This is a song about conformism - not wanting to participate in the world as it is: "I don't wanna live in a big old tomb on Grand Street." Waits has always been very non-conformist, eschewing publicity and taking long absences from recording.
The Ramones covered "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" on their 1995 farewell album, ¡Adios Amigos!.
A pair of lines in the first verse may allude back to Waits's "Rain Dogs": "How do you move in a world of fog, that's always changing things/Makes me wish that I could be a dog."
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