Would that we could be 8-year-olds again

Do you ever wish you could be a kid again? If so, today’s column is designed for you.

The author is unknown.

I quit. I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an eight year old again.

• I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four star restaurant.
• I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks.
• I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.
• I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day.
• I want to return to a time when life was simple. When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care.
• All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.
• I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible.
• I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.
• I want to live simple again.
• I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones. I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.
• I want to outgrow shoes rather than wear them out and go barefoot from June 1st to September 1st.
• I want my greatest fear of the day to be whether my mom is going to cook squash for dinner and make me eat it.
• I want to believe that the cookies and milk I left on the mantle for Santa Claus was really eaten by Santa Claus.

So . . . here’s my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this further, you’ll have to catch me first, cause . . .

“Tag! You’re it.”

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1999