5 Ordinary Things That You Thought Were Awesome As A Kid And Now Aren’t

When you were a kid it seemed like everything had an added sense of wonder to it, and even the most mundane things were interesting.  So I thought I’d remind all of us jaded adults how wonderfully ordinary the world used to be:

1. Bleachers

The bleachers as a kid were like mountains of imaginary wonder where you could play with your toys and take turns daring your friends how high they could jump off of the side of them.  Even better was what laid underneath the bleachers for there was a cave of wonders filled with nickels, dimes, and Tootsie Pop wrappers that featured the Indian with the star on them.  For you poor souls who don’t know, there was a sweet spot in time where if your Tootsie Pop wrapper featured an Indian shooting a star it allowed you to get a free Tootsie Pop.  Now those Indian with the star wrappers mean nothing because someone decided to end joy, and when you’re sitting on those same bleachers now your back just ends up hurting, and you’re stuck watching something you probably didn’t really even want to see that much to begin with.

2. Karate

Remember how much you wanted to learn karate when you were a kid? When I was growing up the most important things in my life were “The Power Rangers,” “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” and of course “The Three Ninjas.”  Rocky loves Emily, Rocky loves Emily.  Being able to take karate classes as a kid was like an honor, and you’d always have an awesome show and tell once you learned how to break wooden boards.  Now you try to take a karate class as an adult, and people are going to start asking questions.  When you were a kid and someone told you they had a black belt you thought they were untouchable, and now if an actual adult human being brought up to me that he had a black belt in karate, I’d ninja vanish quicker than you can say HI YA!

3. Tires

Tires used to be awesome, because it seemed like you could do so many thing with them.  If you got really lucky, you got the pleasure of playing on a giant inflatable tire tube that you could jump on like a trampoline, but you were still able to pick it up and roll it down a hill taking turns trying to jump through the donut hole in it.  If you had enough regular tires you could make an obstacle course for yourself, and you could practice your arm accuracy trying to throw a football through the hole.  You could also spend hours on a tire swing just jumping on it and swinging back and forth.  Even when you were a little older they seemed romantic, and you thought that one day you’d push your wife in one of those.  Now as an adult you realize the only time you use tires is when you’re trying to change a flat on the side of the road in the pouring rain.  You’re still imagining pushing your wife, but it’s not on a tire swing, it’s into oncoming traffic.

4. Spending the Night at a Friend’s House

Remember how stoked you used to be if you got the chance to actually spend the night at your friend’s house?  You’d stay up all night either playing video games or talking about cute boys.  Most likely not both of those things at the same house, but you get the picture.  When it came time to go to bed, you just curled up on the floor in your sleeping bag and woke up fresh as rain.  Now as an adult, it probably just means you got a little too drunk to get back to your place, or even worse, you don’t have your own place at the moment.  You’ll have trouble sleeping, because you don’t fit on the couch quite right, and you’re always wide awake long before they are so you’ll just be stuck laying on the couch wide awake with your eyes closed.  You may eventually give up pretend sleeping and just decide to wake up for the day so you’ll try to turn on their TV, but there’s so many universal remotes that I’d have a better chance turning on Ellen DeGeneres, than you’d have turning on that TV.

5. Running for Extended Periods of Time

As a kid you never got tired of running around and playing tag with your friends.  You could spend hours just sprinting around a playground and you wouldn’t even think twice about it.  Sure there are people that claim they just love running now, but you show me a person who says they enjoy running now and I’ll show you a liar.  As adults we have to make up events to even consider running like The Color Run or Tough Mudder.  If running was fun we wouldn’t have to disguise it with so many other things.  Here’s an example of someone trying to pitch me the idea of being in these races.

Person Out of Good Ideas: Hey you want to do that Tough Mudder run with me?  I hear you have to run through this really thick mud and there’s even a place in it where people have to run through a passageway of swinging tasers.  Sounds fun right?

Me: Didn’t they do that taser swinging thing on Jackass?  It looked incredibly painful.

Person Out of Good Ideas: Well yeah, but I think it’d be fun.  You only have to pay 150 dollars to enter.

Me: (Spit taking out my drink.) You have to pay 150 dollars to run in mud and get tazed?

Person Out of Good Ideas: Hmm yeah I guess that doesn’t sound as fun as I originally thought. How about The Color Run?  You get to run a long distance while people throw powder at you leaving you with a bunch of colors on you.

Me: So you have to run again, but this time instead of getting tazed, they hurl colored dust and sand in your eyes?  I think I’ll pass.