Remember the good old days when rent was an ambiguous term, and the success of the day was measured in the amount of cookies you could sneak out of the cookie jar. Or when the most hurtful thing you could do was uninvite someone to your birthday party, even though it was eight months away. Childhood is a time of having fun, simplistic outlooks, and fantasizing about anything and everything. Who ever said the world is more beautiful through rose-colored sunglasses forgot what it was like to see the world through the eyes of a child. Satisfaction was a result of almost every activity, and everyone was your best friend. The belief that your daddy was tougher than your friends’ daddy was something worth fighting over. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a gourmet meal and the wine that you drank was the grape juice that you had to sneak from your lunch box your parents had packed for the next day. As adults, we worry about things like the clothes we wear or how we will pay all of our bills by their due date. As a child, the biggest fear is not having a snack pack in your lunch like little Johnny next to you. In school you did not have to stress about writing speeches, but instead you get to create a masterpiece that you would display proudly on the fridge until a new one came home. It was acceptable to say you wanted to be a princess when you grew up; now our wants are usually financially driven. Saturday mornings meant cartoons, not an eight-hour shift. In order to get a piece of gum, you had to promise not swallow it or to put it anywhere but in your mouth. Wearing light up shoes gave you bragging rights until those lights went out. Imaginary friends, fictional and fantasy characters were apart of everyday life. The realization of Santa Claus not being real was a travesty, which would then lead to countless questions. One stroke of the hairbrush was more than enough, and shoes on the wrong feet went unnoticed. Negotiating the amount of food you ate with your parents was an everyday occurrence, and dessert was the best bargaining tool out there. The first thought that came to mind when thinking of a McDonalds play place was fun, not urine. Entertainment could be anything from a box of crayons to your mom’s high heels. On the weekends your biggest aspirations were to have a sleep over at your friends house, even if the past two times you called your mom to come pick you up right before bed time. Playing doctor resulted in lollipops, not koodies. As a child the world is in the palm of your hands, and you have your whole life ahead of you, but who cares about that when there is a fort to build. When you run out of paper while coloring no profanity is shouted, instead you take it out on the white walls around you. As the years come and go, it is hard not to reminisce on the great qualities of the past. In fact a great way to escape reality is to daydream of what use to be. So here is a toast to childhood, may the senescence of our old age be as delightful as the innocence of our childhood.