Yosef is happy from the time he gets up in the morning until he's back snug in his crib at day's end. Yosef's life is a study in inexhaustible elation and wonder. Every moment presents another challenge, every fallen leaf or errant piece of sidewalk chalk is cause for celebration.
Do you remember being that way? Do you remember seeing the world as miraculous and amazing? I do, and I wasn't even 20 months old at the time. When I was 8, 9, 10, 11, and maybe even 12, the world was an astounding place indeed. I was never going to grow old. I was never going to get sick. Hell, I was never going to die! My head was wrapped up in turtles, lizards, and frogs, birds and bugs and butterflies. There was Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, and The Honeymooners.
There were my dreams of being a musician, which took flight with some early compositions that I still remember. They were God-awful, but I didn't think so then. There was my Martian imaginary friend, Fling Baboom. He was a rock-and-roll singer back on his home planet. I spent many happy hours with Fling, interviewing him on my radio show. Sometimes he would even sing for the audience, usually his Martian smash hit, "Syato Limpufo."
I guess it's unrealistic to think that I never got upset or angry, but my recollections of my childhood are by-and-large warm and fuzzy and fine. There was magic everywhere. I did just enough homework and schoolwork to get by. My parents knew they had a reasonably bright kid on their hands, but a dreamer whom they had no idea how to handle. I'm convinced that nowadays I'd be diagnosed with something: ADD, ADHD, Asberger's, Learning Disability. I was none of those things. I was bored! I didn't give a rat's pitoot about anything they were trying to cram into my incredibly malleable brain. My world was my amusement park.
So what happened? When does the jaundice set in? Where does the sarcasm come from? What do we become when we stop listening to the little boy inside who knows what to do? It hurts to know that he's been in there all along, yelling on top of his lungs, "Hey! You're fucking this up!" and that he's been drowned out by the cacophony of other misguided, ugly pronouncements. The Voice of Reason. The Voice of Maturity. The Voice of Responsibility. The Voice of Experience. You know what? Those voices might be occasionally helpful, even necessary. But not at the expense of the Young You. The Young You is sometimes right. In fact, check that: The Young You is almost always right. And the tragedy of our lives is that once you let the magic slip away, it's damn near impossible to get it back.
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| I'm the one on the left |
