by Casey Lou
April 4, 2001
The wind lingered over my skin like breath as I sat languidly in an old swing. One I'd frequented as a child, when my legs didn't touch the ground and I had to get a running start in order to get going. When the world was so large and things like equations and complex sentences didn't plague my day. Lockers and teachers and an hour long lunch period that seemed to take up the entire school day. Four periods of the same faces and the same text books cracked to the same mindless words that we didn't really need to know in order to survive. Three floors of this and that, a spiraling stairway on each corner of our enclosed environment that supported its own ecosystem.
As I swung gently, the creaky chains suspending me to the set abrasive against my fingers and the rubber seat pressing hard into my thighs, I watched tiny grains of yellow playground sand dance at my feet. The nearby trees rustled, their sturdy, age old trunks holding them up to whatever force the wind might put against them. I wished that I was like that. Perhaps to the world I was a spindly marionette, awkward and easily broken. And there was always someone pulling the strings. Once more, the wind picked up and blew across my face, sending my hair into my eyes like drapery.
The cool air brought back memories of an age before the lukewarm state that settled around my age. When you're supposed to be responsible, but you've really just noticed that you're supposed to be having fun. It was only at times like this when I was alone, that I saw how strange it was to be human. Everything you do, other than eating spinach and riding roller coasters, is new to you. I've never been a teenager before, and yet all the grown ups seem to think that I should know better. Kids, on the other hand, have it easy--they live in their own world. I can't remember anything from then, and that's what makes me think that it's so awesome to be under three feet tall.
When I was around eight or ten, I would visit my grand parents and sit in their bench swing. It was old, and had been painted white by my grandpa. Whenever you sat on it, a little bit of the white residue would rub off on your clothes and the rusty metal beneath it was bumpy and jagged. In the spring when the azaleas were blooming, my grandma, younger brother and I used to swing together. She would hum a song to my little brother, and I would fit against the farthest side, wishing that I was as little as he was. Cradled in her old arms, bundled up in love, being crooned a song that he didn't know. It's around then that you begin to understand why the Fountain of Youth was so searched for by Spain. Because youth is beauty. But youth is also unrestricted to pure ignorance. Four year olds don't care about the O-Zone layer, and they certainly don't care about who the president is. They have no responsibilities other than to learn as they grow, and to grow as they mature.
The night sky above me was dark, and the stars looked farther away than usual. Probably because I was sitting so close to the ground. It took me a few consistent tries to get back to my feet in the sand. Glistening in the balmy, dark night, the jungle gym sat like an inviting temptation. It practically screamed, come climb on me, hang by your legs and claim your stake at the top! And yet when I was standing next to it, when I pressed my fingers to the cold metal, the silent words went away and the crossing bars became a child's thing again. I was an alien in the playground. It was moving on to twelve midnight and I was a foreigner in the sand box. I may have grown a few feet and become more and more worked up by the on come of the ability to take to the roads and drive, but I was still drawn to the playground. It's silly--I can remember last year when I was terrified of blinkers and turn signals. Now I can't wait to get my hands on the steering wheel. There I was standing in the sand as if I belonged, like a piece of equipment.
The playground had been around long before me. Its additions altered the landscape, but still, a lot of children had been there once. And they grew up to be whatever their heart desired. Either that or they let their dreams go down the tubes when their priorities got lost during the stale years of progression as a teenager. I'd been walking, and stopped at the entrance of the park before looking back at the shadowy, stalky figures that symbolized the very essence of life and vitality. Tiny pansies swayed at the boundaries nearby, the constant gusts of chilly night air rushing them about. I turned to face the street that would take me home. Just around the bend my cozy, familiar house waited for me, and I doubted that anyone had missed my presence.
Memories of childhood are faint, and things that happened yesterday are even more obscure. Because they don't seem so important now. But it was yesterday ten years ago, when I got an honor student bumper sticker and almost always had a scrape on my knees or a blister on my hands. Random parts of that yesterday seem real, but not much of the present's. Way back when playgrounds caused childhood dents, dings and minor peeves, I seemed to be in the middle of a cosmic once-in-a-millenium reaction. Recently it was more like I became a mechanical toy programmed to go in one direction. If I bump into a wall, it's time to turn around and start off again, walking plainly until I meet another wall. That's what humans do. Make a wrong decision or find yourself pinned to a problem, then you just make an about face and start again.
Sometimes you get blamed for being reckless or rebellious when it happens. It's all the same, whether you find out too soon or too late. You can get depressed, express yourself in your own way, find your niche, or just go with the flow. It's a see saw ride, being at this age. Up for a while, then down. And if you're let down too fast, you end up really surprised, biting your tongue, and getting angry. While I walked, I smiled, thinking of these things, absently fingering the keys that I'd put in my pocket when I first left.
Life's been related to a lot of things before, and I found it kind of useless to be finding new ways of representing it. In reality beyond the bounds of my mind, the features of my habitat, my family cubby hole and my home, were only a two houses away. A dog barked in the distance and slippery looking gray clouds crept over the milky white face of the moon. I nodded good night to my neighborhood and took out my keys. The wind, being rather pestering, brushed past like a stranger on the street and washed my worries and ponders away. So I had math problems, and so I had to become something special when I got older. It wasn't going to happen tomorrow, and all that really mattered was that I stuck it out and read the book all the way to its end. Swings and sand, all sorts of old thoughts and mistakes were in the yesterday. Tomorrow was something to look forward to, but I wasn't about to waste my day bothering to frown about it.
The End