While my mind was wandering the other night, I thought of a genius idea: wouldn’t it be so easy to make helmets out of plastic milk cartons? I immediately leaned over to tell my friend. She looked at me like I was crazy and assumed I was joking. I really wasn’t. I meant every word of “Let’s make warrior helmets out of milk jugs and fight.”

So why was it that she didn’t believe I was serious? Have we outgrown that? Since when did we become too old to make warrior helmets out of milk jugs and fight?

Maybe it happened when we stopped thinking about which game we were going to play at recess and started thinking about which college we are going to. As we’ve grown older, I’ve realized that some of our childlike curiosity for fun has dwindled. In middle school, we all wanted to act cool and mature, so therefore we avoided these little kid things like the plague. We are now just a few months away from becoming actual adults, so we don’t have to doubt our maturity if we make warrior helmets out of milk jugs and fight. So why not? Now that we are past our self conscious, maturity obsessed, tween phase and realizing that growing up isn’t all that we expected it to be, maybe we can learn to let go and become kids again.

So I want everyone to know: this time of year, it is acceptable to make warrior helmets out of milk jugs and fight.