Getting in touch with the inner child
I am very blessed because I have some gifted teachers who help me play. Play like a child. Our society has a sickness that drives us to grow up too soon. We see it especially in the young girls who compare bra sizes before they have anything to put in a bra. They wear sexually provocative clothing before they even have a clue as to what sex is. Thank you, Britney.
It didn’t start with this generation. I grew up in a family that scorned childish ways. Anytime I acted my age when I was a child, I was told to grow up. This has given my generation a severe handicap. We forgot how to play at an early age and it has gotten worse, much worse, since then.
By the time I was 50, I had not only forgotten how to play, I had completely forgotten the joys that childish behavior can bring. I was grey haired, mature and stuffy beyond belief. Then I met Reiko. Somewhere along the line, she lost touch with the idea that growing older meant growing up. She had never heard of Jimmy Buffett at the time, but she had heard his message loud and clear.
I don’t know if Reiko was as playful in her previous relationships as she is with me. If she was, it might have caused problems. It might have caused problems with me if I hadn’t been so besotted with her that I was willing to let go of my middle aged dignity.
Reiko is the daughter of a Japanese diplomat. When her mother decided that the peripatetic life was not acceptable, Reiko traveled with her father to many exotic locales and served as his hostess at the embassy. She can behave with exquisite dignity and grace if the situation demands it.
Perhaps that experience led her to grow up too soon. Somewhere along the line, after her father died, she decided that it was time to play. That apparently didn’t sit too well with her first husband, who was a rather serious young Japanese man. He got even more serious when he was converted by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Reiko, ever the iconoclast, delights in baiting self-righteous Christians. So much for her first and only marriage. She used to be a very serious downhill skier. So much so that she has her instructor’s license. She made a very comfortable living for years teaching Japanese tourists in Whistler how to ski.
Her ex, serious Japanese that he was, didn’t believe in playing on the slopes. Not only did he not ski, he tried to forbid Reiko from skiing. Fun was not acceptable. Might as well try to forbid birds from flying. That was the end of a very brief marriage.
By the time that I met Reiko, she had determined that life was pretty much useless unless there was fun involved. I wasn’t too sure about that, having been thoroughly inoculated in the Puritan aberration. It didn’t take her long to convert this once Christian soldier.
Over the six years that we have been together, we have developed a plethora of totally childish games that defy explanation to anyone on the outside. We play them in public and in private, having no shame over who is watching.
That stood me in good stead when, through a multitude of fortuitous circumstances, I found myself living next door to my daughter and granddaughter. Suffice it to say that I manipulated my daughter into moving to Bellingham after her divorce. Brenda, having been well trained, manipulated me into buying a house next door to hers.
We deserve each other. Having missed most of my granddaughter’s growing up years while she was in Juneau, I now delight in terrorizing her as much as she delights in baiting me. We were watching a particularly bad horror movie together the other night when I grabbed her at a most propitious time and caused her to emit a scream that woke most of the inhabitants of the nearby cemetery.
Now, Olivia knows without a doubt that I would not harm a hair on her head. She also knows that I would cheerfully murder anyone who should even look crosseyed at her. Nonetheless, she reacts powerfully to my theatrical imitations of various horror movie villains. I guess that is what pre-teen females do.
A couple of nights ago, I heard her giggling with some of her friends at a slumber party. I sneaked up under her window, and cut loose with a horrific Buwahahaha in my best Boris Karloff tones. The resulting screams were most gratifying, although I was not prepared for the intensity of the reaction. It scared me almost as much as it scared her.
Olivia is a very accomplished and focused young lady. After our recent heat wave, she decided to purchase a small wading pool in which to cool off. When it arrived, she and her mother came by to borrow my air compressor in order to inflate it. I cheerfully loaned it to them.
While they were blowing it up, I had one of those unfortunate urges that causes families to wonder why they put up with each other. I lurched through a gap in the fence that separates our houses and did my best Jack Nicholson grimace, screaming “Here’s Johnny!”
Olivia cut loose with an ululation that would have done any Middle Eastern widow proud. “You brat!” she exclaimed, as I chortled over how badly I had gotten her.
Then things got serious. She picked up the hose that was filling the pool and aimed it in my direction. Her intentions were far more serious than her ordnance. Their hose nozzle was seriously inadequate compared to mine. I have a nozzle that will shoot a seriously concentrated jet about 50 feet.
There ensued a monumental water fight than ended up with both of us getting soaked. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had so much fun. Given the stresses of the last few weeks, it was something I seriously needed. Brenda thought she was safe by making suggestions behind the screen to their home office. I quickly escalated the battle by hosing her down through the screen. That was a big mistake.
While Olivia and I were engaged in serious water warfare, my loving daughter sneaked around the backyard and cut off my hose. Needless to say, I lost both the battle and the war. When I retreated to the house, drenched and dripping, I found my daughter and granddaughter innocently ensconced upon the couch watching the Mariners lose another game. How they got dry so quickly is one of those mysteries that men will never fathom.
The point is that I, a 55 year old editor of a business magazine, totally lost myself in a completely childish water battle that left both backyards soaked. That’s OK, the grass can use it. Not to mention my hanging baskets that got thoroughly watered, if unintentionally.
The last few weeks have been very stressful for me, as you regular readers know. Tonight’s water war was the most healing thing that could have happened, even though it wasn’t prescribed by a doctor of any stripe.
The moral here is to be open to whatever happens. Sometimes the most unexpected events can bring healing.
1:29:38 AM 
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