Can You Tell Me How to Get....
Wherein Our
Heroine Revisits Youth.
I have a theory that everyone has at
least one place where they become a kid again. Some experiences seem to be
tightly woven to the child in us - allowing us still to experience the thrill of
discovery and possibility. In your kid place, you still don't have to decide
what you want to be when you grow up - all doors still feel open. For some,
their kid-place is the ballet, for others an air show or sports event. Take me
to a barn, let me wander around and stroke silky horse noses and I'm six. For
my husband John, his kid-place is probably the
zoo.
It's always fun going
with someone to their kid-place. Their eyes light up and they laugh more
easily. The solemnity of adulthood slides away and you get a little time-travel
journey to their youth. I can highly recommend accompanying someone to their
kid-place if you want to get to know them better. With John at the zoo, there
are hundreds of little capsule experiences that range from fear to laughter. In
the reptile house we get the thrills and chills of big snakes. The small
mammal house is like a wildlife game of "Where's Waldo." Going to the prairie
dog mound is like attending a standup comedy routine. Prairie dogs do a
"jump-yip" to express danger to their community. Since prairie dogs naturally
object to all the people standing around looking at them, they jump-yip quite a
bit, often causing them to fall backwards onto their prairie dog bottoms. Go to
the zoo and see it - it's a lot funnier in person. But the real kid moment
comes at the otter tank.
John
has a profound fondness for otters. I think they bypass his grownup persona,
his responsibility and seriousness, and go straight for the kid funny-bone and
awe. They're clownish and silly, and at the same time they are muscular and
powerful. They get to have both the goofy and the gravitas because they are
otters - it's the niche they adapted to fit. As people, we have to make choices
about who we are and what we want to be. We have to decide what we want to be
when we grow up.
I can
understand wanting to be an otter.
Posted: Thursday - March 04, 2004 at 10:22 AM
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