Days that were wide open expanses to be filled with the decisions of what kids came out to play.

Ideas that were not judged by reality or merit, simply accepted because you said them.

The government of childhood that did not rely on votes but took into consideration the weakest and let them be catcher or everlasting twirler or use the chalk to draw the hop-scotch boxes.

The common sense of kindness that brought a million waxy Dixie cups to the sidewalks to be filled from Tupperware pitchers of sticky, colored, sugar-rich beverages.

Taking turns when the toy was not even your own and being allowed to injure yourself on the neighborhood stilts, pogo stick or rusty scooter.

It was the earliest lessen that freedom comes with costs,

the ones that taught us all that the exhilaration and possibilities were worth the risk.

All the kindness we were born with,

cooked out of us by an education that creates a competition between us

and lets us know that life is a reward system for right answers.

Adulthood is the struggle between our memory of what life was like when right and wrong was not the measure of an idea,

before the chafing struggle of the nagging feeling that what you’ve been instructed is right is questionable.

Perhaps adults just need a “do-over”.