The Title is ______.

sunshine, lolipops and rainbows.

are you ever tempted to wish yourself back to childhood? i have very specific memories of growing up. some of them are quite fabulous, like making tin-can stilts with the neighbor kids and madly stomping up and down the block in the rain. my best friend grant lived two doors down. i used to climb over the partitians between the porches to ring the bell and hope my mom didn't see me because i was supposed to go down our front steps and use the sidewalk to get to grant's house. we rarely followed this rule because it took like one thousand years to go around when all you really had to do was scoot across the porch of the people who lived in the middle. grant and i played together virtually every day when we were little. i loved going to his house because he owned a vast army of GI Joes and dinosaurs. plus he had this unbelievably magical contraption called a water bed. WATER BED. it was too big to climb up on without the aid of the step-stool but since we each felt a compelling urge to outdo and out-cool the other, actually USING the step-stool was absolutely out of the question. We would scurry and scramble around trying to hoist ourselves up on to the water bed as quickly and with as seemingly little effort as possible to create the illusion that it was all off-handed and casual and, upon completion of this operation, hastily glance over to see if we had won. winning meant automatic supremacy. grant won more often than me. i made sure to loudly proclaim (to the GI Joe ranks...?) that it was because he practiced more since it was his house. then we would get bored and move on to the Tanks and T-Rexs. i would bring my barbies over sometimes but since i did not have barbie cars we just used the tanks. one day we made up this game where the GI Joes were going to parachute in and save the barbies from being eaten by the dinosaurs in the back yard sandbox. (*NOTE* the back yard was roughly 10x15 ft of grass/cement.) grant and i went upstairs to the small balcony on the second story of his town house and prepared the men for their mission. we stood on our tippie toes peering over the railing to see if the GI Joe parachutes would open in time. one by one, most of the small green men heroicly sailed into (or around) the sandbox to fulfill their duties. this gave me a brilliant idea. why not give a parachute to one of the BARBIES?? of course. why had we not thought of it sooner? off i ran to get a barbie while grant set to work detatching a parachute from one of the good ol' joes. together we tied the chute on to the barbie and tossed her over the edge. she didnt make it. we looked for several pregnant seconds. "Hey you wanna see my new legos?" and just like that, we were off. ...being a kid isn't easy, but there is something magical about the childlike ability to bounce back. if at first you don't succeed, you've probably already lost interest in it anyway so it doesnt really matter. some parts of childhood are care free because there simply isnt the time to remember them all. that's what i miss.

posted by k.o. @ 8:59 PM