As far as ageing is concerned, I'm totally on the "growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional" bandwagon. However, as I write this I am babysitting Maia. She came downstairs about an hour ago asking for some grapes. I gave them to her and expected that to be the last I heard. However, about 20 minutes after that, she came back down and asked to show me something.
"What is it?" I asked... And she informed me that she had squashed the juice out of her grapes and got it all over her mother's bed. Fabulous. It was quite a LOT of grape juice, which was definitely threatening to get on the stickier side of things, and I didn't particularly want my aunt to come home to a sticky, messy bed. I've sorted it and the bed is now back to the condition in which it was left. Phew.
But what I'm wondering now is... Where did my childhood go? At what point did I stop being able to see the 'squashy-mess' potential of grapes as a bit of fun, and start to see it as a bit of a chore??
I have a strong history of making a mess. I once spread margarine all over the bottom two stairs. My mother was furious, but tells me that my paternal grandmother said to her "Well, had you ever told her NOT to?" As it happens, she hadn't ever thought to ban me from spreading margarine over things and so I got away with that one with a warning.
However, my 'spreading' history continues. My sister and I had spread Sudocrem all over the bathroom, and once again my grandmother came to our rescue with a solid "had you ever told them not to?" and we got a warning. However, a week or so later when staying with our (other) grandparents, we repeated this in the bathroom there! That time, we had definitely been told, and got into lots of trouble.
Obviously as you get older, things like common sense start to kick in, and it becomes pretty obvious that doing such things isn't really acceptable. However, I notice now that somewhere along the way I seem to have replaced a lot more of my "ooohh, let's do that, it'd be fun" outlook with a more grown up one than I thought I had. I think it might be fun to look at things from a 4-year-old's perspective again.
If/when I have children, as soon as they're old enough to understand I plan on placing a blanket ban on spreading things onto other things, unless specifically told otherwise in a supervised situation (e.g. buttering toast/icing a cake).
