When we're kids, being an adult and getting to do whatever we want often seems like the bestest, most awesome thing we could imagine.
But not everything is better as an adult.
Jobs, responsibilities, and that weird back pain you always seem to get when you sit at your desk too long are just part of getting older. A lot of things that were awesome as a kid just don't hit the same as an adult either.
Redditor Athompson9866 asked:
"What was f'king awesome as a kid, but sucks as an adult?"
Luxury Bones
"Losing a tooth"
- Content-Discussion56
"Oh yes! Can you imagine running around showing your family: 'Look! I lost a tooth! Doesn't it make me look adorable?'"
"And when you are a kid, a lost tooth makes you money. $ As an adult, it costs you way more than all the money the tooth fairy ever gave you."
- 4ninawells
It's All Junk
"Getting mail. I remember everyday begging my parents if I got mail. (I had pen pals). I got so excited when something came for me. Now I dread going to the mailbox because all that will be there are bills."
- Slowmechanic180
"Always bills 😞"
- Athompson9866
"And junk scams or advertisements"
- bsEEmsCE
Doughboys Cost How Much?!
"The State Fair. Especially now that I have to pay for everything."
- Lala6699
"My parents took us to Disney World for a week as kids. I went for 4 days with my husband a few years ago and wanted to go home with how expensive everything was. I went home and thanked my parents for that trip."
- jetsqueak
"'2 slices of pizza and 2 sodas? That’ll be $35 please.' —The County Fair"
- oiwefoiwhef
Get In, Get Out
"Going to the mall. I used to like browsing stores, but now I just want to get what I need and go."
- JumpyBomber
"I mean, most malls are also depressing vistas of empty storefronts bookended by a department store on life support these days"
- negativeyoda
"There used to be fun things at the mall. An arcade, stores with stuff in them to look at... now it's empty except for maybe a drug store and a grocery store."
- arvy_p
World Go Spinny
"Spinning in circles."
"I try to do that now while holding my little one and I do about two spins before I'm lightheaded and dizzy as a drunk."
- lamacake
"Turning my head too fast makes me dizzy and nauseated lol"
- Athompson9866
"I was soooo surprised by this as an adult! Spinning and rollercoasters are fun as a child. I tried that as an adult with my kids and felt like I was going to die. The dizziness takes so much longer to go away and you feel terrible the whole time."
- AgeOfJace
"Staying awake till 2 in the morning as a teen/young adult: 'Yea baby!! the possibilities are ENDLESS!!'"
"Staying awake till 2 in the morning as a 40-something: 'This is gonna hurt in the morning'"
- Significant_Map122
"My circadian rhythm is set so firmly that I know I'm still gonna wake up at 7 am no matter how late I try to stay up so I hate staying up past 1 am. I'm usually in bed by like 9:30pm these days just cause I'd rather get comfortable and play a game on my phone until I get sleepy."
"I'm 38 with the sleep schedule of a 4 year old but I don't care."
- JoeyJoJo_Junior
All Pain, All The Time
"No Pain! I could fall down, scrap my knee and cry for like 1 minute and then get back up and ride a bike, or play tag or whatever. Now, I fall down... I am staying down and may need Life Alert! I have to take advil, put my knee up with Ice, and complain to my wife how painful it is for the next week. That is if I am lucky and didn't break the whole thing."
- Ekecede
"So I'm like into jogging now and I wished I got into it when I was younger. After a run, I felt this weird pain, like a bruise, on the back of my right foot. Long story short, it's Haglund's deformity. I googled it and it said, 'it's a common injury that occurs to middle aged people who runs.'"
"I don't know what hurts more, my foot or my self esteem when I realize now I'm middle-aged."
- mymymissmai
🎶 Summer Breeze Makes Me Feel ... Blah
"Summer. When you’re a kid, it's three months of freedom from school. When you’re an adult, you still have to go to work, but now it’s sweltering hot and you’re sweating your balls off all day, every day."
- chadthundertalk
"This is the answer I was looking for. It’s even harder if you are a working parent - trying to give your kid that super awesome summer while trying to keep your job. That balance between 'I want to come play at the park with you' and 'I really don’t want to lose my job' is hard."
- kennedar_1984
Sick Days
"Staying home on a sick day."
"As a kid it was a huge victory, got to stay in bed all day, watch TV, and having a parent tend to your every need. Then as an adult you're just thinking about the work you're gonna have to make up for and how you hope you don't need to go to a doctor."
- -eDgAR-
"Hehe, now there's WFH so you can be sick AND still work! Got COVID? Well, we have to get this proposal out today and you have a laptop, right?"
