Actually, I knew. We were immature and playing for longer than other kids but there was a feeling the last time. I can picture it now, running around in the dark giggling and as our Make Believe characters. It was harder to assume our roles that time. We promised to play again at the next sleepover but somehow, I knew. There was a crisp winter feeling of finality and I felt that we were leaving the world of pretend behind. The next time we hung out we did other things that were fun. Dance to Whitney Houston, read books, sneak into their mom's room to try on all of her random hats, general pre-teen shenanigans.

I think we knew we were behind. At least I was aware of it. For a while we didn't care but the horrors of puberty come for us all I suppose.

Jesus christ

I still play outside smdh

At some point you do everything for the last time and most of the time you don't know.

I have a theory about this. About why our childhood was amazing. It's because we never had something back then to look back on and feel sad about. We lived in the moment. We had our entire life ahead of us.

It seems like it is inevitable that we develop nostalgia and feel bad about missed adventures because we often look in the rear view mirror when we are grown up. But this raises interesting questions: are our brains; reaching the end of their growth spurt, start reusing existing structures and thus we can only live by comparison to our childhood? Is it possible that if we figure out how to allow the brain to continue creating new neurons we can feel as excited as children all our lives ?

Nope. I'm 34 and my best friend and I still go backpacking a few times a year.

fortunately i never had any friends so i have successfully avoided this sad thing

It is shocking how many events were one time. Family reunions which seemed frequent were actually rare. Family trips, parties, playdates, all took a lot of effort to plan and many were done exactly once.

Nah I fuckin knew it because that time was when they really started to bully me and I started avoiding everyone

Nah, we all knew it was the last time because someone got a car.

I still engage in pretend play with friends in my 30s.

There's a rulebook and dice now, but same concept of fantasizing and making up stories.

We even do it outside in the summer

That's true, we tend to do our playing inside these days. I still hang out with one of my friends from childhood though, so not so sad!

I still play in the woods with my friends as an adult. It is a lot less often and we tend be more drunk than we were as kids.

This is both sad from the perspective that it was the last time and nice from the perspective that during that last time, I wasn’t bogged down with that knowledge and was able to enjoy it for what it was at the time.