Wistfulness

I saw a young boy standing next to a street sign earlier today, holding on and swinging around.  He couldn't have been more than six.  For a brief moment I flashed back to the Red-Headed Menace doing the exact same thing.

I was never an infant person.  I liked toddlers, but the best age was the age of questioning.  The "why" stage.  "Why can birds fly?" "Why is the sky blue?" "Why do you only have rainbows when it rains?"

And exchanges like this one:

Railfan, aged seven: If people are God's children, what are dinosaurs?
The Red-Headed Menace, age five: Dinosaurs are God's pets.


My kids are wonderful, and I love them as they are now, but sometimes I miss them as they were then.