Why is it that one of the most typically “child-like” things we do is to try and to act like an adult?

Little children dress up like Mom and Dad. (My brothers and I did “fashion shows” for our parents wearing their clothes.)

Kids a little older pretend to drive the car.

Older kids still play with pint-sized pots and pans, play-doctor kits and miniature tool sets.

Some of us are even old enough to remember playing with perhaps the worst child-oriented product ever invented — candy cigarettes. Does anyone remember those? These were facsimile red-tipped replicas that let us “smoke” just like grown-ups. Gives you the shivers now, doesn’t it?

The hard truth is children want to imitate and emulate the adults around them whatever those behaviors might be. That is why being an “adult,” being …