15.

When I grow up, I am going to be a spoilt, bossy know-it-all. I am going to do everything exactly the way I want to. I am going to insist that my way is best-that it is the only way. I am going to live just the way I want to live.

I am going to grow so many indoor plants my house will look forested. I'll have a bouncing castle installed in one bedroom of my house and use it as a personal gym. I'll spend my evenings bouncing and falling on my behind in this new room. I won't let anyone tell me I am too old for it.

Every month, I will stock up on sugary breakfast cereals, not whole grain muesli. I'll eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. I'll collect glow-in-the-dark stars and plaster them on my ceiling. I'll colour-code my wardrobe and alphabetize my books. I'll disinfect my doorknobs and label all my drawers. There will always be a notebook and pen by the phone.

I will have a swing in my backyard. I'll have a petting zoo of baby animals, and when they grow old, I'll build them homes to retire in. I'll have a library of my own. My books will be stored on sky-high shelves, and I will have a sliding ladder to reach them. There will be poufy armchairs scattered around. Not the orthopedic, ergonomic ones. Just poufy armchairs.

I'll have tents built around all the beds. At night, I'll zip up mine and forget where I am. My bed will be suspended from the ceiling, like a hammock. When I sleep, it'll swing by itself. My guests will come especially to sleep in my swinging tent-beds.

My house won't have a house-smell. It will smell like starched linen, or warm vanilla, or freshly-baked bread. The bathrooms will have tubs-germ and mildew free. The tubs will have claws. There will be a constant supply of bubble bath and Crayola bath pellets, the kind that turn your water blue or pink or turquoise.

There will balloons floating around at all times. I won't wait for a celebration. Helium balloons around my ceiling and regular balloons on the floor. There will always be a slice of cake in the fridge.

When I grow up, I will be lovably eccentric. Or perhaps I'll just have a lot of children and say they designed my life.