Childlike

Do you ever do something that is childlike? You do it and don't realize until after you did it that you did something that a grown up wouldn't normally do, something that a grown has long since "grown out of." Now, I don't mean "childish" as in stupid and immature, I mean "childlike," as in young and innocent and all-believing. A good example would be like sitting on the floor cross-legged. Or putting out cookies for Santa Claus. Or coloring from a coloring book with real Crayola crayons... I did this just the other day.

I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant eating with my family. When I walked in, I had placed my keys on the table, because I had decided to leave my purse in the car. During a lull in the conversation, my dad asked me: "Are those your keys?" (Now that I think about it I have no idea why my dad even asked me this question, considering they were in fact keys, and they were in fact sitting right in front of me... but the story goes on.)

And I replied, nonchalantly: "Yep... and I even have this wicked cool key chain on them."  Now, this key chain had been one that had come on my keys when the salesman handed them over to me the day I purchased my new vehicle. You know, it was one of those plastic oval key chains with the dealership's name on it. And normally, I would have taken this key chain off long before that night because I find items with company's name on them to be really stupid things to keep around, but I liked this key chain for one simple reason: It glowed in the dark! And I don't know if you've ever been stuck digging around in your purse, outside your vehicle, in the dark and cold, but I figured this little diddly might come in handy one night in the winter. So I kept it attached to my keys and proceeded to hold it up and show it to my dad that day at the Chinese restaurant. And then I acted childlike.

I said: "It even glows in the dark!" To prove it, I pulled the key chain up to my eye and held my hands around the neon yellow key chain, as to block out the light and allow myself to see the glow. My tongue stuck out as a attempted to block out different angles of light.

My dad laughed at me... "What a goof ball," he said.

"It does!" I claimed, "See..." I handed him my keys, and he proceeded to do the exact same childlike thing. (And he's fifty years old!)

This may seem like a really funny experience to blog about or even tell again, but I felt really good after I did this childlike thing, because I felt relieved. I thought: Yes! I am not a boring, old, workaholic, adult. My childlike qualities are still intact. I am still going strong. And while in some situations, acting childlike isn't a good thing, I think it keeps you positive and believing in something somewhat magical. So my goal is to stay "forever young"... and childlike.