By Julie Vick of julievick.com

I’m sorry, but there are some places kids really don’t belong, and one of those places is an amusement park made specifically for children.

On a recent trip to Disneyland, I was trying to enjoy a day with my friends, but all the damn kids there kept ruining it.

At the character breakfast, I wanted a chance to get my photo taken with Chip or Dale, but I had to wait for a bunch of preschoolers to do it first. And some of them were crying! I stayed in the line the whole time without shedding a single tear.

Later, I saw one child who couldn’t stand still in the three-hour line for the Nemo submarine and then spent half the ride screaming in terror. I mean, sure, they simulated a submarine crash halfway through, but it was clearly fake!

Then another kid collapsed on the ground crying when she wasn’t allowed to have a pretzel shaped like Mickey Mouse’s face. Sure, I could have just walked away from that unpleasant scene to visit one of the other 84 acres of the park, but then I wouldn’t have gotten my Mickey-Mouse-face-shaped pretzel either.

I really don’t have a problem with kids, I just don’t think they should be seen, heard, or spoken of.

I’m sure that I was a well-behaved child. But the truth is, I didn’t even enjoy being a kid because I kept thinking, “Why are my parents even taking me out in public? Why can’t I just be quietly shuttled from my house to school for 18 years until I’m ready to emerge from the shadows and start contributing to society?”

If I ever have kids, I plan to have the kind you can take places, though. They’ll be able to entertain themselves with a dull spoon and a piece of lint in a restaurant as they wait patiently for their sea urchin toast to arrive. Because if there is one thing that annoys me more than the presence of children, it’s parents who let their children have electronics so they won’t bother irate strangers nearby.

So, to sum up, here is a list of places I think kids shouldn’t be allowed:

• Restaurants that serve cocktails, coffee, or water
• Grocery stores
• Parks that have birds
• Street corners
• In cars that might drive by me
• Places with “Disney” in the title

Here is a list of places they should be allowed:

• Inside their houses
• In their backyards (but please, never the front)

I really wish Disneyland would reconsider their welcoming policy toward children, or at least think about having several child-free days throughout the week so that the rest of us can enjoy the park with dignity.

Hopefully this policy can be changed sometime in the next year. Because I want to get married at Disney, but having anyone even mention the name of a kid on my wedding day is definitely going to ruin it for me.

*****

About the Author

Julie Vick is a writer living in Colorado whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Brain, Child, and Mom.me. You can read more of her work at julievick.com or follow her on Twitter @vickjulie.