Stereotypical Kid / Teen things you do as an adult?

In My Humble Opinion
1

What stereotypical kid / teen things do you do as an adult? Either you started them as a kid and kept doing them long after most people would have “grown up”? For context I’m a GenX man.

There’s a couple of inspirations for this question

  1. Sarah Boone’s explanation that they were playing “Hide and Seek” (and I LOLed when the prosecutor threw shade on her “rather creative interpretation on the rules”

  2. A 30 something women I know online that’s gone to “Build a Bear” several times, and commented that it “gets weird” when they ask her to kiss the heart and put it in the stuffed bear.

  3. My cousin from Florida was visiting over Christmas with her husband and two tween daughters. Of course they just absolutely had to see the Mall of America, and the two kids just absolutely had to go into the Claire’s. (I’m sure they have those in Florida with the exact same tween girl merchandise, but whatever) I waited outside and noticed a girl getting an ear piercing. I had a random thought like “what would happen if I walked in and said I wanted my ears pierced?” Although come to think of it, it probably would phase them much, it’s probably happened before even if not every day, they’d just stay friendly and on script and show me their piercing earring selection.

  4. A thing I regularly I do is I still go to the amusement park / water park, and I go alone because my sister doesn’t like chlorinated water, doesn’t like roller coasters. There’s sometimes a few older people at the dry side of the park, often I’m obviously the oldest person sunning themselves at the waterpark that’s not an obvious Dad. Staff all treat me as politely as any other person if I’m buying food or going on one of the slides and another guest has never commented.

Any thoughts or stories?

2

I read YA and middle grade books. It’s not fair I should miss out on good stuff just because it was written after I got old.

3

I actually do to- I like the Ramona Quimby series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ivy and Bean

4

I still collect things, like for instance rocks and fossils; I got some pretty cool rocks.

And I laugh at a good fart and play “who dealt it?”, always a crowd pleaser!

5

My sister (age 56) and I (age 59) share with each other fart-themed Instagram posts on a daily basis.

6

One does not simply walk…
over a hopscotch grid chalked onto the sidewalk.

As C. S. Lewis said, “Any book that’s not worth reading as an adult isn’t worth reading as a child, either”. And also, “When I became a man, I put aside childish things… including the desire to be very adult and to avoid looking childish.”

7

If loving farts is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

8

I apologize for nothing.

I still watch cartoons.
I continue to collect toys.
When I moved from my first apartment, I kept almost no furniture. I did keep the wooden display case my Dad gave me. I will be using it in this apartment to display variouis monster models, toys and related products.
On a recent trip to the grocery store, I saw that a variety of the brand of chicken nuggets (Tyson) I buy was discounted. They turned out to be dinosaur-shaped. It was the same weight, the same ingredients, and cheaper. As a bonus, I get to eat dinosaurs.
Shortly after I moved into the neighborhood, there was a Bat Night event at a local cemetery/park. I was studying some specimens on a table, when somebody with a megaphone spoke up. They said “Storytime will start in five minutes.”
I reacted naturally.
I lifted my arms in the air, smiled and said “Yay! Storytime!”
Then, I remembered that I was both in public and surrounded by people from a neighborhood I had just moved to.
It seemed a few people had noticed. None of them seemed to think anything of it.

I’ve learned after living here a few months, this neighborhood is not only very left wing bleeding heart liberal, it is filled with Bohemian free spirits.

While I was in Florida, my relatives suggested I get a haircut and have my beard taken care of by a barber. One of the reasons was ‘You want to make a good impression on people in your neighborhood.’
I responded ‘Then, I should dye my hair some bright color not achievable in nature and get a facial piercing.’

9

The full quote:

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

At any rate I still enjoy watching cartoons, and pay little attention to if a story is supposed to be “YA” or not.

10

Guess I’m the first to mention video/computer games but I know I’m not alone!

11

My current motto: “You’re only as old as you behave.” I’m trying real hard to never act more than half my age, with 1/3rd being my general goal, and 1/4th the stretch goal. At actual chrono age 66 that’s 33, 22, and 16 respectively.

It’s made easier by having mostly skipped out on being a classical teen or 20-something when that was my true age. So I don’t have any cringy memories and I’m doing it all ab initio now. But with a much larger credit limit. :wink: And no pesky school, work, nor pregnancy concerns. Yee haaawwww!!1!!11!1!!!1!

12

Don’t quote me on this, but years ago I think it was Stephen King who said adults read YA books because they want stories with a decent narrative.

Let’s see, things I do that are still kid/teen thigns.

  1. I still play Dungeons & Dragons and other table top role playing games.
  2. I still paint little toy soldiers, vehicles, and creatures.
  3. I still laugh at fart jokes.
  4. I still love pizza.

I gave up comic books more than twenty years ago. Not because I outgrew them, but because I got sick and tired of how they marketed them. The final straw came when I was reading Nightwing and the story line was interrupt by some crossover event I would have had to purchase a bunch of other comics I don’t normally purchase the follow along. I just flat out quit.

13

Me too!

I never got into that due to my low manual dexterity.

I snipped. But, I agee completely.

