Are you a Conforming Betty?

There is extreme joy floating around the world. Extreme even more so than sports which require some form of maiming. And this leaves your body intact and your heart exploding. As long as ‘society’ keeps its quick nimble fingers out of the pots of this extreme joy it will always be real.

It sparks from the ungoaded, unscrutinized, gently encouraged spasms of a child’s heart. As long as they are run from the divine “right” of their core they could relinquish the laws of gravitational pull. It is true, that without the law, or the understanding, or the science built in history one could leap the tall buildings, be and do anything the heart desired, and sleep soundly under a different sky.

There were once unicorns and winged men before people decided to create the laws of science.

So a child’s best laugh comes when it is her joke, her understanding and her surprise. When she’s playing in her rules and the rest of us remain baffled and left out. We are the squares and sometimes too sheepish or lazy to ask her the questions. Since when were the elders considered wise?

As I biked down the streets of a smoggy hot city, wearing clothes less bright, less decorated, and brown shoes with no pressurized lighting devices on the heel, no rhinestones, no pink and blue plastic beads, obeying traffic signals, my serious face in tote, my bag of tradesman’s tools on my back, saying nothing, observing yet making no expressive comment due to moral and intuitive restrictions, I biked past a shrieking joy.

A shrieking joy tearing down the side walk streets with socks pulled up to his knees with little khaki shorts and a blue and green painted shirt – he ran. He ran screaming, making noises I’m assuming were to be that of a cowboy OR the hobby horse enlisted around his waist. The horses legs flailing as he ran, its head bobbing – as it would have had it been alive by my grown up definition. The little boy stood in the middle, where the horses stomach would have been. He ran and yelped with such earnest enthusiasm I’m almost positive it wasn’t exactly a horse he envisioned hanging from his waist. There was no time. Where ever he was going there was no time.

Once – I had done the same. Oh society – why I am such a conforming Betty??