When I was a kid, things seemed a lot slower, and somehow, smaller, simpler.  As a child, your immediate world was all there really was. But it is a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?  For while life was more concentrated and immediate, in many ways it was monumental and enormous.  Traveling to places took so much longer.  Things we’d only heard of, were far, far away.  Christmas was a  WHOLE dang week away!

We didn’t have video games.  We had to think up our own games.  It was a huge deal to run ALL the way around our block.  But we’d do it 3 or 4 times in a row.  We’d have races.  The block itself was 1/2 mile all the way around.  Two kids would hover at the “Start” line, standing back to back.  On your mark.  Get set. GO!  One of us would take off running around the block in one direction…. the other kid in the opposite direction.   Oh, that was a fun way to race.  As you passed the person on the backside of the block, you’d pick up speed and try to gauge if you were more than halfway.  Whoever lost would always say:  “Best of three.  Let’s go.”

My Dad has a “whistle” call for us kids (all seven of us).  He’d whistle into his hands, and we knew we better skidaddle home for dinner.  After we ate everything on our plates, we could go back out and play.  Play.    But we knew we had better be back home when the streetlights came on….

There were a lot of things I liked about being seven years old.