I'm dying to return to the childish exuberance that happened in grade school at 3:01pm on a sunny Spring afternoon. That moment where you bolt out the school doors the second the bell rings and head for home, or the playground, or the park, or a friend's house, or wherever. Just that sudden jolt of electricity from being free to do whatever you wanted.
Maybe it's the hour long commute to work, on a dingy old train through a putrid old city (I love New York, but you need a bath!) to get home and do what? Nap? Watch the Mets game? Eat salad? Get to sleep early for tomorrow?
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| If I ever have kids, I'm telling them never to grow up: their playground is far superior. |
I'm not sure how to remedy this problem, but I promise I have been making steps. I try and keep in touch with my friends from school who are in the city this summer and usually do dinner with someone a couple times a week. I try and stay in touch with other friends who I'm not around as much right now, despite my penchant for making friends with people who have the communication skills of a comatose sloth.
I still play catch and basketball with my friend Michael fairly often, but I don't think it's quite the same as the aimlessness of being a kid and just going out and riding bikes (or scooter in my case) into a park or some other mysterious wilderness that only gets more and more tame as you grow.
One of my childhood passions that I never hope to give up is video games. Now bear with me world, I do not mean hardcore MMORPG (still don't know what this stands for) games like Warcraft and all that; never was my scene. I mean everything trivial from Pokemon to Mario to Madden and back. The same sort of trivial, pick-it-up-whenever game that is our generation's equivalent to a deck of cards (another passion of mine, but perhaps that will be a different post).
I still have my original Pokemon Blue Version with my most consistent team (Charizard, Vaporeon, Raichu, Pidgeot, Mewtwo, and Marowak); I still remember how to play the middle versions between Blue and FireRed, my last. I loved those games, and back in elementary school about 10-15 kids in every class would bring their GameBoy to play together at recess.
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| Yeah I still remember this collection of awesomeness! |
Madden christened me into the world of sports: I liked football before, but having that kind of access to all the player details and history made the game something special. I haven't bought a Madden in two years, due to keeping focused at school, but my love of football has stayed. Meanwhile, I haven't missed a baseball video game in eight years and still thoroughly enjoy it; I think this enhanced a love of pitching, I'll give the 2006 Mets team credit for my general love of baseball as it stands now. A few basketball games helped me understand Garnett's jump shot a little bit more, and without Michael forcing me to play NHL games I don't think I would know a single player on the Devils (Off the top of my head right now I can name seven).
So there's sports and games? But there's more to it. There's definitely a social aspect, and as many of you will come to find out, I'm not the world's most fluttering social butterfly. Perhaps it's just the isolation of summer, or working in a small office with little to talk about, but this lackluster bit of summer is bringing me down.
As a kid I used to go to day camp in the summer, which at times was tedious, but always more welcome than school. Still, there was something special about just seeing an open field and running until you couldn't any more, making up games to play even if there was no one around. Was I just a strange child? Does it make me a strange young adult to want that again?
What happened to the excitement of living? I know I'm not the only one who's hit a boring rut, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in Grand Central Terminal who remembers to look up at the ceiling once in a while.
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| Not in the middle of the concourse though; that's for dumb tourists, and this photographer apparently |
So that's where I'm beginning. I'm enjoying the aesthetics of being in Manhattan and trying to find my second wind to go out and have an adventure. Any suggestions on what to do next?
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