Kids. They get away with everything. It changes when you hit double digit ages I think, but life at some point takes away all the ridiculous benefits of being a kid. I want to call them out on it so that either kids stop getting a free-ride for things I don’t get a free-ride on, or that I do start getting to take advantage of all these benefits.

Spitting their food into their hand:

Who in the world hasn’t attended a dinner at the home of an acquaintance only to shovel a spoonful of something that looks delicious only to realize they used baking soda where they should have used baking powder? What do you do? You look at your kid and find out awfully quick what you’d like to do as thet sit at their little plastic picnic table with a lump of kind-of-chewed baking soda mess in their hands.

“Oh, you don’t like it,” the people at the adult table will say in their imitation of a kid voice. “That’s ok, it’s probably too sweet.”

“No,” you want to say, “you made it wrong, I want to spit mine into my hands too but if I did that you’d ask me to leave.” So, you swallow it. Even worse, you continue to eat the rest of it too, taking as many sips of your drink as you can throughout the experience.

And there’s your kid, smiling at their picnic table with Oreo cookies they’ve been given because they spit the other stuff into their hands.

Getting gifts when it’s other people’s birthdays:

Right now, when either of my girls have a birthday, they are given presents by loving friends and family. This is beautiful and fun and it’s pretty common. What also happens a lot of the time though, is that presents are brought for the sibling who isn’t having a birthday because they shouldn’t have their feelings hurt or feel left out. They shouldn’t feel left out of having been born on a day they weren’t born on.

These it’s-not-your-birthday gifts aren’t as glamourous but they’re gifts nonetheless. I’m 35 now and my brothers have combined for 62 birthdays between them. I’d be far more willing to participate in continued birthday parties for 33-year-olds if I knew there was something in it for me. Maybe a pack of beer with a ribbon on it or a container full of homebaked goodies.

Falling asleep when being talked to:

You know what adults find cute? Kids who fall asleep in random places because they’re “pooped out.” People gather round, call their friends, like posts on social media accounts when you share a picture of your kids falling asleep in a cereal bowl or on top of the monkey bars.

“You’re not supposed to fall asleep there!” they yell, giggling to themselves. “They must be so tired!”

I will tell you right now that when I get to work and start typing emails in the morning I’m going to be “pooped.” I can also guarantee that if I fell asleep and my boss or my bosses boss walked past me, they wouldn’t gather everyone around and talk about how cute I looked and how much I must need a nap. They very well might take a picture of the situation but they wouldn’t be posting it to Instagram, they’d be sending it to our HR department to file under the “reasons he shouldn’t work here” folder.

The same goes for sitting in meetings, even the ones where the lights are dimmed and we spend an hour looking at a PowerPoint presentation while sitting in comfortable boardroom chairs. Dimmed lights, comfortable chairs and dull subject matter are no excuse to fall asleep I’ve been told a hundred times. Unless, of course, you’re five.

Talking to invisible friends:

Parents and relatives find this cute in their kids once they figure out who in the hell their kids are randomly talking to. Sometimes these friends have names, sometimes they aren’t actually invisible but are talking teddy bears and such. All cases are accepted and all cases should be accepted. Imaginary friends are the best because they can often do the things we can’t do. My childhood imaginary friends could do the splits, played in the NHL at the age of four and ate Froot Loops every meal of the day. By talking to them I was able to experience a consequence-free life.

Then I turned into a teenager and talking to the air became a sign of emotional instability. I have way more invisible friends than my kids do and I vent to these friends all the time. They’re my swearing outlet friends and I wish I could openly hang out with them all the time. Alas, they’re only socially acceptable to talk to while I’m driving or while I’m under doctor supervision.

Walking around with a bowl haircut:

For years I had assumed the bowl haircut had disappeared. I spent four years in university never seeing one and being too scared to bring one back for myself. But boy did I ever want to. To let my long locks just drape down from the middle of my head. To wear that perfectly shorn line of hair all around my head. To look exactly like I was wearing a bowl made of hair on my head.

The bowl haircut was dead. And then I had kids. The first time I saw a little boy with a bowl haircut I nearly stole him. Realizing that was wrong, I nearly cut my own child’s hair into the familiar bowl. Realizing she wasn’t asking for that I realized what I really wanted was to wear the style myself. But what would people think of me? I wear dress shirts with killer whales on them and I wear red pants. I wear suspenders and I wear bow ties yet I was afraid of what people might think if I had a bowl haircut.

I’ve seen four or five more kids with bow haircuts since that first one and every time I run my fingers through my own hair, thinking what if.