Staying young

For my birthday, I was given a book of quotations by and about Muppets and their performers. (Thanks, Monica!) I typed up a few of my favorites from the book, and when I need inspiration, I open up the MSWord file and read.

Starting camp and dealing with kids and watching how the react to learning something new every day have brought one of the quotations to mind.

“The most sophisticated people I know – inside they’re all children. We never really lose a certain sense we had when we were kids.” -Jim Henson

This seems true of all of the people I love and respect the most in my life. Of course, the most pertinent is Otis, the camp director in his mid-to-late 60s. (Not sure of his exact age.) Today, after a fun game of Capture the Flag (where my campers learned an important lesson: never stand next to me when I have a whistle…) with the 11-13 year olds, I said to Otis, ‘I think I have more fun than the kids sometimes.’

Otis looked at me and agreed, not only that I have more fun than the kids, but at times, he does, too. And all of the successful camp counselors do.

Yes, this isn’t the biggest or most eclectic sample of people. These are people who work with children who make sure to keep their childhood alive, bit childhood comes out in other ways, too, with people who don’t have the same sense of concrete childhood that they need to have while around children.

I’ve spoken about childhood before – about how I wish to be eight-and-a-half when I grow up. And those people I respect the most, they all are. They all keep their minds open to allow themselves to get excited by the little things and allow themselves to be moved by the new.

Or if they cannot do it themselves, they get excited by watching others get turned on by the new. I think of a rabbi I studied with throughout high school. He did not show our group new parables or passages. In fact, with one exception, I’m sure he had been teaching everything he showed us for at least 10 years. But seeing our reactions to it and watching us get excited brought out his inner-child.

I watch grown men get excited by baseball. I see teachers get excited by new recordings and readings of their music – and mine (and other students’).

So why is it that I see so many young people try and pretend they have no child left in them? Why do people want to hide their inner-child and pretend it doesn’t exist? I’m not going to say ‘enjoy your childhood; it only lasts so long’, because I believe that childhood should never end!

I’ve never been accused of being my age. In fact, I sometimes have to show my license to prove how young I am. But I will never deny my inner-child – my teddy bear, my Muppets, my toy cars – to myself or the world.

My first girlfriend called me ‘the only person I know who is 6, 16, and 86 all at once.’ I’m proud of that. I hope the only thing that happens to my age is that my middle age gets older and the others, well, I always want to be 6 and 86. And I want to be around people with those qualities. I like surrounding myself with people who, say, get excited by capture the flag, like comic books (even though I don’t, the sense of childhood comic books take comes from people I tend to enjoy being around), still read Winnie the Pooh, or just plain get excited by new things.

I’m pretty lucky to have people like that. And I’m even luckier to have people who feed into my second childhood by buying me stuffed animals or playing games with me or giving me great books of quotations of all things Muppet.

Man – I love being a kid again. You should try it; it’s awesome.