Well, I Guess This Is Growing Up

Farewell to all those dinosaur t-shirts

Have you ever been to a Tilly’s? If you haven’t, I advise you to do everything in your power to keep it that way. A Tilly’s is sort of like a Hot Topic or a Pacific Sunwear, but worse, somehow. It’s probably just worse because I’m old now, and the last time I was in a Hot Topic or a Pacific Sunwear I was young and cool and I understood the pants they were selling and recognized the music they were playing, but alas! now I do not. There is nothing that will make you feel lamer and grouchier and inching ever closer towards Karenhood and/or death than being in your 40s and walking into a Tilly’s.

Unfortunately, my older kid just started middle school and Tilly’s is apparently the only place you are allowed to shop when you’re in middle school. Maybe this is one of the bullet points they went through at the sixth grade orientation? Must have been on a handout I missed. Because the minute you enter middle school, apparently, all of the other stores you used to shop at—or rather, that your mom used to shop at for you—are now FORBIDDEN. Old Navy? Stop it. The Gap? Regretfully, no. J Crew? What, are you crazy? You want him to wear something as embarrassing as stripes???!!

Sorry, it’s Tilly’s or nothing now. And it’s not even just for your own kids — Tilly’s is where they want you to get their friends’ birthday presents too. Life comes at you fast, my dudes! One day you’re choosing between Pokemon LEGO sets, the next you’re buying t-shirts emblazoned with skateboarding logos for children you are fairly certain have never skateboarded.

For the last eleven years, I have been terrorized by that saccharine little sentiment about how one day you’ll pick your baby up for the last time. Truly, it haunts me! I find myself hoisting my kids up every chance I get (let me lift you to get that thing off that high shelf! Oh, is it too far to the car, do you need a piggyback?!) I refuse to not know that this is the last time I’m picking my kid up, even if that means I’ll be moving him into his college dorm as he sits astride my shoulders. (DON’T THINK I WOULDN’T FIND A WAY.)

But I feel like what nobody prepares you for, what totally flies by without you even noticing, is this: one day your kid will wear a sweater that features the solar system for the last time. One day you’ll buy your last National Geographic geode kit! One day you’ll get an email for the Janie & Jack sale, spy an adorable dinosaur shirt, and then realize wait, my kid doesn’t have a favorite dinosaur anymore. Then he’ll come up to you with the Tilly’s website open on your laptop, trying to show you a pair of oversized orange mesh basketball shorts.

A friend told me the other day that she took her sixth grader to a toy shop and he didn’t want anything. It broke her heart in a very specific way, and it kind of broke mine too. When I think about the percentage of my life that I spent in the Target toy aisle when my son was younger, practicing deep breathing exercises while he took longer to choose a single Matchbox car than anyone has ever taken to choose a single Matchbox car in their entire lives, I feel….well, okay, I feel predominantly happy that I will never again have to watch a three-year-old go back and forth between an amphibious vehicle and a non-amphibious vehicle while the seconds tick down towards naptime. But I also feel sad! There are no Matchbox cars at Tilly’s. There are only Vans hoodies and a creeping feeling that you are becoming slowly irrelevant to both your child and the world at large! Kind of a downer, honestly. Not a retail concept I would’ve predicted would flourish!

You know what though, I do call BS that he no longer has a favorite dinosaur. Everyone still has a favorite dinosaur. Right? Even I have a favorite dinosaur. Have I ever ended a piece of writing before by exclaiming, simply, “diplodocus”? No, I do believe this is a first. Very well, then. Here we go. Diplodocus!