Have you ever been told you need to grow up? That you’re acting too childish and immature, and you should focus on your studies or your work? Society puts a lot of pressure on the idea of maturing and becoming successful adults as quickly as possible. Sure, focusing on your future is important, especially as you approach new stages in life, but often we focus too much on what lies ahead, and never enough on where we’ve been and where we are in the here and now. Especially as teenagers and young adults, there are a lot of expectations to meet and external pressures to deal with, whether that’s from peers, friends, family, or even just people you don’t know but are older than you. Society as a whole, if you will.

Teens deal with a lot of extra and high maintenance expectations. And it can be particularly frustrating because we are expected to act like fully mature adults, but are more often than not treated like children who don’t know what they're doing. That’s not to say that we know everything, because we certainly don’t, but it gets confusing when the world as a whole is constantly sending mixed messages. More importantly, we get so wrapped up in preparing to be adults and preparing to enter a new stage of life, that we forget to enjoy the stage of life we’re already in. We forget to be kids. So many adults look back on their childhood and feel sad or regretful that they didn’t take the time to enjoy it more.

So why is it that we are so determined to remove the bliss of childhood and its innocence from our lives? Why is there so much pressure to leave the freedom and stress-free nature of it all behind?

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I have been fortunate enough to have encountered and bonded with a solid group of friends who love each other for who we are, and encourage each other to enjoy the little things in life. Just recently, two of my best friends and I took a day trip together. We didn’t do anything crazy, special, or expensive, we just set aside the day to go on a small adventure and enjoy each other’s company. We got in the car together and took about a two hour “road-trip,” if you could even call it that, to a nearby city which had a restaurant we all wanted to try. I drove, and the other girls helped keep me alert on the long drive by playing car games with me.

There’s one game that our group of friends plays all the time. We call it “Cork,” but we aren’t actually sure where the game came from or if it has an official name. It’s a simple word association game that can be played with three or more people. One person thinks of a word and reveals it letter by letter, and the goal of everyone else playing is to guess the word before it is all spelled out. To start, one of the guessers gives a clue to a word they are thinking of that lines up with the revealed letters, and either the other guessers or the original person can call out “cork” to say they think they know what that clue means. Then on the count of three you say the word at the same time. If the guessers said correctly, they get another letter. If the original person guesses correctly, the guessers have to come up with a new clue. If the original person guesses wrong, the guessers get another letter. It doesn’t necessarily sound like the most exciting game, but we have a lot of fun with it and it’s easy to play on the go since you don’t need any game pieces or anything. Just your mind. To us it's a more “grown up” version of a lot of the games we would just make up as kids. No game boards or cards, just our imaginations.

Aside from “Cork” we found other ways to enjoy each other's company on the long drive. Cracking jokes, people watching, reading weird billboards. All menial things, but some of those “little things” to enjoy that people always say they wished they appreciated more. There were also just some small moments of comfortable silence. No talking, just the sound of the car on the highway and the quiet radio in the background. In many ways, these moments were just as precious. Just being comfortable with each other, without feeling the pressure to fill each moment with excitement or laughter, but genuinely enjoying each other’s presence. We went back and forth between the high and low energy moments until we reached the restaurant, and even then we had pretty similar moments while we were dining. The food was really good, but the company was even better.

After we finished lunch, we decided to check out what things were in the area that we could explore. Nearby, there was a Build-A-Bear workshop that we had talked about doing before graduation, so we decided to take the 20 minute drive over. Even on the shorter drive we had plenty of fun moments. I remember specifically there was a point on the road where I wasn’t sure where my GPS was taking us because it looked like we were driving near private property. We got a bit confused, and I remember my best friend shouting from the back, “Siri! You’ve led us astray!” The three of us all burst out laughing, and thankfully realized that Siri had not in fact led us the wrong way, just that the city roads were a bit confusing which led to a quiet, relieved, “Oh no, wait. We’re good.” from the backseat.

We reached the destination safely, and drove up to the fourth level of a nearby parking garage,  then made our way over to the Build-A-Bear workshop. It was tucked into a nice, small walking plaza with brick paved paths and light cream-yellow stone-brick walls. Inside the small building the smell of fabric and cleaning supplies was faint, and the walls were lined with the different stuffed animal options. A girl named Izzy greeted us with a bright smile and walked us through the process of building your own teddy bear. We went through and picked the bears we each wanted, then picked their names and outfits. Next we stuffed the bears at one of the machines inside the store, and stuck a small heart in the center before handing the bears over to be sewn closed. The experience, although childish, was genuinely enjoyable and gave us a chance to experience a moment of childlike bliss amidst the chaos of nearing adulthood.

When we had completed our teddy bear experience, we still felt as though we hadn’t spent enough time together, so we decided to walk around the plaza and people-watch. There were a few carnival-type attractions nearby, and we enjoyed watching people ride them, going quickly up and down in the air on various swings and slingshots. Nervously laughing all the while to each other saying, “No chance I’m ever doing that.” There were a few couples walking up and down the brick paths, and we spotted some cute puppies which the owners let us pet. There was a really sweet golden named Daisy that licked all over our faces as we giggled and stroked her fur.

Eventually, we made our way back to the parking garage and jokingly pointed out a sign that said “No Roof Access” near the stairs. Curious, we decided to take the three flights of stairs that would take us up to the seventh level to see if there was no roof access at all, or if the sign just meant that the stairs didn't go directly to the roof. We ended up discovering an opening for cars to drive through and park up on the seventh level, or the roof, and realized that it would be a much better vantage point to people-watch. Before we found a nice spot, we went down to the car to put our teddy bears away and grabbed a polaroid camera that I had brought with me. Then we made our way back up to the top and found a nice spot to sit and look over the short walls of the roof level and look at the people on the nearby rides and walking through the plaza below.

For the next hour or two, we proceeded to people-watch and goof off together, just enjoying that childlike bliss. At some point, although I can’t remember exactly when, my best friend suggested I download a timed camera app, as the camera on my phone did not have a timer. We then spent time coming up with different ways to pose and set-up the camera to capture the funny moments of us messing around on the roof.  There are plenty of cute and funny pictures, but my personal favorite is one where we posed like a famous scene from the Titanic movie. My best friends posed as Jack and Rose standing on the bow of the ship, while I layed on my stomach and stuck my feet up and propped my head on my hands to pose as the ship itself. The photos we captured during this hour or so contain some of my most cherished memories, and are therefore some of the most important to me.

My whole life, I have been fortunate enough to have plenty of fun and exciting experiences, but I can say without a doubt that running around on the roof of a parking garage with my best friends is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. The three of us all agree that even if the food or the teddy bears hadn’t lived up to expectations, the trip still would have been worth it just for the quality time with each other. The time of remembering what it’s like to be a kid and using your imagination to turn what you have on you into lasting memories.