The clich\u00e9 \u201can oldie but a goodie\u201d conjures up many thoughts about things from our past.\u00a0 From cars made of actual metal that could run into many a pillar at the gas pumps and never leave a dent, to self-rising flour that actually rises, to being able to buy a gumball for a penny, most of us can identify with\u00a0things from our past that make us smile\u00a0and remind us of Sunday afternoons in our great grandmother\u2019s kitchen as she prepares food from scratch and not from a box.\u00a0 They definitely don\u2019t make things like they used to.<\/p>\n
Most of us, I bet,\u00a0can remember the smell of swing set hands.\u00a0 Kids these days who play on plastic play sets have no clue what I\u2019m talking about, but us from an older generation can surely recall.\u00a0 You know\u2026 after your set sat in the yard for a few years, and you dangled from the cross bar, the paint would rub off onto your hands.\u00a0 A weird white sort of paint that you would try to rub off on your cut off jean shorts.\u00a0 And the plastic swings were cracked and would pinch your rear end when you swung.\u00a0 And the metal slide would burn the back of your legs in the heat of the summer, so you\u2019d hook up the water hose to the top of it and improvise.\u00a0 Or you would throw the swings over the top bar to make them higher off the ground to show you\u2019d graduated from sissy to daredevil.\u00a0 But my favorite was the contest you would have with the neighbor kids over who could swing the highest and them jump out the furthest.\u00a0 You disregarded the entire swing set coming off the ground when you pumped your legs as hard as you could to maximize your launch.\u00a0 We just didn\u2019t think about it.<\/p>\n
Seems like when we were kids we were fearless.\u00a0 Never mind the ramps and makeshift jumps we would soar our BMX’s over helmetless.\u00a0 Never mind the crazy games of tackle football with no pads or the romps through the woods with no regard for scary spiders or snakes.\u00a0 Fearless.\u00a0 The undaunted attitude that we were invincible.\u00a0 Faith in the fact that we were always safe from injury or harm.\u00a0 That a kiss from mom or a band aid would make it all better.\u00a0 And that was even before Toy Story or Strawberry Short Cake band aids!\u00a0 It was a\u00a0fearless faith that enabled us to have some great fun.\u00a0Nowadays, I shudder at one of those little tiny house spiders in the corner or cringe at the fact that I gotta go out into the woods to cut down some branches.\u00a0 And riding my bike with no hands is a talent I no longer possess.\u00a0 When do things change?\u00a0 When do we lose our fearlessness?<\/p>\n
Is it when we learn that spiders can bite or the woods are full of poison ivy?\u00a0 Is it when we learn that insurance doesn\u2019t cover everything, and there\u2019s always going to be a deductible?\u00a0 Knowledge can be powerful, for sure.\u00a0 But sometimes our head gets in the way of our hearts.\u00a0 Sometimes the more we know, the less we walk in that fearless, childlike faith.\u00a0 The more wrinkles in our brain, the less eager we are to run barefoot down the street or mix up all our food into one pile or cut flips on the trampoline.\u00a0 We shut our eyes and hold on tight, hoping our BMX doesn\u2019t hit\u00a0a rock and send us over the handlebars.\u00a0 Or even sometimes, we park our bikes in the garage and let the tires get flat and rot to the point where we can\u2019t ride anymore.\u00a0And sometimes we look at that plastic seat on our swing set and think to ourselves that it will never hold our apple pie bellies or twinkie thighs.<\/p>\n
I think it is necessary\u00a0somehow, someway to maintain our childlike fearlessness.\u00a0 Our kid faith.\u00a0 Our lack of inhibitions.\u00a0 Maintain our reckless abandon and simply ride and swing and dangle and run and climb trees and play tag in the dark.\u00a0 To stop rationalizing everything to the point where our learned fears and apprehensions prevent us from living our lives and taking chances.\u00a0 Not that we should be dumb and not pursue knowledge and use that knowledge to make sound decisions.\u00a0\u00a0And not that we should be crazy and make\u00a0silly choices.\u00a0 But instead, that we should disallow our head to get in the way of our hearts and our childlike trust that indeed the swing will hold.\u00a0 Avoid losing our sense of wonder in the protection of\u00a0His hand and cower at the site of life and the bumps and bruises it may have.\u00a0 Take a risk.\u00a0 Take a chance.\u00a0 Scrape your knees and smell the smell of swing set hands and swing high.\u00a0 Ultimately, \u201cwe are stuck on band aid brand ‘cuz band aid’s stuck on us,\u201d and there\u2019s nothing a little antiseptic spray or a kiss from mom or a good scrub with soap won\u2019t fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The clich\u00e9 \u201can oldie but a goodie\u201d conjures up many thoughts about things from our past.\u00a0 From cars made of actual metal that could run into many a pillar at the gas pumps and never leave a dent, to self-rising flour that actually rises, to being able to buy a gumball for a penny, most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-from-sheryl-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153490"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155512,"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153490\/revisions\/155512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.muscogee.k12.ga.us\/jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}