- Thunderhorse74
Adulthood definitely isn't the sunshine and roses most of us thought it was going to be when we were little, that's for sure.
We've all heard creepy rumors or legends that have made falling to sleep far more challenging than necessary.
Such as ghosts that supposedly haunt old buildings or alligators supposedly lurking in sewer systems.
If there's anything guaranteed to send shivers down the spine of superstitious or panic-stricken individuals, it's learning that the terrifying information they've just been told is fact, and not fiction.
Making one nervous to step out their door in the morning, let alone fall asleep.
Redditor mimiqttt was eager to hear the most utterly spine-tingling facts people knew, leading them to ask:
"What are some creepy facts you know?"
For The Sake Of Transparency...
"Box Jellyfish are not only the most venomous jellies to humans, but they also possess at least 24 functional eyes (of various degree) on its body despite having no centralized brain."
"Four of its eyes always peer up out of the water regardless of the animal's body position."
"Some eyes can make out images, others are more primitive."- Southern_Gator
The Last Thing You'll Ever Hear...
"Hearing is the last sense you lose before dying."- HorrorPusherr
Talk About Keeping You Up At Night...
"Hundreds of people die every year."
"From being strangled by their bedsheets."- bender0x7d1
Sunny Day Bed GIF by VVS FILMSGiphySay Cheese!
"If all bacteria in a cheese decided to move in the same direction the cheese would move quite a distance in a day."- Worldly-Traffic-5503
Deserving Of A Raised Brow...
"Due to human artificial selection, dogs are evolving eyebrows."- Light_of_Niwen
Beyond An Existential Problem...
"There is a condition where you just think you’re dead or don’t exist."
"People who have it sometimes stop eating because they think they’re dead."- BlueCanary434
Sad Halloween GIF by This GIF Is HauntedGiphyAmong The Many Reasons You Should Always Knock...
"One of the most common places to find a dead body is on the toilet."
"Cause when they're alive and not feeling well, the first thing they do is go to the toilet thinking it could be a bowel issue."-pumpkinthighs
Dubious Honor...
"Herculaneum is better preserved than Pompeii, it just hasn't been excavated as much."
"Pompeii was essentially destroyed by falling volcanic rock, it's dead later being buried by ash after rigor had set in."
"Herculaneum was destroyed by pyroclastic flows so hot that the liquids in people's bodies turned to vapor and exploded instantly."
"Currently, the population in the area is so large that the Italian government is having a hard time deciding whether or not it's worth it to warn or evacuate them or not."-Reddit
Can't Say It Ran In The Family
"In a strange and semi creepy coincidence, Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, was saved from falling off a train platform and being run over by Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth."- Infamous-Piece3783
train tracks natgeo channel GIF by National Geographic ChannelGiphyA Job Not Fit For The Human Race.
"Cadaver dogs can smell bodies through waters."
"Lakes , etc."- PlaysTheTriangle
...BWAHAHAHAHAHA...
"If you build something in your yard against HOA rules, then it’s called an unwanted erection."- thecookiesmonster
When Your Body Starts Gaining Up On You...
"Your eyes have their own immune system that works separately from your body’s immune system."
"If your body’s immune system found out it would attack your eyes."
"I read this here and at my last eye appointment I asked if it was true."
"The eye doctor said 'Yeah, it’s kinda weird' and I was like 'kinda?'"- McSmackthe1st
Eyes Blink GIF by Eternal FamilyGiphyPretty And Delicate On The Outside...
"If given access to it, butterflies will happily drink blood."- supermarketblues
The Only Thing Scarier Than One Black Hole...
"During the merger of two black holes, a black holes can occasionally get ejected from the system and get shot out into open space and become a wandering black hole."
"The creepy part for me is that because a large part of the way in which we see black holes is through their interactions with their surroundings we wouldn’t really be able to see it coming towards us."- rflok34
Vanity Is A Sin, After All...
'Everyone who has ever owned the HOPE DIAMOND has met some sort of gruesome, untimely death."- QuietRulrOfEvrything
diamond supply GIFGiphyThe world is a fascinating, often terrifying place.
Perhaps why some people firmly believe ignorance is bliss.
On the other hand, knowledge is power.
So if you see a school of jellyfish, you all now know better than to think they can't also see you...
Do you ever use a product and wonder... "Who in the world thought this would work?"
That seems to be an issue with a lot of items in life.
Like, who designed all these extra dinner forks?
It's all too confusing when you just want to eat a salad and a steak.
Let me keep my fork.
You're wasting water on all the cleaning.
