When I Grow Up

How much of you as a child is left in you now?

What the sheet?!?

Boy, do I know how to start a party or what?

🎊

I mean, how much of young you still remains?

Youthful you?

Kid you?

Pure you?

This assumes a few things.

One, that you're an adult.

Kids, this is not the place for you. Come back when you're old(ish).

Two, that you had a good childhood.

Or decent.

I suppose decent is a good standard.

And three, that you can remember it.

Did you end up like Peter Pan, Ben Buttons, or just an old curmudgeon?

Like me.

Mad at the world.

Throwing punches at the sun.

In my day...

Well, what were you like in your day?

I'm thinking pretty much like you are now.

Except maybe less so?

Or more so?

It's just nostalgia, man, it has a way.

You ever go to a place you used to go to, after a lot of years have passed?

And felt, oh what's the word, underwhelmed?

You were beneath the whelm.

There was no whelm.

No whelm left at all.

This is not a negative musing.

I don't write those.

It's just, I believe, we all have a bit of us young in us old.

Some too much, some too little.

But I think this is key.

What has remained that is you from the initial spark?

What hasn't the world been able to change, to diminish, to extinguish?

What has survived?

That, my friend, is where to start.

The present first principle.

Who were you as a kid?

And how much of that kid is still here?

You can fight many things, but you cannot fight that.

That is who you are.

I play an old curmudgeon.

It's part of this whole gimmick.

Oh, it's a gimmick, alright.

But I do it for good reason.

Protecting the little boy who became old.

Ish.

Oldish.

Man.

Time flies when you're having fun.

⏳

What do you want to be when you grow up is a terrible question.

Who do you want to be when you grow up is a better one.

And I bet, I hope, you just said, "Me."