I was scared enough starting middle school. Then the Assistant Principal got up on the stage and started talking about how we needed to figure out where we wanted our lives to go. I knew I was growing up too slow. While my peers were talking about how honors chemistry would help them become a neurosurgeon, or how they really needed to get volunteer hours to look good for colleges, I was having trouble even admitting to myself where my passions lay. I didn’t know where I wanted to be in a week, much less in five years.
And so, I tried growing up faster. I tried hanging out with the cool kids, overworking myself in all my classes, going above and beyond even when it didn’t matter. I told myself, many times, that my interests lay in STEM. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t love The Peanuts.
All through elementary school, I knew that I loved the Peanuts. When we used grids to blow up pictures, I used the Peanuts. Twice. Once with Snoopy and once with Woodstock. I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas religiously, even though no one else in my family liked it. I made us go to Worlds of Fun for my birthday, just so that I could see Planet Snoopy. Again, twice. I still remember that my second-grade teacher, Ms. Johnson, used Peanuts characters next to our names to signify which desk was ours… mine was Sally.
But I also knew that the Peanuts were for little kids, and that I didn’t want to be one of those. If I was going to grow up, I needed to leave behind The Peanuts. And so, without really thinking about it, or what it meant to me, I just stopped loving The Peanuts. Not overnight, the Woodstock plushie I bought in the eighth grade is still in my room at home somewhere, and I still got the warm fuzzies whenever I saw a scrawny Christmas tree all bent over. But the weirdly bald characters of my childhood just slowly left my life.
And then, about a month ago, I saw a pack of Thanksgiving themed Peanuts socks on sale at TJ Maxx. And I lose socks like nobody’s business, so I decided to pick them up. I started wearing them and began remembering all the things that I made myself forget all those years ago. They were a connection to the past, tinted with the rose-colored goggles of nostalgia. Those silly socks, that no one could see but me, reminded me what it was like to be a kid. To let myself be big, and silly, and not take things quite so seriously.
And when I look back at my past self, so unsure of what she wanted and where she wanted to go, I feel a different kind of silly. I know now that nobody has quite figured it out, that even the kids who desperately want to be neurosurgeons still waver in their path every now and then. That I don’t have to be something I’m not to be worthwhile. And that it’s okay to be childish sometimes, no matter what that means to me.
When I went back to TJ Maxx, I picked up a Halloween pack of Peanuts socks, even though they were out of season as soon as I bought them. Because they made me smile. Because I know I will wear them until they are beyond repair, or they mysteriously disappear. Because it’s okay to indulge that nostalgia as long as I don’t live in it. Because I’m allowed to be a kid, sometimes.
So even if you don’t know yet what you want to be when you grow up, even as a grown up, or if you didn’t love the Peanuts, or if you’re the kid who always knew you wanted to be a neurosurgeon, allow yourself to honor what the past you loved. Because that little kid is still tucked somewhere deep inside you, even if you don’t want to admit it. I know I didn’t.