When We Played

I was telling him all about the complexities of trickery, the day's history of fun, and suddenly he burst out with the words:

"Haven't you grown out of this yet?"

No, actually, Papa. We haven't. We haven't and we shouldn't and we can't, because much as sometimes we do want to feel grown up, much as sometimes we girls want to dress up in our mothers clothes and we boys want to pick fights and act macho, we're still just kids. We are in a world where some of us may be forced to grow up fast, but maybe, on this one day when we can come together and stumble around foolishly, playing those 'immature' games with our fellow 'immature' friends, we only really wanted to be naive again, get to believe someone with no quick moment of hesitation, of doubt and mistrust. Maybe we really just want to be fooled, to be conned, and to do it in return, because in this world there are more things than just protecting yourself and striking out at others - whether intentional or not. There's also giving and taking, gaining and losing and above all, forgetting about the repercussions we might have to face the next day as a result of our one day of fun, forgetting for a moment about what could happen and what might be the result of that. Because in the games that children play, on slides and swings and not in office blocks or even diamond rings, we don't consider or discriminate. In the games that children play, we play.