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ABCs
At nine o’clock on a Sunday this is what happens: Brian calls. “Carol,” he says (although that is not my name.) “Do you want to come over and eat ice cream?” Except for very rare occasions, I do. Frivolousness reminds me of being a kid. Good ice cream reminds me of frivolousness. How getting ice cream was this little irrelevant occasion that was an enormous event in childhood. I didn’t notice its importance shrinking until I realized how long it’d been since I’d gone out for a scoop of the cold treat. Justly, I’d also failed to notice other dilutions of childhood priorities: Kite flying, bug-hunting, making slip-knots out of long grasses to catch blue-bellied lizards. Listening to crickets and owls more than grown-ups. Making mud pies and flower-hose-water soup. Never wanting to go to bed, regardless of exhaustion.
Occasionally I try to inject my young adult life with childishness. Purposely letting inappropriate laughter careen out of my chest like a mischievous animal down a slippery slope. Quietly sneaking around hallways and corners, inching along the wall like a spy. Randomly leaping into stacks of dried leaves, just to hear the crackling sounds break the silence of the cold afternoon. Sometimes it works. The breaking out of the standard routine lights a sort of spark in a habit-hardened-heart. Unless the non-sequitur activity is met by an attack of adultness: Villainous people telling you that making wishes on dandelions spreads weeds.
When we grow up we lose something: X. Youth, in all its blankness and malleability, is in many ways stronger than the wisdom so often equated with age. Zooming from computer labs to grocery stores, most adults forget about counting flower-petals, catching grasshoppers, wondering about bees.
At nine o’clock on a Sunday this is what happens: Brian calls. “Carol,” he says (although that is not my name.) “Do you want to come over and eat ice cream?” Except for very rare occasions, I do. Frivolousness reminds me of being a kid. Good ice cream reminds me of frivolousness. How getting ice cream was this little irrelevant occasion that was an enormous event in childhood. I didn’t notice its importance shrinking until I realized how long it’d been since I’d gone out for a scoop of the cold treat. Justly, I’d also failed to notice other dilutions of childhood priorities: Kite flying, bug-hunting, making slip-knots out of long grasses to catch blue-bellied lizards. Listening to crickets and owls more than grown-ups. Making mud pies and flower-hose-water soup. Never wanting to go to bed, regardless of exhaustion.
Occasionally I try to inject my young adult life with childishness. Purposely letting inappropriate laughter careen out of my chest like a mischievous animal down a slippery slope. Quietly sneaking around hallways and corners, inching along the wall like a spy. Randomly leaping into stacks of dried leaves, just to hear the crackling sounds break the silence of the cold afternoon. Sometimes it works. The breaking out of the standard routine lights a sort of spark in a habit-hardened-heart. Unless the non-sequitur activity is met by an attack of adultness: Villainous people telling you that making wishes on dandelions spreads weeds.
When we grow up we lose something: X. Youth, in all its blankness and malleability, is in many ways stronger than the wisdom so often equated with age. Zooming from computer labs to grocery stores, most adults forget about counting flower-petals, catching grasshoppers, wondering about bees.