Think before you create.
Redditor DongLaiCha wanted to discuss some products that may need more in-field research, so they asked:
"What products are clearly made by people or companies who never actually use them?"
Remember CDs?
It was easier to break into the Pentagon than open that plastic wrapping.
Who thought that idea up?
Too Dry
Hair Bathing GIFGiphy"I swear that people who design some shampoo and conditioner bottles have never tried to use them while wet."
danarexasaurus
Assessments
"Elementary state assessments. They are the most obtuse, poorly written, unrealistic questions on earth. They enrage me. They are clearly written by people who either have zero experience in elementary education or haven’t had any in a decade or so."
meadow_chef
"I have a BA in English and couldn't figure out one of the answers to my child's third-grade ELA state test practice. I spoke to the teacher about it and she sounded so defeated about the testing. There's no way to prepare children for a test when the questions and answers are so poorly written that the students, their teacher, and the parents can't pick the correct answer."
DistractedHouseWitch
Cheap and Expensive
"A few years ago we wanted a coffee maker with a slightly larger carafe. The only 14-cup one we could find at a reasonable price was branded with Drew Barrymore's name. Whatever, we bought it. It was the worst kitchen device I've ever owned. The interface to set the clock, program it, etc. was absolutely baffling to use, never seemed to do the same thing twice."
"The instructions were apparently written by whatever guy at the factory had a cousin who'd seen an American TV show once. And when it actually did somehow make coffee, it came out shriekingly hot, to where I would put a couple of ice cubes into my travel mug when I left for work just to get it down to drinkable temperature."
Fabulous-Quality-282
Flip It
"Those who make the 'pull this flip to open' on plastic packaging of cold cuts."
MissNatdah
"Similarly, the people who make 'resealable' packages of food products where you have to cut it open in a certain place, but cutting there either results in: A) the package still being sealed closed, or B) ruining the internal sealing zipper. I have this issue with the frozen dumplings I buy and no matter what I do, I have NEVER been able to reseal the package as advertised and have to resort to a chip clip."
pls_send_caffeine
Punch a Hole
Mac And Cheese Eating GIF by Megan BatoonGiphy"The 'push here to open' spot on Kraft Mac and Cheese."
coop_doop
"Whenever I get a different brand I just punch a hole in the same spot out of habit. It’s about exactly as hard to do as with the Kraft ones. So they might as well take out the perforating step and save .001¢/box in the production process."
Reaper_Messiah
Why do they want to keep our Mac and Cheese from us?
Give me my meal!!
Tearing Sheets
office paper GIFGiphy"Those toilet paper holders in public toilets that cut off at two sheets."
theshortlady
"Same area: those paper towel dispensers that require a two-handed pull, commonly leaving you with two little torn-off triangles of paper in your hands."
repowers
Useless
"Zebra printers. I swear Zebra customer service is useless. I've had to call the help desks for the specific companies I've worked for because the Zebra CS is just like 'Huh!?'"
monotoonz
"We wrote our own internal manuals for how to setup, manage, and troubleshoot Zebra printers. It includes helpful information like 'Do not call Zebra about this issue, instead, see Appendix A' (which is screenshots of conversations about how it is is a known issue and the resolution should be coming shortly (dated 2016))."
001235
City Life
"Maybe a bit off-topic, but in a meeting with a former colleague of mine, the person in charge of the metro for a nearby city admitted that he had never used the metro. Not that he didn’t use the metro, but that he had never used it in his life, even once. I suspect that this kind of thing isn’t uncommon for government services."
KireGoTI
"Similar story. A lifelong friend of didn’t even know we had a Metro until a recent expansion meant she had to drive a different way into her office. She works for the city council."
TheKingMonkey
Warn You
"Hospital beds. From the standpoint of the person who has to push it around and mess with rails that get caught in the mattress and plug it in with a long dirty cord that gets mixed up with another random cord that no one knows its purpose. No retractable cords so they constantly drag on the ground and try to trip you when pushing the bed."
"Brakes that are in the most awkward position that you have to invert your knee to reach with your foot. And worst, the screeching, ear-piercing alarm that they emit to 'warn you' that the bed is not locked. Hospital beds are obnoxious."
Agitated-Effort3423
Help Please
Customer Service Waiting GIF by Juno CalypsoGiphy"Customer-facing software. Developers should be required to hire grandmas under the explicit condition that if grandma can't look at a menu option and decide what to click without giving up and calling the help desk your functionality has failed."
Puzzleheaded-Bat8657
I can't even begin to get into software options.
It brings back too much PTSD.