For a while, there were no comic book stores. You bought them at a newstand, a drugstore etc.

Then, there were stores devoted just to comic books and such. New comics and special events were advertised in the comics and in the stores. Some customers would ‘subscribe’ to certain titles. Mostly though, stores ordered based on perceived demand.

Then, in the early nineties or so, Advance Comics and Previews came up with a system where you could order comics and such months before they came out. Advance Comics only lasted a few years. Previews became the method through which any store would order anything that was national. If you could not get listed in Previews, you were basically screwed. At the same time, various companies (including some comic producers) started treating comics as a commodity to be invested in.Often, ads urged us not by a product not because it might be of high quality, fun to read etc but because it would be valuable one day. At this time, slightly different editions of trading cards or comic books were produced for the same reason. I mark this period as the beginning of the death spiral.

Things just got worse. A few companies tried shifting from paper editions to digital versions you could not downlioad, but only access by paying a monthly fee. At some point, the market for buying and selling comics that were actually rare and valuable changed. In order to get buyers interested and fetch a decent price, comics must first be ‘graded’ by a few approved companies. The process may require shipping the comic to them. I haven’t recently checked on what it costs to get a comic graded. It used to be at least $50. It was cheaper to buy a ‘trade paperback’ (a one volume collection of a mini series, or a single story arc from a longer series) than to buy all the individual issues. Companies realized this and began including things in trade paperbacks that were not in the original issues. While sometimes the ‘bonus material’ was not necessary to the story, sometimes it was.

Marvel also started advertising certain comic books as ‘optional extras’. While there are plenty of examples, the four issue Sentry mini series (no spoilers) stands out. There were four tie-in issues of Sensational Stories. They were fun, retro and indeed optional. I was getting worried halfway through issue four of The Sentry mini series. I just did not see how they could finish the story in the remaining pages. They could not. They had never intended to. Issue four ends with a caption that the climactic battle will occur in a special, one issue micro series.

Important deaths started being undone. Yes, nobody (especially Batman) thinks the Joker is actually dead just because he was repeatedly shot, hit by lightning, and fell of a cliff. But, certain deaths actually mattered. Cap’s friend and sidekick Bucky sacrificed himself to save lives while fighting the Nazi mad scientist, Baron Zemo. The second Robin, Jason Todd, had his life put to a vote. The fans chose death. So, the Joker beat him severely with a crowbar and then finished him off with an explosion. Whether you liked the characters or not, whether you agreed with the decision to kill them or not, they sent powerful messages.

Bucky was brought back as The Winter Soldier. I really hate that. Jason Todd somehow returned from the dead. I do not know details because I have never read the story and really don’t want to.

I could go on, but it is late. I am tired. I have probably gone on too long already.

I turned fifty last month. At this rate, I still expect to outlive the comic book industry. Some companies will continue to exist as owners of intelectual property. Movies, tv shows, toys, and other licensed products will be made. Paper editions will be phased out. Digital editions will follow. New characters or ideas will show up very rarely if at all.

14

Me, three! :wink:

15

I play musical instruments in rock bands, though that’s fairly normal in my demographic. I’m 59 and far from the oldest person doing it that I know of. I get paid, but it’s usually not a large part of my income.

Some of us never stopped playing music. Some did “normal” things and came back to it. Some came to it later in life. As I was recently saying to a 68 year old friend who took up playing live music in her 50s: by this point, the people who were doing it for ego or who expected to become rock stars all gave up decades ago, the older people who are doing it now are doing it because we truly love music. If you’re good at it, why stop?

Anyone who thinks it’s “undignified” for elders to play rock music is going to be far away doing whatever it is they think grownups are supposed to be doing. Most of us aren’t trying to act like teenagers, anyway.

16

I still love stuffed animals and will pick up and cuddle one when I encounter them at stores.

I enjoy eating ice cream in a cone. Not sure if that’s actually childish but there was a debate on the radio about it.

I buy bandages with characters on them.

17

I don’t eat vegetables.

18

Read comics/manga, watch cartoons/anime.

19

For anyone that has doubts about reading children’s books, Katherine Rundell’s essay Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise is instructive.

I’ve been writing children’s fiction for more than ten years now, and still I would hesitate to define it. But I do know, with more certainty than I usually feel about anything, what it is not: it’s not exclusively for children. When I write, I write for two people: myself, age twelve, and myself, now, and the book has to satisfy two distinct but connected appetites. My twelve-year-old self wanted autonomy, peril, justice, food, and above all a kind of density of atmosphere into which I could step and be engulfed. My adult self wants all those things, and also: acknowledgements of fear, love, failure; of the rat that lives within the human heart. So what I try for when I write – failing often, but trying – is to put down in as few words as I can the things that I most urgently and desperately want children to know and adults to remember. Those who write for children are trying to arm them for the life ahead with everything we can find that is true. And perhaps, also, secretly, to arm adults against those necessary compromises and necessary heartbreaks that life involves: to remind them that there are and always will be great, sustaining truths to which we can return.

20

If I stumble across “Teletubbies,” leave me the hell alone for the next couple hours.