Nine

So, if you follow me on facebook, allow me to apologize now because many of the photos I'm posting on here will probably be things you've already seen. Hopefully you are okay with this. And maybe you'll see some of these photos in a new way, or I'll pull out something that didn't strike you when flipping through the photos. Who knows?

The other day I wandered down to Waterfront Park, which right now isn't waterfront at all. It's basically a bunch of mud. It was still pretty cool though. I was sitting there, reading a book and sipping a coffee when this little girl came up to me and asked me to watch her stuffed dog for her. I said she could leave it on the bench with me and I would make sure it stayed safe. Well, she was really chatty and before long I knew she was nine and lived a couple of streets away. She was spending her afternoon doing something particularly kid-like: throwing rocks into mud. She would clamber down the sides of the pit and grab some rocks, haul them up to the lookout point and then throw them over the edge into the mud. She loved the sound it made and the way the mud splattered really far when she made a good shot. She also really loved the big rocks. I was amazed by the size of some of the ones she was moving. I mean, this kid is nine and she was picking these ridiculous rocks and then refused to give up before she actually got them to the lookout deck. Before long she had roped me into helping her. So for the next hour or so, the two of us climbed around gathering rocks and then throwing them into the mud. I felt a little silly at first, but then I started to enjoy myself. Sometimes as adults we forget how much fun the most random activities can be. We feel weird. We wonder whether we should be doing this, whether we could get in trouble for it. Sometimes it's good to let loose and just throw some rocks into some mud.

Also, something about how this girl talked and the fact that she was nine (and therefore turning ten sometime) made me think of "On Turning Ten" by Billy Collins. I could just imagine her saying the things in that poem. Maybe that is part of why I was uncharacteristically comfortable spending the afternoon with her; it felt a bit as if we were kindred spirits of a kind.