Comic Sans is one of the most iconic fonts ever created by Microsoft. Inspired by comic book lettering, Vincent Connare designed this casual typeface and geared it towards children and fun uses. Comic Sans has, however, since gathered many haters for how childish and misused the font can be, especially in serious circumstances. Haters have banded together to create websites and movements such as Ban Comic Sans (“Putting the sans in Comic Sans”) and Comic Sans Criminal (“There’s help available for people like you!”).

I fell in love with Comic Sans MS in the fourth grade. I loved the way it curved, slight but noticeable, and the fun but uniform look it gave to my roughly crafted stories and poems (which included quintessential lines such as, “I could feel the cold, blue / Ocean watr [sic] on my bare feet.”) I loved that my best friend loved it, too; many of our conversations were geared towards raving about how awesome Comic Sans is.

Now, I use Times New Roman with my essays, and occasionally Arapey with my stories. I decided that Comic Sans, like my OshKosh pants or Justice shirts, was too childish for me when I hit the sixth grade, and my scorn for the typeface has grown ever since. Every time someone mentioned Comic Sans (“And it was in Comic Sans!” or “Do you see that sign? Imagine it in Comic Sans!” or “When I was five, I named my cat Comic Sans!”), I would laugh and then take a few jabs at how silly Comic Sans is. Once, my friend and I passed a house number sign in Comic Sans while going for a run, and we both burst out laughing. In other words, my reactions to Comic Sans have become similar to my reactions to his buddy Papyrus: “I would definitely buy Edible Arrangements — but Papyrus!”

Recently, however, I have had an epiphany: no matter how much we try to deny it, there is a bit of Comic Sans in each of us. It is that part of you that bursts out laughing when your friend recounts how her mother broke her hip yesterday, or that part of you that gets a little too excited when you pass by a swing set and insist on stopping even though your friends are trying to get to a coffee shop or a bookstore. Essentially, for me, it is the part of me that I have been trying to repress for a long time now: the extroverted, slightly obnoxious part of me that I gave up when I grew up.

Looking back, I realize that I tried to give up this part of me when I entered middle school (and, not coincidentally, when I gave up Comic Sans as a typeface). Maybe it was that I had just moved to a new school and left my best friend, with whom I’d always make butt jokes and other sophisticated comedy, behind. Maybe it was that I now lived an hour away from my school, so I didn’t even have time to be obnoxiously immature. Mostly, I believe that it was the idea in my head that, now that I’d entered the double digits of age, it was absolutely necessary to “grow up” or “be mature.”

Now, I realize the danger of those thoughts. They kill the childish imagination and activity in us, the immature and the fun. The first time I was in the center of attention in a group was when I finally managed to bring out a smidgen of Comic Sans, and my jokes finally made people laugh, and I finally felt good about how I interacted with people.

In the end, I guess there is a balance between Comic Sans and Times New Roman, but if you’re anything like me, your serifed and aligned attitude might only have one solution: the Power of Comic Sans.