The Question.

          As I walked past the glass door from the ice cream shop, with my overpriced chocolate chip vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone, I noticed how any thing around me can distract me from my surroundings. To my right I saw my cousin eating her lemon sherbet with chocolate shavings with delight in each bite; she was so focused on her treat that she didn’t see that I hadn’t taken a single bite out of my ice cream. While I may get distracted by an ice cream cone, it can also be something like the car keys hanging by my hand, or the small piece of wood in the middle of my lawn, or the squirrel climbing a tree. Pretty much everything is a distraction, and this 

makes it so that my day is focused on small useless things rather than the big picture happening all around me. 

         I took some time out of my cold dessert to take a closer look at the city I live in. It occurs to me that I hadn’t even taken the time to see the almost daily commute I did from my house to the ice cream shop. I just know that all I have to do is take a left turn, another left turn by the playground on my neighborhood, then after walking through the main street to the little house complex, I had to take a right, followed by a left and just straight down through the city park, and finally I reach the store. On my way back, I try to pay more attention to the path I take home, only occasionally taking a little bite of my ice cream cone. 

          Walking down the park, I see some kids rolling down the hill, they’re probably around six years old, and either siblings or close friends. In front of the hill were their parents, they were both talking on the phone, only stopping once to tell their kids to quiet down, and not giving any attention to their children who appear to be having the best day or their lives. In the lone pond on the middle of the park were some ducklings and their apparent mother. Cars just passed by some of them probably over the speed limit, missing how even the simplest of things can make your day better. Halfway through the park I asked my cousin if she wanted to sit on a bench and just relax a little. She had almost finished her ice cream and when she saw mine she asked, “wow, you haven’t eaten anything, you usually end it in a couple of bites.” She then noticed how I was in a deep state of thinking and asked if something was wrong. I started speaking about how we have come from being the little kids rolling down the hill, to teenagers who just follow a daily routine, and growing up to reinforce that way of life. As soon as I finished she had this “that was deep dude” look on her face. We both just sat there for a while, I eventually finished my ice cream. 

          As soon as it started getting dark I asked my cousin if she was ready to go, our parents would be worried sick and I didn’t like the idea of being only my cousin and me all alone in the middle of a not so bright park. We slowly walked home, yet we found ourselves at the front door in no time. As expected, as soon as we walked in the house our parents were there ready to scold us. We didn’t pay any attention to it and just left to our rooms and lay on our bed. We came out of our room only to grab something to eat and take a quick shower. I then walked across the aisle outside of my room to my cousin’s room to keep talking about our thoughts at the park. We came to the conclusion that the only way to see if it was really childhood which made us into the happiest of people or could we find a way to be the kids that could find the delight in about anything we came across.  To be continued…