I Believe in Cooties

I believe in cooties and that even at the age of nineteen I’m allowed to act like I’m five every once in a while.
I can remember those days at the top of the plastic red slide, refusing to whiz myself to the woodchip ground simply because “those people” were at the bottom. Yes, “those people,” also known as boys, were sickening, covered head to toe in cooties. I never really knew what cooties were, but I knew that whatever they were, it was bad.
My belief in cooties goes a little deeper than that because even though I allowed myself to believe in such silly things like the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and cooties, there was nothing that could stand in my way. I didn’t care what people thought about me if I decided to wear a pink princess dress, boa, and crown to McDonald’s. I never wondered how I was going to pay for college yet alone gas, and I certainly never clutched my purse tighter as I walked to my car in the dark because any new person meant a new potential playmate. I was free, and nothing stopped me from having fun. As a child, I lived for the moment; I lived for those compliments on how pretty my pink crown was in line at the McDonald’s.
These days, it seems that people care way too much about public opinion. What’s funny is that usually, it’s caring about what strangers you’re never going to see again think of you. Take my mom for instance: she would never be caught dead in public wearing an old gaudy sweater or no makeup. My friends never cease to amaze me with caring too. My friend once ordered a salad at a restaurant when she was really hungry because she was afraid of what our waiter would think. We all seem have a little bit of insecurity in this way. We all think that people won’t like or accept us if we don’t act or dress a certain way.
So I believe that we should take the way children act as an example of how to live life. Live for the moment and don’t spend your time worrying about what others think of you. If you want, sing along with the radio in the car and wear mismatched clothes; just do whatever makes you happy and let others think what they will. A lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t always please everyone. My favorite quote is from Marilyn Monroe, “I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I'm already better than them."
Be who you are and people will like you for who you are and not this person society has formed you into. It’s ok to believe in cooties and it’s fine to act like you’re five every once in a while.