Childish Things

I remember the day I stopped playing with toys as a kid. A small collection of G.I. Joes would usually occupy my afternoons. I would stage ambushes, march them along my windowsill and over the peaks of pillows, subjecting them to all the perils mustered by a boy’s imagination. Then, one day, whatever we call the thing that lives in children and animates this sort of play, went out like a candle in the wind. In my hands were lumps of plastic, cold and silent, nothing more. There might even have been a twinge of embarrassment upon the sudden realization. I had grown up. Well, sort of.