When Adulthood Turns Ugly...And Traumatizing

I think we should all agree on one thing, being a kid is great. You can eat cotton candy all afternoon with no concerns except having to share with your sister. Sleep when you want to in a bed that costs you exactly zero dollars and zero cents. My weekend life as a kid consisted of barbie doll houses, riding my bike and begging for another sleepover on my best friends trampoline. Some of these childhood pleasures can be recreated as an adult, at a substantial cost to your dental bill, chiropractic bill and vacation time away from work. Here is one childhood activity that should never be recreated as an adult. Wearing characters on your clothing or dressing up as a character when it is not Halloween. We all understand that you just must impress us all as a slutty Ariel once a year. I don't think Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts should never be made in any size above Youth 12/14...ever. There is no possible excuse for being seen in public as a 40 year old woman with a Tinkerbell tank top and matching sweatpants. I won't even get started on why you need to decorate your steering wheel with the same fucking character. I don't want your bumper to inform me that you are the #1 Betty Boop Fan while I honk and flip you off on the freeway. I feel there should be some sort of box to check when you apply for a grown up job that could differentiate between real adults and the people who had such a fucked up childhood that they need to carry a Mickey Mouse purse to the bar. As a person who does hiring, I would be grateful to know that I wasn't subjecting our other employees to a desk chocked full of your yearly trip to Disney World with your creepy husband who is a professional video gamer. No one is ever going to pay him what he is really worth and we can all see how you two found each other. Not having children hasn't stopped you two from spending every penny you have on Scooby Doo dishes and kitchen towels.
I feel bad when these people have children. I don't want to fight my mom to be the happiest person on earth when we get our photo taken with Goofy. Is my mom going to push me out of the way to get the first princess signature? Most likely. This is how you ruin your children's lives and guarantee that they too will decorate their college apartment with Hello Kitty memorabilia.
I had a couple uncomfortable encounters with people who never outgrew characters while on our Disney cruise. Let me say now, I have a theory about why so many of these people follow Disney products to the ends of the earth and take out a second mortgage to see Mickey every 3 months. I am pretty sure that in some secret dungeon below Disneyland are a bunch of really smart marketing execs who do nothing but think of ways to promote their products to this particular group of people. It's brilliant. You have a built in market of consumers who need your overpriced shit from age 2 through 98.
The one woman I saw on our cruise was in the age range of 25-30 and was carrying around some baby weight, which I understand happens to many of us. What shouldn't happen, is dressing that body in a Minnie Mouse costume that is four sizes too small and showing up to a formal night dinner in your get up. It's not formal. Perhaps for Minnie Mouse it is, but not for you. You should also know that Minnie Mouse is a paid actor in a costume, not a real life character born as a baby mouse. I'm sorry I had to be the one to break that news to you.
Second encounter was a group of middle aged women which in my book is mid-50's. They had apparently spent their Social Security checks on every single Disney princess dress in their size and splurged on the wigs that matched. Randomly we would see fifty-five year old wrinkled Jasmine stuffing her face at the buffet or sixty year old Belle pushing her grand baby to the pool. It was creepy. I guess that's what happens to princesses when they retire. I think other people thought it was cute and possibly brilliant because there were many photo ops with Grandma Ariel. There is a time and a place to go balls out on costumes in public...it's called Halloween. You could probably even get away with it for your wedding, but this shit is fucking weird when you are over the age of 20. Let's give our kids the best childhood ever so no one has to be subjected to another Wal-Mart trip with Tweety flannel pants lady. She creeps me out.