I was bouncing home along the cobblestones of this beautifully-old college town of ours, Seven Stars baguette in my tote, with just the implication of fall in the cooling air and the first curled leaves underfoot. It was a lovely night. I was ready to happily spend it alone, making garlic bread and binge-watching HBO’s Girls on my roommate’s parents’ account. I was enjoying the independence of living off-campus, shopping for dinner without being beholden to the nightly selections of the Ratty and the spooky ways they made my stomach feel. And as I took a crisp, deep breath as delicious as the champagne I am now legally allowed to drink, I felt happy with my early adulthood. 

I even smiled at the little girl walking by in her lace pink dress, swinging hand in hand with her father in front of me.

Now, what sparked this smile, this display of pure human emotion? Nostalgia or hope for the future of the human race perhaps? It was big for me. Because the truth is that, normally—and please refrain from getting your pitchfork—children bother me. Namely, the way they are. I generally don’t find them cute. I do not coo at them in their strollers, nor as they waddle, nor at pictures of them on an iPhone held in my face by a doting parent. I ignore them as they gaze up at me or hold out their toy to me. I don’t find it charming when chocolate or red sauce is smeared all over their wide-eyed faces. 

I don’t like ice skating, but I accompany my friends to the rink during the winter so that I can stand on the side and enjoy the hilarious sight of a child falling—bonus points if they have a ridiculous puffy coat on. I am not religious, but I pray hard for anyone except one of them—screaming and fidgeting and kicking—to sit down next to me when riding public transportation. I groan when one of them goes viral for saying “me!” when asked if they want to go to the Four Seasons Orlando. Kids, in short, annoy me.

Of course, I suppress my inner distaste with my best polite smile, but it’s not as much to spare parents’ feelings as it is to preserve my image as a Normal Member of Society. But today, I’m coming clean: I don’t like kids. 

And no, I’m not so cruel as to attempt to convince you not to like them either; I realize that everyone acts as though children are the shining beacon of joy in this nasty, brutish, and short life, and I am the unpopular one with this take. You may find me cold, bitter, a mockery to the maternal purpose of womanhood—I don’t care. My opinion is steadfast. 

So when I saw that little girl—the picture of little girlhood, holding hands with her father—and my immediate reaction was to smile, I thought my cold heart was thawing. I was suddenly being picked up from kindergarten early, hand in hand with one or both of my parents, and en route to my childhood home, or the park, or the ice cream shop—it didn’t matter. I was noting the tastes and smells of the first autumn I would remember, all of them sweet and conspiring to forge my favorite season. I was looking at every single thing with the cool rush I would eventually learn was awe. And when I looked at something too big, leaned my head too far back, and saw every single color churning in the sky, I didn’t fall, but instead felt my mom’s hand squeeze mine, the shoes around my growing feet, and a sort of shield between me and the big bad world. 

That’s when the little girl said to her father, after we’d passed one another: “Did you see her? She was scary. That girl looked scary.”

And immediately, I was no longer a child, but once again a quickly passing spectator of a stranger in a timeline eons away from my own. I was not cute and wide-eyed, everything coming to me brand new and wrapped with a bow. I was scary—I’d been war-torn, weather-beaten, and through the wringer of life. I was an old woman looking back on my childhood memories sadly, pathetically, hoping to get back some fresh vigor I never would. I was also alone, no parents to keep me from flying away or running into danger. If I did, it would be my own fault. 

I’ve always heard that kids are honest. If you want to know if you’re ugly or pretty, ask a kid, or better yet, wait for them to offer the information unprompted. Great for them—I am glad they have the opportunity to express themselves honestly without filter or consequence—but for someone with a history of being insecure, it has the effect of making me terrified of them and what they might say. I was ready to declare this interaction the worst-case scenario. Scary? Did she think this because of my dark clothes, black eyeliner, and tattoos? Or was it something less superficial: did this small girl of only a handful of years somehow know something true about me? My dark and twisted mind, the fact that I sometimes write really bad poetry, that I ate an egg past its expiration date, that I’ll be alone forever?

My friends laughed when I told them this anecdote, but it was not so comical to me. What gave this inchoate smudge of a human being the right to insult me like that? Okay, that was harsh. Rather, why was she allowed to be so rude? I once apologized for implying I didn’t like a song my friend put on aux. That’s when I began to think that this one-sided feud I have with children is not just because they are annoying and sometimes sticky for some reason. There’s jealousy fueling the fire. 

They have no responsibilities, not even for random girls’ feelings whom they pass on the sidewalk. They get driven around, they can still be anyone. Sure, there’s the process of going through the very beginnings of school again, but anything that happens will be followed by an entire life to get back on track. They don’t pay for anything and get driven around everywhere. They are not expected to suck up to people they know nothing about for the small possibility of being considered for a job. They have no idea what the FAFSA is. They get designated time to play and have never had to merge onto a busy highway. They don’t know anything yet—other than toys and lollipops and maybe a U.S. president or two—and it does them good. 

What changed? What if I still want to be a kid? I’d be a really good one, I promise. I would never allow my mom to scold you for watching an rated-R movie on the airplane while I’m next to you. I’d practice the best hygiene of any child you’ve ever seen. And most of all, I would savor the opportunity to–even if just for one more day—experience the protection, the safe knowledge that everything will be okay, the moments of feeling small wrapped in my parents’ arms. 

Then again, there are privileges to growing up, to standing on the cusp of real adulthood. I’m seeing my passions burgeoning before my eyes and taking classes in cool things, and when I talk to my friends, I get the sense that I am becoming someone real. Plus, what I didn’t mention was that next to my baguette, I had a bottle of wine in my tote bag too.