am i ugly?

when i was a little kid, i wanted to be the one who invented the flying car. i also wanted to invent moon-shoes, teleportation, and toast that didn't always land butter-side down.

these dreams are improbable, however typical, of an eight year old playground mobster with freckles, grass stains, and a tooth out. over a gravitationally inclined cardboard memoir holder, i stood-and dusty closet surrounding- i recollected. comparatively thinking, i assessed my inner young'n as she stands more than a decade later. i still have grass stains. freckles are hereby present- only now to adorn naked shoulders rather than a wrinkled up nose. the tooth fairy and i have parted ways. and my toast still lands butter side down. i lost hope in flying cars when that whole santa thing turned belly-up; and have stuck to more attainable goals, such as curing cancer. yet through drawings and spelling tests i sifted, through crafts and through camp flyers, remembering what it must have been like to be so blissfully unaware of the disdain of it all.

i reached the bottom of the overturned memory reservoir. and i was changed.

just below my grasp was a purple crayon. gently worn, paper torn, broken in the middle. i looked back to where i'd come from, and saw the mess of tutee's homework, cholera epidemic spreadsheets, and bills to pay, covered up by an oversized cookie monster coloring book. a box of eight crayons lay drizzled over the scene, save for one. my purple.

we grow up in size, in cognitive ability, and in physical maturity. we make our adult lives about the hard things. after all, we had our chance to have it easy. we were kids... once. but today i learned that part of our need to wonder never dies. part of the innocent glint, the perpetual 'why?', and the need to be euphorically oblivious of the real world is still in there. and in little ways, it comes out, in faint whispers, it speaks. and it's when you lose your ability to strap on the rose-colored goggles and giggle-fit your way into remission... that life will truly lose all meaning.

in summation, for the faint of literacy, it goes something like this:

trip. fall. laugh. stand.... and when life gives you hell, make s'mores.