Maybe I have found the fountain of youth. Tomorrow is my first day of school. I am nervous, just like I was when I was little, before the start of every school year. Will I fit in? Will I wear the right thing? what if I can't find my classroom? what if everyone else already knows everybody?
I have had other moments like this, where I am suddenly a child again. Sitting in the principal's office at my son's school made me feel like I was 9 and I was in trouble. Every time I go to church, as soon as my butt hits the pew, I feel fidgety and out of place, just like I did way back when. When I get really dressed up, I always feel like a kid in easter clothes, clearly stiff and uncomfortable, and way too worried about a rip or getting dirty.
Do we ever really leave childhood behind? Maybe we are more like a nautilus than we think, each decade another chamber added on, but nothing discarded. I still have a wild urge to stick my tongue out after an obnoxious colleague leaves my office, and schoolhouse rhymes still float around in my mind [nanny nanny boo-boo... I see London, I see France...found a peanut, you name it, they are all in there, threatening to come out]
So maybe we have always had the fountain of youth -- Memory.
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