Twenty Children Cannot Play for Twenty Years.

I was going through some old picture of my mothers of my cousins and myself and I was reminded of one of her perennial saying. “Twenty Children Cannot Play for Twenty Years. I was never sure what she meant until I look through all of her pictures. Most of them were dated 1985, 1986, or 1987. The snapshots were of smooth faces, bright eyes, and dated hairstyle fashions.

As I moved to my pictures that included 2000 and beyond I could see the difference in smiles, or lack thereof, spreading faces with facial hair, longer waistlines, shorter hair, and longer skirts. A lot of our youth and black hair had given way to more serious affairs over the last twenty years, such as jobs, mortgages, marriages, wives, separations, and kids.

The key thing that had changed was our smiles. There were far less of them. The wear and tear of life had laid into each of us in one way or another, and to one extent or another. Life had less weight to it then. Things were simpler. We all had less experience back then, but the problems of life were far less complicated.

Back then we were all on the same level in life. We were all still in high school. The world had yet to hold us accountable in the way it does now as men.

Play time, as we knew it is long over. Now, we have to make a point to remember to play, and more importantly, play with one another. Play in such a way to bring some of those smiles from the 80s back.