To be a kid again

We've been taking our daughter on more & more walks recently. Its really nice to get outside & get her accustomed to the outside world. She just loves it outside.

Anyways, Saturday afternoon, probably about 6:30, 7:00 p.m. we're walking back home from our walk (if you couldn't guess). There's i think 4 or 5 kids playing outside this apartment, all around the ages of i'd say 6-9 years old. As we're walking, one looks at us, straightens his arms out in front of him, points down and says, "Don't look."

I am normally a very curious person, but when an 8 year old tells me not to look, something about it told me to listen to him.

As he sits there, shaking his head back & forth, saying "don't look" i finally look and see a pile of rocks - decent sized ones, about the size of a gallon of milk. He continues to say, "Look, there's a dead bird."

I thought he didn't want us to look??? Hmm, kids are strange.

And he didn't lie, underneath the rocks was a dead bird, crushed. We walk slower as he follows us explaining how they found it and were throwing rocks on it. One of his friends threw a rock on it just right & its guts went all over one of his other friends. He then said that friend went home after that.....

...yeah i'd go home if a bird's guts were just propelled at me. Doesn't seem like much fun!

Anyways, he goes back to his prized possession, and stands there. As we walk by the door of this apartment, another little boy rushes outside w/ a ghetto bird feeder. You know, the one's you make as a kid - pinecone, peanut-butter, bird seed and string? Yup. One of those.

Anyways, that's irrelevant to what happens. This kid rushes outside, stops & points at a boulder in front of him, and with the straightest face possible he states, "this is the biggest rock in our yard."

At first, me and Megan are so confused at what happened. But about 2 seconds later we burst into laughter, and continue laughing at this for the next 30 seconds or so. It was hilarious! I wihs i had it on video, the kids expression was priceless.

Granted me & Megan were a little high from smoking earlier, but this was still the funniest thing to me at the time.



All that got me thinking...did i do stuff like that when i was a kid? Yeah, i'm only 22, so it wasn't THAT long ago, but still. I've come a long way since the younger days, when i used to look up curse words in my dictionary (lyrical quote! Guess who).

I used to set ants/bugs on fire, play in my sandbox w/ army men & trucks, climb trees, you know all the kid things to do. Sadly i even tried my first cigarette at around age 8.

Seeing those kids made me want to go back in time and be a kid again. To be that happy. To find joy in the littlest things, like a dead bird, or the biggest rock in your yard. I think it would be awesome. Like if you could go back with the same mind-frame you had now, would you?

Think about it...To be ten years old again (or younger), you don't have any worries at all besides going to school & listening to your parents. You don't care if people think you're weird or others judging you, you don't worry about getting hurt, you just live life to the fullest while you still can. The funny thing is, kid's don't realize that this part of life doesn't last long. Yet they are able to be the happiest beings.
And those are the most important times in your life, i believe. When you're able to the most insignificant things and find so much joy in them. Makes me jealous.

But then i snap out of it and realize how lucky i am. I have a beautiful girl that i will someday marry, a gorgeous & smart little girl who will be a year in 3 months already, a good, secure job, and a place to live.

Sometimes it takes the littlest thing to make you realize how great your life is. This made me feel like a kid again.