Being a Kid

It'd be great to go back to being a kid. No worries. No responsibilities. Life was easy. Easier than it will ever be again. Of course, nobody knew that at the time. Oh, no, we talked about growing up and what we wanted to do. Now, I often look back and wish that I could just return to that simple bliss. It was so easy to find joy in the smallest and simplest of things. Going down to the river to catch crayfish, riding bikes or walking to Buell's and climbing up into the hay mow with our bounty, going around with my dad while he made farm calls, "camping out" in the front yard, going over to Faith's house for pizza and to watch McGyver, playing in the sandbox with my Tonka truck. So many memories, so much nostalgia.
I know that it can never be like that again. Not for our generation, anyway. Time only moves forward; there is no way back. It's past time to think about what we might want to do when we grow up; it's time to decide and follow our course. That's the hardest part, though, the deciding. Once on the path, it's relatively easy to stay on it; it's finding the path that's the hard part. Well, nobody ever said that growing up would be easy.

Here is a picture that I'm guessing was taken 15-16 years ago. It is a picture of my two adjacent siblings (middle and right) and me (left) taken by our parents old house in PA. I'm not sure who took the picture (probably our mom), but my brother scanned it a while ago and it's one of my favorite childhood pictures.