kids do need to learn, and they need adults teaching them how to get on in the world. But when you are a kid, those lessons can definitely feel like the most unfair thing in the world sometimes, even if you knew you were in the wrong to misbehave or disobey or just not react appropriately to something in the first place. Getting mistreated by classmates can be just as heart-breaking to a child as getting backstabbed by someone in adulthood.
☺️Breaker: I am aware that the world is not fair. This makes me especially thankful for the good things in my life because I know that they are part chance. It makes me also thankful for the bad things in my life because they remind me that there are no guarantees, and that I should be modest and thankful for my successes. I am thankful that still, the majority of the poeple I've met have been honest and good.
🧐Meme: I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I still believe many things are possible, even if extremely unlikely. I am still in wonderment over many things. In childhood, maybe it was the latest toy that moved and talked. Today it's amazement over how a tiny Ipod can hold thousands of songs, or how I can put a whole music arrangement together using just one keyboard and have it sound like an orchestra or a rock band!
☺️Breaker: I know for a fact that anything is possible. It gives me chicken skin thinking about it! I am amazed and awed at the complexity and generosity and essential goodness of the universe!
🧐Meme: I want to live simple again. I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I'm happy to be living simpler than I did as a child. I don't miss being in the direct line as a target or participant in school gossip. I don't miss all the stupid homework assignments and worrying about marks. I'd rather have the computer crashes and the bills. I'm thankful that, although losing a loved one is very sad, it doesn't sting nearly as much as being mistreated and stabbed in the back. Losing someone to a death when you were on good terms with them hurts far less in the long run. I choose not to watch the news. I disbelieve much of it anyway, and don't see the point in subjecting myself to stories about things I'm futile to do a thing about. I'm overjoyed to have come into my own so that my decisions are respected as such, I don't have to listen to anyone else's orders unless it is part of the job, and I can choose who's advice or suggestions to follow, based on how much I agree with, respect, admire, even love them.
☺️Breaker: I am pleased that my life is so simple--when I want to get a pet, not needing permission from anyone; when I want to advance my education, I go for a master's degree, even if I can't afford to quit my job and thus lose sleep working fulltime while going to school; when I want to have nothing but apples and baked potatoes for dinner, I have nothing but apples and baked potatoes for dinner; when I want my husband to quit physically abusing me, I throw him out, file some papers, wipe my hands, and am done with it; when I want my mother to approve of me, and she doesn't, I very politely cut her off and hang up the phone; when I want to be in a good relationship, I find a good relationship, and the balance of power is stable, since I am financially and emotionally independent; I can build my own bookshelves, replace my own garbage disposal, change my own car oil, and make my own mortgage payments, and I am happy and honored to do so! I am thankful that I have the honor of access to things that no king had access to a hundred years ago. Computers are cool tools, often misused, but also unbelievably productive and powerful; mountains of paperwork go with the territory, but where would we be without 'em? Without proper documentation, how would we ensure that our corporations aren't overspending and devaluing their stock? I am thankful that we have the bureauracracy, however annoying it is, to control how our corporate monsters behave on a microscale. I am thankful even to hear of depressing news--people dying in Darfur deserve to be mourned, even if it is only by me wiping away my tears as I sit in traffic; a hundred years ago, no one would even give them that in their death. I am thankful that I have the gifts of budgeting skills, access to health care, friends that care enough to spend time in idle chitchat with me, illness to remind me to appreciate health, and losses to remind me to appreciate the gains.
🧐Meme: I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I still do believe in and appreciate all of those things. That doesn't stop at the end of childhood unless you choose to let it stop.
☺️Breaker: I still, and ever will, believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.
🧐Meme: So . . . here's my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Really!? Then where is it? I could use some extra money! Oh, darn, it's only cyber stuff...
☺️Breaker: So . . . I'll cling fast to my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements.
🧐Meme: I am officially resigning from adulthood.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Whatever. You're still an adult, whether you like it or not.
☺️Breaker: I've come a long way, baby, and I ain't going back!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Ditto!
🧐Meme: And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first, cause.......
I'm gone.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Buh-bye! Don't wait for me to follow you!
☺️Breaker: /egotistical rant. You could not pay me enough to be a kid again. :D
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That is for sure! As an adult, I laugh more, cry less, appreciate more, worry less, have more faith, doubt less, have more fun and less disasters, more freedom,, and the summer sunrises and sunsets are every bit as wonderous now as they were when I was a kid. Christmases are every bit as exciting, and I love to treat myself to dressing up and my own bag of leftover candy at Halloween once the people at work have taken their share. I love my pets just as much. I laugh with my parents more, and get along much better with my siblings now that we are all adults and recognize one another as such.
Over and out.
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