the child within

...there's a child inside that wants to run out and play,

but it doesn't add up...

no, it doesn't add up...

I have circled the sun 48 and 1/2 times now and my claim to dour adulthood is well secured (actually well secured way back into my youth...I have been called an "old soul" more times than I care to count...but that's neither here nor here.) But, that fact notwithstanding, I know and celebrate the child within often and unabashedly.

I think babies and children have the best perspective in the world (looking at the world with, as George Carlin once put it, those wondrous "new eyes" of theirs) and I have no problem getting down on the floor...or the grass...and sharing it with them when they ask. I like puppies, who live for exuberance, and even kittens, who don't but who have their own sometimes haughty charms. I like wonderfully silly cartoons and wonderfully silly pop songs...both from my childhood and here in my dotage...and I think that my Atari 2600 (I got one for my birthday this year) is still the coolest game console ever. I think that Charlotte's Web, Green Eggs and Ham, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are, now and always, among the greatest books ever written.

And I still love super-hero comic books. And comic book heroes. In a world where we have so very few real heroes it's nice to, if only fleetingly, immerse myself in a world where heroes still exist and most times the good guys win and the bad guys, however briefly, slink away in utter defeat. The adult in me knows that it's not the way the world really works...but the child in me enjoys the illusion just the same.

So I celebrate the child within and his bright and ever-vital heroes...Superman and Captain America, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, the amazing Spider-Man and the mighty Avengers, the Justice League of America and an entire Legion of Super-Heroes...and hope that the feeling, brief but utterly engaging, never goes away no matter how old my soul is or however many rides around the bright golden star I eventually end up taking.

"It Doesn't Add Up"

words and music by Carole Bayer Sager and Johnny Vastano