I Was Thinking... Taking the Time

Remember when you were a kid and life was much simpler? Decisions could be made by a flip of a coin, with eenie, meenie, minie, moe, or by rock, paper, scissors.
And summer was the best time of the year. While most of our parents gave us chores to do, when we were done, it was our time to do what we wanted. It was a time when the only direction we got from mom was to be back in time for dinner. For me, that meant hopping on my bike, with my baseball glove already hanging on the handlebars, and heading out to find somebody else to play ball, just ride bike, or to explore the nearby creek.
Growing up in the country, there was no organized activities for kids. We had to find or make our own entertainment. The type of ball game was determined by the number of kids you could round up.
You may play 500, some type of baseball with less than NINE players, or just play catch. If that didn’t work, there were apples to take off a farmer’s tree, woods to build a fort in, or a creek where you could try to fish for bullheads with homemade poles. There were butterflies to chase, grasshoppers to catch or tadpoles to capture in the creek.
But even if we couldn’t find anything else to do, you could always just lie on the grass and describe the shapes you saw in the passing clouds. While sitting on the ground, you found there was a lot of activity right in the grass. Kids could be entertained for some time by just watching ants busily moving with some unknown but very deliberate purpose.
Years later, I remember the first summer for our oldest daughter. Her first experience with grass was when we set her blanket out on the lawn. She reached out past the edge of the blanket and touched the green for the first time and then quickly pulled her hand back. But she continued to touch and feel and even tried to pull some to eat as she enjoyed a new experience.
So, at what age do we lose the desire to observe and explore all the aspects of the world around us?
Somewhere along the way, life happens. We get older, we get involved with more activities and begin to just “do stuff.” Society expects us to grow up, take responsibility, and be engaged in undertakings that we were allowed to avoid as a kid.
Most of us move through all the phases of life. Yet, before we know it, we are nearing the closing chapters. Suddenly a lot of the required responsibilities are no longer there. In some ways, we’ve come full circle. We can again do pretty much anything we want as long as we are home for dinner.
So that’s how it was, when I was sitting on our deck reading a book. I had the time to observe the world again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small green object floating down from nowhere. It was a tiny inch worm. He was suspended by some type of invisible web that probably came from the tree above. He landed softly on the brown deck boards and his bright green color made him easy to watch.
He inched his way down the board with deliberate speed for an inch worm. He moved from board to board and crossed the crack between with ease. He came to the leg of a chair, stopped, raised the front part of his body, assessed the obstacle, and moved around it.
I moved closer for a better look, and he froze. I backed off and he continued his journey. But now he was tougher to see. His bright green color had morphed into the same color as the deck. What his plan was I don’t know. When a breeze blew some papers off the table, I bent to pick them up and he was gone. Still, I enjoyed my brief time feeling like a kid again, being entertained by the smallest of creatures.
Did You Ever Wonder? — Do hummingbirds hum because they don’t know the words?