childhood

Children spend years of their lives wondering, planning, dreaming of this moment. Adults ask the question before children are barely out of diapers: So, sonny, what do you want to be when you grow up? The adults find the answers cute, charming, and endlessly entertaining.My classmates and I were asked this question, once; our answers are printed in a sixth-grade yearbook that NONE OF YOU WILL EVER SEE.

A world is a very large, yet very small, concept for a child. Vast, in that there are untold many things that children realize they do not know—how to drive a car, the intricacies of insurance, the difference between a first cousin and a first-cousin-once-removed. Yet small, in a way that most adults cannot grasp: for them it’s easy to believe that it’s still possible to know everything there is to know.