Will your younger self approve?

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my younger self. By younger self I mean my 5 year old self. I keep asking myself: Would my younger self approve?

Would the younger Kiara approve?

When I was little, I was a very big tomboy. I used to play with bugs, chase boys around with all sorts of them literally from big to small. I loved playing pranks on people, scaring the living daylights out of them, doing all sorts of silly things and part of being tomboy, I also loved to play with cars and refused to wear dresses, because it wasn't fun to play in it. Yes, that was my younger self. Just writing this blog post is giving me nostalgia, which I can't explain. Is it a part of yourself which you lose whilst growing up?

I feel like I have left my younger self behind on some playground, because somewhere along the line, life said that it is time to grow up. Why is growing up so boring? Waking up, getting ready to go to class, working, eating and sleeping has become my daily routine. But yet, life is fun and it is long enough to both have fun and sometimes be serious and act like an adult. I must just make time to have fun and just be me who I really am. I always make excuses that I don't have time, but my problem is that I never make time.

I miss the days when I made pranks on people. I can never forget the different reactions I got from people and how i laughed until I cried.

I once had a small paper bag, which said "Rattle snake eggs: handle with care". I would take it to school and show the teachers and they were usually curious to look inside, once opening the bag, a rattling sound would come out of the bag.

The trick was that there was a rubber band with a piece of metal in the middle of the rubber band. You then had to wind the rubber band up and hold the packet correctly so it won't unwind. When people opened the packet, the rubber band unwound and the metal piece hit the sides of the packet, making the rattling sound. It scared a lot of people and the reactions were priceless.

My sister brings the fun back

Since my sister's birth, I learned to chill a bit and have fun, because she is only young once and when she's older I won't be cool enough to have fun times with her. She taught me a lot about life and how to enjoy the simple stuff.

Enough of the complaining! This is my decree to myself for all to see: I will go back to my roots and have fun for the remainder of 2014! I will pull pranks on my friends and family! Yes, you heard it... be prepared, I'm coming