Yesterday

I was walking through the park yesterday, watching the young people having a cook out and it occurred to me how much time we spend trying to figure out how to fit in.

It was a college party.  Kids stood in a circle tossing the Frisbee from person to person or sat swinging on the swings.  Others gathered around a grill and two long lines sat neatly at picnic tables placed end to end.  The fun looked a bit forced, the faces a bit too excited for what they were doing, but the desire to have fun was certainly there.

They have heard about these days for years.  Now they are trying to figure out what it’s all about.

Sometimes I think adults set kids up in their own need to relive what really wasn’t all that hilariously fun in real life at all.  But we all have to figure it out for ourselves.

And then, as if that isn’t enough, people begin making up other rules about living just to make the pecking order a little more complicated. 

The fight for dominance in the barnyard never seems to die.  Sex, color, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, if it isn’t one thing, we make up another.  Anything to be top dog!

There are pecking levels within pecking levels and the sad part is that in the end, to quote a very bad joke, we all end up dying to get out.

The kids are doing it right.  It’s the journey that counts.  So they stand in lines trying one thing after another attempting to figure out which ones are not being over rated.  I don’t miss that part of being young.