Childhood Joys

We went on vacation recently. We visited family but also stayed in some motels. From my perspective, the stay was adequate. Rooms were clean and well maintained. The shower actually had some water pressure so that’s a huge plus. The bed only hurt my back after a few days instead of instantly. Breakfast was your usual bland fare but edible.

To my kid, wow, this was an amazing experience. The place had two pools, an indoor and an outdoor. It also had a playground. It only consisted of a slide and a two-person rocker swing. That’s more than you find most places so that is cool. But compared to the playground at any of the parks near home it’s quite lacking. That didn’t matter to him. It was here and that made it the best thing ever.

He also discovered a mysterious and strange device known as a landline phone. He was absolutely fascinated by this. He begged to use it each day to call the family to arrange the day’s events. He’s never really shown any interest in placing calls from our cells (something I can sympathize with).

I wish I could recapture that innocence and ability to get such extreme pleasure out of such simple things. Growing up really sucks the joy out of life. Though, I suppose that childlike glee is also a double-edged sword.

While all these experiences are “the best thing ever”, every small disappointment or minor inconvenience is similarly “the greatest tragedy in the history of the world”. When you don’t have a tremendous amount of life experiences to compare things too, what to us boring adults are rather mundane things, really are the best and the worst things in the world.