My Easter Sunday was busy. My wife and I catered and conducted a Prayer Breakfast for our little church, made two hospital visits, attended a friend’s dinner cookout and Easter Egg hunt and somewhere in the middle of all that, we were guests at a two-year old’s birthday party. By the end of the day we felt like salmon returning upstream; we reached our destination (home) dispensed of our load, then dropped dead.

During the day yesterday as I was watching all the children play and laugh, comparisons of age came to mind. I sat wishing I could be like a kid again. They had fun, they had crazy acting friends, and they never worried about the effects of the junk food they ate. Yet the more I ruminated on the subject, the more I realized that in reality, I too was still a kid.

Formal attire for a child is tied shoes and clothes an adult would never be seen in. Half the day I wore an absurd apron and my shoes stayed tied and I guarantee no adult would have wanted to wear my outfit. The young children had no concern for fashion, they were confident. I spent the day happy confident because even if the fly on my pants were to break, my apron covered everything.

I was jealous of the agility of these young ones; they were on their hands an knees a long time looking for Easter eggs. Then I recalled this week I had done the same thing only this time it wasn’t an Easter egg. I was looking for a prescription pill I had dropped on the kitchen floor. I also showed the same level of excitement when I found mine too.

As they ran laughing through a pack of balloons I thought how silly? Then I realized I had played with a shipping blister pack this week laughing while I popped each air pocket. They were giddy when they got away with grabbing a snack off the table without being seen, so was I! Each of the children went full-tilt until they conked out for a nap anywhere, I did the same.

Throughout the day each child hung around with friends who had few or no teeth and wore plastic briefs, and it didn’t bother them one bit. Ditto for me.

I recall the story of two old men in a retirement village. They were sitting in their reading room and one turned to the other and said, ”How do you really feel? I mean, you’re 82 years old, how do you honestly feel?”
”Honestly, I feel like a new born baby. “You do?”, said the friend. “Yes, I’ve got no hair, I’ve got no teeth, and I just wet myself.”

Getting older is inevitable, but growing up is optional.