I would very much like to wear Velcro shoes.

However, at a certain age I was expected to tie my own shoes and to dispose of the Velcro ones. This seems illogical to me. Isn’t it much easier to fasten Velcro than to tie a knot with a shoelace?

I don’t believe maturing should mean giving up simple pleasures and working harder at tasks that don’t matter in the slightest.

When I was younger, I had little pegs on the wall of my laundry room that I could use to hang up my pint-sized parkas and raincoats. Now, because society expects me to, I have to hang up my coat on a hanger and those marvelously convenient wooden pegs are long gone from my life.

How about playgrounds, huh? It’s perfectly natural to have the desire to swing, slide and see-saw. But if I were to set foot on a playground, I would look a fool. I may fit onto a slide, but doing so doesn’t fit the societal norm.

I want to eat chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, but I’m forced to settle for lifeless, void-of-all-fun nuggets, or—god forbid—chicken not in nugget form at all.

I want to go trick-or-treating. Instead I’m supposed to willingly hand over my sweets to undeserving juveniles. Just since I’m older, it doesn’t mean I’ve given up my love of Snickers and Laffy Taffy.

Yet I am supposed to grow out of all these things because that’s what people do.

It’s only general courtesy to offer a solution to this complaint. I don’t suggest that we start regressing to every childish habit we used to have. I simply ask that before we blindly conform to this soul-sucking idea of ‘growing up,’ we ask ourselves “why?”

Tell yourself that your food CAN be shaped like things. You CAN wear shoes and hang up clothes in a more convenient manner. You CAN laugh at fart jokes—though perhaps it’s best to give up that one.

You may be thinking, “Hey, you don’t do all of these things!” Well, I am a victim of this system too. Luckily, together we can break out.

So here’s to the child within us. Here’s to the Velcro-wearing, peg-hanging, dinosaur-nugget-eating, see-sawing, trick-or-treating child within us aching to wreak havoc on this unwittingly oppressive world.