DRIBBLE ON YOURSELF
What goes on inside some people? We see them from the outside, their tie dyed bandana, their Bluetooth, their Tom Cruise Mission Impossible shades, their attempt at perfect stubble, their reading glasses, their odd simple atrophied bicep tattoo hung out of a sleeveless hole of a shirt that covers sagging breasts and belly.
What kind of role-play game is this?
I was driving home the other day and passed this company that makes storm shelters. I had to stop the car and snap a few because it looked to me like a little storm shelter neighborhood, complete with mail box and wooden shutters. I thought to myself that whoever buys these things may use them as storage shelters but more likely they will be places for their kids to play in. After all… not since the Wizard of Oz has anyone really needed them, I thought.
That is, till the disaster hit Oklahoma and only those who had the damn shelters survived.
An ancient couple marches onto the beach. Their skin shows the signs of many Sun-days when they set up the red chairs and stuck the matching big red umbrella in the sand between them to expose their flesh to the solar prune maker. Their whole life they played in the sun on the beach. It’s bright, it’s warm and when we are young it changes our color; way better than playing with make-up.
The extremes of life’s cycle meet on a beach towel. Grandpa and grandson bend over and look at each other with no age difference between them. Some day when the boy is grown he’ll say, “I played on this very beach when I was young with my Grandpa from Bergen Op Zoom, Netherlands.”
” Then I played with the sand, pouring it from one cup to the other. Nothing was more fun than that.” He might grow to be a significant CEO at a world-wide company, that either preserves or destroys beaches. He would become this executive, so he thinks, as a result of holding many management roles leading up to his current post. It will not be obvious to him that the peak of his career is derived from that day long ago, when he poured sand with his grandpa.
A single mom takes her baby to the beach. She wants to give her daughter the attention she never got as a child. She is determined to not let her little girl go out on that date with that handsome biker dude, much less let him make her pregnant. This mother will make sure that will not happen to her baby. It all starts with proper playtime with mamma on the beach.
Just not sure who is having more fun.
I walked down the beach where a gang of ladies were playing with a captured crab in a bucket. One of the older ladies used one of the young girls’ dolls to bait the crab to clamp down its claw. It looked like a fun game of play with the crab. Do we ever really grow up? Or are we just older children secretly playing with dolls on the beach.
What if we all hope no one finds out about us? What if we are all still children playing grown-up with other big children playing grown up?
How is dressing up our Barbie any different from dressing up our mannequin outside our retail store? How is going into those stores or buying anything, any different from selling lemonade when we were little, from a plastic chair and a folding table that was our stand ?
A grown craftsman who always wished he could be a biker, decides to make a rocking horse motorcycle for children. A grown shop owner buys it and puts it on display outside his store. An actual biker parks his Harley next to it because he thinks the child’s toy is a special sign the city put there for bikers to tell them where to park their motorcycle.
He only rides a motorcycle because he never wanted to stop riding his bike when he was a kid.
Inside, the shopkeeper sells a cherubic vase for $8.50. Across town a couple celebrates their 60th wedding anniversary. The senior bride of 82 years passes a mirror in the lady’s room and stares at herself and wonders who the old woman is in the mirror. Inside her mind she see’s herself as a young bride of 23.
Are we not all feathers blowing in wind to the next fun destination with only some of us guarding our childlike secrets better than others?
The artists, the only honest playful souls out there, imagines throwing a big ole grapefruit on the wall and then painting the fruit in its dripping orange juices.
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” ~Pablo Picasso
“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
“Adults are obsolete children.” ~Dr. Seuss
While others work to pay the bills, a grown woman secretly plays in her kitchen making cookies. Since no one is looking, she will eat cookies for dinner.
Elsewhere the biggest beach in the world offers a giant chess set for sun bathers to play with, in between kite surfing, throwing around the ball and giggling in their bikinis on the blanket.
In one corner of the room a mother lets her child go play. He spills water all over his new shoes; the mother and the child both giggle. On the other side of the room a completely different type of mother holds onto her child for dear life for fear that he might too soon discover that he can play without her constant attention. Elsewhere in the world a beautiful young woman finds a sugar daddy. She get’s to play grown up and he gets to relive the missed opportunities of his youth.
“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him.” ~Pablo Neruda
It’s okay. Go play. Get dirty and giggle. Squish something. Color outside the lines. Fill your mouth with water and say your name without swallowing and let it all dribble out in front of you.
I know you want to.
Barry Stein's Blog 
Great shots!
Thanks Susan!
Well, I poked that “like” button, but it’s not enough. In this instance, it should say “love!!” On my screen, I fixed the problem with a marker. I think I’ll leave it on there for a while. 🙂
Thanks Bob and Thelma! Remember to “protect the nest egg.” (Movie: “Lost in America” with Albert Brooks)
a good day for photography. Great shots!
Thanks Lisa!
Great array of picture and imaginings. 🙂