26 Signs You Haven’t Outgrown Your Inner Child

1. Your Netflix queue features at least one animated series, which you might justify by saying it’s there because it brings you memories from childhood or because your little cousin watches it when he visits you. Or, if you’re like me, you don’t even feel the need to justify binging on the Winx Club or My Little Pony every single Sunday even though you’re in your twenties.

2. Likewise, among your diet staples we can find Fruit Loops, McDonald’s happy meals, candy and other types of food specifically marketed to children. Speaking of McDonald’s happy meal, you unapologetically ask for it on the counter and then eat it while still in the store and feel no shame. You might even play with the toy in public – You have nothing to hide. You are also a very picky eater.

3. You’ve literally told someone you’d like to be friends with them, and that happened past the age of twenty.

4. You take everything at face value: The personas people try to project, what they tell you, the promises they make, etc. That is, unless your intuition is shouting “DANGER! DANGER! ABORT MISSION!” This is probably why your friends talk about you as “the innocent one.”

5. You rarely dislike people because you’re an optimist, trusting person and believe the best of everyone unless previously proven otherwise.

6. You were either a really early or a really late bloomer sexually, and you either enjoy sex with abandon and without thinking twice about people who label you as promiscuous (after all, when children like something, they do it just for the sake of it and don’t take anything else into account), or you have an extemely romantic outlook on sex and believe very strongly in saving yourself for marriage or for a serious relationship.

7. You daydream at least once everyday, and your musings seem to get more and more elaborate with the passing of time, even including complex elements of fantasy.

8. Your speech features many an invented word and idiomatic expression, or you change the morphology of words even though you know the right forms because you think it sounds cuter. You also have a talent for expressing complex concepts in a simple way, because your way of speaking lacks the excessive subtlety and euphemisms proper of adult speech.

9. You can turn anything into a game, from an essay for college to cleaning the bathroom. Everything is a competition against yourself and all of your household chores feature a princess you have to save or a friend unicorn that’ll help you.

10. If you’re a girl, people may say you are a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but you just roll your eyes and go about your business because you couldn’t care less about what people think about you.

11. Your style of dressing is very colorful and you don’t mind being fashionably mismatched as long as you get to wear several of your favorite items at once. If you are female, you might also be the type that wears pigtails, glitter, unnaturally colored hair, cat ears or mismatched nail polish past the age of eighteen.

12. You can form strong emotional bonds to certain inanimate objects and it may hurt you to part with them. Related to this: you give names to such things as your car or your iPhone.

13. You love playing pranks on people and you practically live for improving the expression of your sense of humor, although, unlike many adults, you are never snarky – Just goofy.

14. When you see a parent scolding his or her child, in your head you automatically side with the child and understand his or her position perfectly.

15. You adore animals and you consider them your very best friends. Your apartment resembles an animal shelter or a zoo – Just what you wanted when you were a kid!

16. At a bookstore, you always make sure to browse in the YA section and you enjoy reading stories about fairies, dragons and magic.

17. You are not afraid to change your mind. Just as a little girl changes her favorite color every day, you can go from Republican to Democrat at the drop of a hat. Of course, your adult self might make sure they have the right reasons for changing their minds, but you still don’t doubt to go from Coke to Pepsi if you feel you’d be justified in doing so. Being stubborn when it comes to your opinions and striving to always be right is a grownup thing.

18. You are very curious, even annoyingly so. You ask “Why?” on the most unexpected moments and your questions are very odd. When talking, you tend to ramble and end up going on about totally unrelated topics. But this also means you are insanely creative and philosophical because you can see connections when other people see plain disparity and you question everything, even what is not meant to be questioned.

19. You haven’t given up on your childhood dream and you’re actively working towards making it a reality.

20. You love it more than the average adult when your boss tells you that you did a good job, and a small part of your mind wonders what would your parents think about the decisions you make. A tiny fragment of your self-esteem is totally dependent on the opinion your mentors have of you.

21. You are more cheerful than the average adult because you take time to smell the roses and enjoy the small things in life. You’re also pretty low maintenance – It doesn’t take much for you to have a small moment of happiness.

22. You can get pretty cheesy, especially when it comes to express affection to your friends, but I’m sure they love you all the more for it.

23. Children get along with you because you can speak their language and think like them.

24. You are hardly ever cynical and still believe in things like finding your soulmate or being loyal to your friends.

25. You can be brutally honest sometimes.

26. You can listen to the same song, read the same book or watch the same movie forty times and it’s always absolutely fascinating.