I Want to Be Six Again. . .

           

To Whome it May Concern:

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult in order to accept the responsibilities of a 6 year old.  The tax base is lower.  I want to be six again.

 

            I want to go to McDonalds and think it’s the best place in the whole wide world to eat.  I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make waves with rocks.  I want to think M&Ms are better than money, because you can eat them.  I long for the days when life was simple.  When all you knew were your colors, the addition tables and simple nursery rhymes, but it didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know, and you didn’t care at all.

 

            I want to go back to first grade and have snack time, recess, gym, art, music and field trips.  I want to be happy, because I don’t know what should make me upset.  I want to think the world is fair and that everyone in it is honest and good.  I want to believe that anything is possible.  Sometime, while I was maturing, I learned too much.  I learned of nuclear weapons, prejudice, starving and abused kids, lies, unhappy marriages, illness, pain and mortality.  I want to be six again.

 

            I want to be oblivious to the complexity of life and be overly excited by the little things again.  I want to live knowing the little things that I find exciting will always make me happy as when I first learned them.  I want to be six again.

 

            I remember not seeing the world as a whole, rather being aware of only the things that directly concerned me.  I want to be naive enough to think that if I’m happy, so is everyone else.    I want to spend my afternoons climbing trees and riding my bike, letting the grow-ups worry about time, the dentist, and how to find the money to fix the car.  I want to wonder what I’ll do when I grow up and what I’ll be, who I’ll be, and not worry about what I’ll do if this doesn’t work.  I want that time back.  I want to use it now as an escape, so that when my computer crashes, or I have a mountain of paperwork, or two depressed friends, or a fight with my spouse, or bittersweet memories of times gone by, or second thoughts about so many things, I can travel back and build a snowman, without thinking about anything else except whether the snow sticks together and what I can possibly use for the snowman’s mouth.  I want to be six again.   Don’t you?

                                                                                           AUTHOR UNKNOWN