This one goes out to all the kids of spring

I just don’t know how I would be able to survive in a place that didn’t have at least some flavor of all four seasons. This doesn’t mean that it’s rainy in December, no I mean that there is full on snow and freezing cold and my wife complains when we go to the car and yells at me because I left the door open for too long. And when fall hits it is actually fall, meaning that the leaves are falling and not because some boll weevil infected it no because it is cold and so the tree decides to die for a temporary time.

I love all seasons, and I mean that, I’m not one of those fair weather fans of the seasons. Every time that we are going into a new season I find myself yearning to the last season. Right now part of me wishes that we’d have a huge snowstorm that pours about three feet of that beautiful stuff on the ground. I think that this is because I had such a great childhood. Winter meant snow and snow was like a toy, spring meant I could go outside, summer meant I could go to the pool, and fall meant I could play in the leaves. I think you’ve figured out by now that I didn’t have too many video games when I was a kid.

Few people remind me more of my youth than my nieces. They seem to constantly be a phantasmagoria of fun, they love TV just like any other kid but they remind me how simple life used to be. Especially the youngest, well I use the term youngest loosely she isn't the youngest but she's pody trained which puts her out of the baby catagory and into the child catagory, and she is the youngest child.  She reminds me of those people in that movie, “The God’s Must Be Crazy.” You know the one where they find an old bottle and they find a million uses for the dang thing, well that’s her. She seems to be cool with anything. If there isn't anything going on she can twirl, that's all just twirl, that's fine, it reminds me of when I was a kid I could just keep myself occupied by shifting my weight left to right and watching my arms flop up and down. Her trust is so naked; she’ll do just about anything to be in the group, probably just an unfortunate effect of being a middle child. I say that being the middle child and knowing how it feels to do something knowing you were being picked on but just complying with it so you could remain part of the group. Still but it is this trust and undaunting persuit of joy that makes me so envious of where she is in life.

I really miss those days when everything I did was fun and full of whimsy. I watch my nieces do their karaoke and I get the feeling that for those few seconds they really truly believe that they really are Hannah Montana, even though that is a person who is wholly fictional, even in the fictional television series she is, but for those short three minutes and forty five seconds while my nieces are doing their thing on the karaoke machine they are an aspiration of Hannah Montana.

Last week the people who rent the apartment that my parents have downstairs had their grandchildren over for, whatever reason. They went into my backyard and were playing. I think that our tenant was actually a little worried that they annoyed me, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It was nice to have kids in that old backyard playing. Glasses are meant to be broken, milk is meant to be spilt, and kids need to play. So to all you kids that are excited to see the snow melt, so that your parents can take out the trampoline and you can play outside for extended periods of time… this ones for you!