Simple things in life

The bus ride from downtown took only 10 minutes or so.  I could have been updating Facebook or texting that whole time, like people do.  But the ride provided free entertainment that didn't even need data or wifi.  So I put on my observation hat and decided to watch people.

A lady had a baby on her lap.  She would cover her face with her hands, and the child would look perplexed.  What's mama?  What is this faceless creature in front of me!  Then the mother moved her hands away, and revealed her smiling face.  And the child broke out in joyous delight.  Then the mom covered her face again, and the child looked bewildered again.  And again, the child laughed with great joy when mom's face appeared again.  

The lady varied the game too.  Sometimes she would cover the child's face with her hands.  What happened, mama?  It's all dark and I can't see!  Then she removed her hands, and voila!, the child saw mother again.  What a smile the kid had!  Such genuine, innocent pleasure.

Other people watched the mother and child playing as well.  And they all a smile on their faces.  How could you not?

But it was such a simple game, no?  Didn't we all (at least most of us) play this as a child or as a parent?  It seems universal.  Joy is universal.  The innocence of a child is universal.  And we delight in simple, carefree, unadulterated happiness.

So what happened to us as we got older?  Why are we so hard to please?  Why do some of us become abject assholes?  Why do we morph into egomaniacs and demagogues?

"What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable.."   So wrote Shakespeare.  Hate to say it, Will old boy, but you are so wrong!  We're just idiots.  Self-centred, greedy, stupid, moronic, insatiable nut jobs.

So, speaking of nuts, it's a Friday.  Almost seven now.  In times past, Meat Loaf (or some other music) would be blasting away from my office.  The fragrance of Green Mountain Double Diamond would permeate the air.  And Tony (the nut man) Gabriel would be passing by my office on his way to print out yet another test to torture his students.  Sharon would be next door hoping to God I would turn down the music.  

Interesting how when something that happened as a matter of course stops happening, one begins to relish them and lament their passing.

As I lament the vanishing of simpler pleasures of childhood.  As I lament the wake of memories from the daily grind.

Perhaps it's fitting that I end this post with another one from Will.   "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought."

Way to go, Willy.