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Want to play hide-and seek?
This is true for several reasons. First, you didn't have the pressure of having to earn a living or dealing with traffic or worrying about your cholesterol. Because of this, you could devote most of your time to important things, like playing hide-and-seek or kickthe can. You could go fishing or ride your bike all the way down to the Suwanee Swifty convenience store to buy a bag of candy and an RC Cola, which my friend Andy and I used to do almost every summer day. You could take your shoes off and play in the mud. Or you could stay inside and lose yourself in the adventures of Captain Marvel and Superman and Spider- Man in the comic books. Yes, life was uncomplicated. If you had a question you wanted answered, all you had to do was find a grown-up, because you just knew that grown-ups had all the answers. But one day, you realized that Spider-Man comic books just didn't do it for you anymore, there was no one to play hide-and-seek with, and you and Andy didn't ride your bikes down to the store because you both had cars and more interesting things to do. And then all the stress of being an adult sets in. Unless your name is Trump or Rockefeller, you have to go to work and earn a living. And then you have to figure out how to pay the power bill, the gas bill and the grocery bill and still have money left. When you're an adult, you have to go to the doctor for a regular physical, and when you get to a certain age, the doctors start poking and prodding in places where no body ought to be poking and prodding. The worst thing, perhaps, is that when you become an adult, you realize that you were wrong when you were a child. Grown-ups don't have all the answers. In fact, we have very few answers. We certainly don't have the answers for the important questions, such as how can we for the love of God finally make it rain around here so that Lake Lanier won't completely disappear. But we don't even have the answers to unimportant questions, questions that nonetheless keep me wondering. For instance, why do Hershey bars with almonds cost the same as Hershey bars without almonds? I know that may not keep you up at night, but it bothers me. Have you bought any almonds lately? Those suckers ain't cheap. Yet Hershey just throws them in for free. That or they are gouging us on the plain candy bar. Why are there locks on the front door of the Waffle House? The place never closes. When do they lock the door? Speaking of locks, why do so many convenience stores lock their rest rooms? I could reach across the counter and put my hand in the cash drawer, if I were the kind of guy who'd do something like that, but I have to get a key to go to the bathroom. Why? What's in there to steal? If you've been in some convenience store rest rooms lately, you know that you don't even want to touch anything, much less steal it. I worry about why our society seems so obsessed with celebrity news. I enjoy looking at Sandra Bullock as much as the next redblooded American guy, but I don't need a daily update on what's happening to her. Yet you can't turn on the TV news without updates on Brittany, Lindsay and Paris. I'm fully convinced that one day, I'll turn on the TV and hear the anchorperson say, "World War III has just started in the Middle East, but before we get to that, here's our top story: Brittany is acting like trailer trash again." Why, when we are in the middle of a historic drought, do you still hear people complain about the fact that they can't water their grass? I know some people have expensive landscapes, but come on. Just be thankful you don't have to mow the lawn. See? The stress of being an adult is tough. Makes me long for the days of hideand seek.
Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times in Gainesville, Ga. He can be reached at mclarke@ gainesvilletimes.com.
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