Tuesday, September 26, 2006

...but some days, i sit and wish i was a kid again (c) ahmad

today when i was on the metro, an interesting childhood memory flashed across my mind. Highlights Magazine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlights) was my favorite thing to read as a little kid. i remembered my mom and i solving the "hidden pictures" puzzle. i really loved those...lookin for the picture santa hat inside the picture of a giant dog, stuff like that. she'd read me stories from the newest Highlights and then we'd get to Hidden Pictures, and we'd say together in a singsong voice, "Hiiideeeen Pictuuuuures!" and i'd grin and laugh.

i miss that sometimes. i can't believe i had so much less to think about back then. or that there was a time when i had so little to think about. now it's how i'm going to pay my next bills, how i can avoid eating ramen for the next two weeks, and how the hell i'm going to afford grad school. why can't life stay as easy as finding the hidden picture of a santa hat? or as predictable as the end of a Bearstein Bears book?

playing dress up. that was fun too. wearing my mom's clothes and pretending to be mommy. or a princess. or a lawyer. or anything. i can't pretend anymore. and hell, i gotta PAY to play dress up now! and H & M doesn't seem very cheap anymore.

i remember when choosing and keeping friends depended solely on whether or not i traded by ho-ho with them for a fruit roll-up. i think as you get older a consideration of REAL emotion and raw honesty and loyalty is more important, but the issue is that everyone's perception of these things is different and depends on your life experience. and experience can make you either optimistic and hopeful or judgmental and perhaps cynical.

sometimes i definitely wish it was as easy as it was when i was 5. this whatever years/pre-quarterlife crisis time, in a word, SUCKS. no matter what aspect--job, dating, money, fam--it nowhere near ideal. but at the same time...i know i couldn't have it any other way.

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