Perspective

Many years ago, I had a friend who owned her very own teeter totter. It was in her back yard by a tree.  The paint never chipped or peeled on the sturdy board, and the pipes it was mounted on were substantial and cemented into the ground.  This was a quality teeter totter.  I couldn't figure out why it never had handles.  We had to hold on to the board itself, and although this wasn't a problem, it was a curiosity.

One summer when we were older, almost teenagers, we figured it out.  We would sit on the board backwards and lie with our heads toward the middle, going up and down for hours.  

We watched the clouds and solved all the world problems right there in her back yard in the old neighborhood.  Summer clouds are the best.  They change constantly, and on a hot summer afternoon they get huge and white and billowy. That's when you can find ships and animals and about any old thing in them.  It was a great summer.

 I'm really old now, but not as old as I hope to become.  During the span of years between then and now, there were times when things looked very different to me than they did when I was almost a teenager.  There were times when what I saw wasn't necessarily what was before my face.  I saw what I wanted to see, but it could get pretty distorted.  

Being almost a teenager was better.