You always hear people saying that one of the best things about having kids is that you get to see the world through their eyes. It may sound cliche but it’s true in a lot of different ways.

For one, children are infinitely fascinated with things that adults have long gotten used to, and bored with. Take a kid on an elevator and see if he isn’t instantly infatuated with pushing the floor buttons. Take two kids on there and you have to learn how to negotiate this “honor” — “Billy can press the button on the way up, and Sally can press it on the way down.”

And I don’t know why but kids are inordinately fond of those rinky-dink little carousel rides you see outside of places like Walmart. You know the ones–they have little cars or horses that kids can “ride” around and around on, creaking all the way. Next time you pass one of those and see a kid on it, take a look at her face. She will be either wearing an expression of pure joy or pure terror, both of which are inexplicable on a ride that goes .0005 miles per hour. But in their limited life experience, that ride is a thrill.

Even the things that adults grow to think of as drudgery have some kind of strange “brass ring” quality for kids.

Like driving. I was standing in line the first thing in the morning on my 16th birthday waiting to take my driver’s test. For the first few months after I got it, I would jump at the chance to run errands for my mother. “Need a loaf of bread from the store? I’m your girl!” Now? It’s like torture to have run out to the store and pick something up. I have a long work commute as well, so now I’ve come to see my car as a little prison cell.

And I cannot believe there was a day when I begged my mother to let me shave my legs. As a young teen, I lacked the perspective to know that that would merely become an act of physical maintenance that I would grow to dread.

Speaking of shaving and children’s perspective, when my son was about 10, I found him shaving his face in front of the bathroom mirror just like his dad. Horrified that he could have beheaded himself, I chastised him and said, “If you shave, the hair will just grow back darker! Do you want to be the only boy in third grade with a beard?” He looked at me like I was crazy and asked, “Why wouldn’t I?!”

So I guess it’s all about the impatient desire to grow up much too soon. If only they realized how good they had it now.