Being Big

I went to see Big, the musical, on Saturday. I enjoyed it (apart from the ending, which seems out of tune with the rest of the play) and it got me thinking about childhood vs adulthood. Big reminds us not to leave our childhood TOO far behind us, and seems to lean towards the “best years of your life” perspective about being a kid.

I’ve always disagreed. When I was in my early teens and loathing school, and getting my mum to write me notes so I could skive, I took some comfort in the fact that my dad also disagreed – and he was an adult, so his opinion had a bit more validity than mine. I was just hoping fervently that life would get better at some point.

It did. There were wonderful times in my teens, and yet I still love being an adult more. In a lot of ways, it’s actually lived up to the expectations and beliefs of youth. I can stay up as late as I like, read all night if I want, drive, eat whatever I choose, go to nightclubs without fibbing about my age, hang out with my friends all the time, I don’t care that I don’t look like Christy Turlington any more, and I don’t have ANY HOMEWORK. Plus I get paid for going to work. I always slightly resented the fact that I didn’t get paid for going to school.

Sure, there are consequences and flip sides to all of those things, and there are hard things about being an adult, but on the whole, I like it.

One of the wonderful things about being a kid, though, apart from the endless, sunny summers and meals waiting for you all the time, and having your mum be able to kiss anything better, is how you laugh ‘til it aches on a pretty regular basis. That kind of laughter is a little harder to come by as I get old and wrinkly.

But I've had it a few times over the past couple of weekends. First, going down the river at Lava Hot Springs last weekend in a big chain, almost having my arms pulled out of their sockets, screaming “bottoms up,” as rocks and little rapids approached.

Then on Friday night playing round the world ping pong at a party, as our group got smaller and smaller, and we ran around making ourselves dizzy more and more…

Then Sunday night playing a variation of Catchphrase (I really DON’T spend all my weekends playing catchphrase, despite blogging appearances). I was on the winning team--we won rather thoroughly and were very bad sports about it. We giggled helplessly as the other team struggled to guess things like “hat” (“helmet!” “visor!”) as part of “cat in the hat,” while somehow my teammates were thinking and guessing as one. It was beautiful. Of course no-one cared deeply about the outcome (well, let’s hope not), so we were free to gloat and patronise the other team to our hearts’ content.

For some reason, this all made me laugh until I was weak. It felt so good.