People say that our childhood is the best part of our lives. A short, precious slice of abandon, safety and discovery. A time when things didn’t come with all the pressures, considerations and bureaucracy of adult life. How unfair that it has to be like this. As if a clumsy waiter accidentally served us a decadent dessert for the first course before revealing that all the others would be bland, boring, and hard to chew.

Looking back, I realise I was served a dessert as rich and decadent as they come. My childhood was packed with school, dance recitals, building friends, tuition friends, family friends, bedtime stories, a busy kitchen and a loving, stable family. Despite being someone who was dealt a great hand in my childhood, I’m starting to wonder if being a child was really all that great.

Everything is a little more romantic in retrospect. They say when someone dies, people only say good things about them. Maybe our childhood is a little bit like that. With every passing year, as it feels more distant, we simply start to remember it more fondly. And then proceed to only say good things about it.

But if we were to give our younger selves more credit and pause to think for a moment – there has to have been a reason we wanted to grow up so much. Why for so many years we have waited patiently to be adults – some of our biggest milestones were simply about hitting the benchmarks for ageing – being a teenager, turning eighteen, turning twenty one – even as a toddler the first title I ever strived for was being a ‘big girl’.

Maybe we’re forgetting that things are easier now. That being a child meant being afraid of the dark, of authority, bugs, bullies, or anyone who has a big brother. We forget that we had high-stakes responsibilities then too – final exams, homework, and climbing the social ladder within the limits of a 7pm curfew.

Maybe we forget how unforgiving teenagers are – but on days that I wake up with acne, pack a  boring lunch, or get an adventurous haircut, I am grateful I am not a child.

We now have access to little joys that were locked away in the top shelf as children. Your parents call to ask for your opinion. The vegetables on your plate disappear without much effort now. You know that technically, you could get a puppy on your next birthday if you wanted to. And that some of your favourite ‘limited edition’ childhood moments – buying what you want in the snack aisle, picking your outfit yourself and getting an icecream on a summer afternoon, – those magical things happen regularly now.

I can’t say I have an airtight argument for why our adulthood is the best phase of our lives. But I have an inkling, that while it is true that we look back on our childhood with passionate fondness, few of us would trade a typical day in our adult lives for one from our childhood.

Who knows?
Maybe the clumsy waiter knew what he was doing.