Never Listen to a Giraffe. Gee whiz.

I don’t wanna grow up. And it has nothing to do with Toys ‘R’ Us. (side ramble: Oh. My. God. I just realized who is responsible for the dumbing-down of America. They started it with their ‘R’ instead of ‘are’. Sure, they thought they were all clever and shit with their laziness. Geoffrey Giraffe, I am on to you!) I don’t care if they have a million toys. I couldn’t even fit a million toys in my house. Unless I got like a million checkers and covered my roof with them. Or retiled my bathroom in Scrabble tiles. I guess I could buy a million Lincoln Logs and make my own log home. Or build a mansion out of a million Barbie houses. But then I’d have to sit on tiny furniture and drink out of tiny glasses and sleep on a tiny bed and that’s just retarded.

I don’t want to grow up because being a Grown Up sucks. It’s hard. Oh, wait. Let me say that with a little whine because that's how I really feel about it. It’s haaaaaaaaaaaarrrrd (insert pout here). Growing up means paying bills and cleaning the house and going to work so that I can have money to pay bills and a house to live in. It means making dinner when I’m tired and taking care of a kid and trying to be responsible and making hard decisions and always being tired and not having enough time to play. See? Fucking Toys ‘R’ Us. Even if I did have a million damn toys, I’d never be able to play with them.

When I was a kid, I thought being a Grown Up meant I could do whatever I wanted. And I can, to a point. I can drive a car. I can drink cocktails (which is really the only redeeming part of being an adult and I never, ever want to give it up). I can get a puppy and I can eat Easy Cheese and ice cream for dinner or refuse to eat brussel sprouts (because they’re totally icky!) and I can stay up all night and I can dye my hair any shade of Strawberry Shortcake pink that I want. I can even get in my car and drive across the country never sleeping and trying ice cream in every state and dyeing my hair a new color every day and filling my car with puppies and feeding them ice cream and Easy Cheese and teaching them to bite strangers who judge me.

The downside? I can’t do all of these things whenever I want. First of all, they all take money. Nobody just gives you an ice cream cone out of the kindness of their heart (which is probably what is wrong with the world). Money requires a job. For some stupid reason, jobs frown on you when you call in because you’d rather drive around drinking cocktails and petting puppies instead of coming in to work.

I could live off of Easy Cheese and ice cream but my body isn’t 10 anymore and punishes me for that fact by turning every bite I eat into fat. Hello? Ice cream has calcium! It’s good for us! Stupid body. Being fat is definitely not something I wanted to be when I grew up.

More than this, being a Parent means you have to be a Grown Up. Even if you only pretend to be. It’s like being Spider Man, but with all the responsibility and none of the power. Hear that, Toys ‘R’ Us? I will never buy a fucking Spider Man toy because it’s all a big, fat, comic-hero-sized lie. I’m supposed to set some kind of example for my offspring. I don’t even want to think about what kind of example Spider Man is supposed to be setting in his red leotard and his climbing all over walls and shooting nasty webs out of his body. Really, Spider Man? Spider webs are so totally creepy. Dude. Seriously.

So, riddle me this, Toys ‘R’ Us. How do I afford your million toys? When do I have time to play with them? Which one of your million toys is going to earn me a million dollars? Which Barbie is going to take time out of her busy doctor/rockstar/princess schedule to help my kid with her homework and drive her to ballet? Which Teletubby is going to cook dinner for me? Oh, I’ll answer this one. None of them! Because they’re too freaky to be allowed in my house, plus they’re stuffed and my dogs would eat all of the stuffing out of them but then they’d be possessed by the Teletubby’s evil soul and that would be even worse because I love my dogs and I’d just have to live in fear of them until some” unfortunate accident” removed their presence from my life.

Yep. Being a Grown Up sucks. Bills suck. Responsibility sucks. Most jobs suck. But ice cream rocks and alcohol is delicious. Guess what I’m doing tonight? Yup. Because I can. Neener neener.