Innocence lost

I don't think people ever stop being children, deep down. I think perhaps the extent to which we're socially allowed to act like children changes, but you can get around that. The more you get comfortable with folk, the more you start to realise that you don't always need intellectual conversation. Sometimes all you need is to sit in a corner giggling at nothing much in particular.
I think alcohol helps. The way it knocks your inhibitions out of whack a little is sort of interesting at times. What's odd is that I find that caffeine works the same way, that it cranks your mental age down about a decade.
'cept that you're not as likely to wake up in the morning with a headache, a traffic cone and someone naked next to you after downing a relentless. Or at least I hope not, because I'd like to remember, should anyone appear in my apartment naked, how I ended up in that situation if only so that I could blog about it.
What was I saying?

We still play with toys, now we're adults. It's just that the toys change. When you're younger, you play with army men, dolls, toy cars, footballs and tranformers. When you're older, you play with guns, outfits, autotrader.com, footballs and transformers. And golf. I'm not sure that's something that has an analog in children's activities.
We still play games, too. They just involve less running around and chasing each other. Although I suppose you could argue that the whole idea of dating is one REALLY involved game of kiss chase or... whatever it's called. We never played that one, really. It's odd to me that we stop running so much when we get older, since our bodies have fully developed and running is both faster and easier, but I suppose you get a lot less energy as you get older. I'd like to know where that goes, y'know. It seems like as soon as half the people I know hit puberty, it was like a magic button with "lazy git" written on it was pushed.
I like that button.

It's a shame that we lose so many abilities that we have as children. They'd serve us so well as adults. Like the ability to learn things REALLY QUICKLY that people around you really would rather you didn't (things like annoying TV theme tunes, how to make rulers make that twanging noise on desks and the names of reproductive organs). We lose the ability to get away with anything because it's cute. We lose the ability to hold long, rambling conversations with complete strangers in the queue at supermarkets.
I don't want to grow up. I want to be mature, in that I know how to manage finances, cook, handle my time and still do a good job at work, but I never want to lose that childish mentality. Life is far, far more... ugh, I know it's a cliché, but life's far more magical if you can still see it as a kid would. If you can still get excited about mundane things, still appreciate stuff that other people become jaded to...

It occurs to me that in the future, if I ever have kids of my own, I'm either going to make a very entertaining kind of father or a horrifically embarassing one. And given that one of my life goals is to live long enough to become a senile old coot, I don't hold out much hope for little Andys. Or Andreas. Or whatever.