Before a man became a man and a woman became a woman, the man was a boy and the woman a girl. "Boy" and "girl" here are not indicators of gender or sex, but are connotative of a tender and mild stage of a person's life. This stage captures the qualities of the individual, and behaviours portrayed at that stage which are deemed in many senses "childish". Now, I think being childish isn't a forbidden thing as many may perceive. Within the confines of the walls of being a child, it is a clear response to his or her age and an indication of an orderly system. Unfortunately, with that stage, what seems wrong might seem right to the child.
The problem then would be when one is all grown and yet decides to maintain a childish attitude and character. At that point, many would consider a disorderliness in that case. Through this, we've come to develop a mature character, doing away with the childish aspect and holding on to a matured one. In this sense only could one consider the things done before as childish. And yes, it's not just a bodily growth, but a holistic one.
I could count a list of inexhaustible things I now consider childish which I did before. Such things and the memories of some of them would leave me laughing at my little old self. Others would leave me in an almost state of regret and disapproval, thinking "if only I knew better, I would have done it this or that way". I was taking a soda last night, and I could feel the sweetness too much that I had to dilute it with water. In a funny sense, I could just think of my little self, mixing several of these sweet drinks and gulping them down with utmost enjoyment of the sweetness, if I could add sugar I would, haha! Now, it's something I don't cherish, I barely take soda even.
Some of these things seem to be resonating much in these days. I was cooking yesterday and needed to add seasoning cube—Maggi—which I opted to break with my mouth due to how strong it was. The sweetness; I’ll say, got my senses a kind of overwhelmed that I felt like spitting it. I then recalled how I would desire and plead for the opportunity to open these seasoning cubes while my mother was cooking when little, all so I could lick the sachet. Now here's the opportunity but I'm spitting it. Haha!
One thing I can't fail to count among my list of childish things was with respect to dressing or “fashion”. We understood fashion differently as little children, and yes, I see that today still in children. This of course is how a sense of dressing that doesn't really appeal was the deal for us. I remember vividly how I handled long sleeve shirts then. I dare not water a long sleeve shirt without rolling up the sleeves. The main deal was not the folding of the sleeves, but buttoning the sleeves quite all right, however then, I would drag it up to reach around my elbow regions. This is what I find childish now. How much it displeased my parents then, but hey, that's a child's ways. I can remember looking at a certain picture where I had such a dressing and I could just feel the current disapproval within me.
Another aspect of this is when I would wear a shirt and leave the top two or three buttons unbuttoned. In this case, I had a strong accomplice while in school then who loves to dress like this too, and we would dress like that. The idea was to have our nice and white good-looking inner wear—or "singlet" as we call it—revealing. No, we didn't have "chest" to reveal so that was the best we could reveal if we wanted to reveal something.
Guess what, even if I were to be beckoned with promises of handsome rewards to do that this day, I doubt I will. Today, I find it childish. Not just it, but every other childish exuberance I had then.
Images are mine
