We weren't afraid of being ourselves and we knew who we were.
We stood together because we didn't know there was any other way to stand.
We never questioned our motives of our friends.
We thought our parents were heroes.
All fights between friends were forgotten in a couple of days and caused no personal damage.
We loved spending Friday nights in the family room, watching TV:
Family Ties, The Cosby Show, The Wonder Years.
And they were wonder years,
for we lived on dreams and the hope they never failed to inspire.
We ate our three meals a day and went to bed at nine.
School was actually liked at times; after all, grades didn't matter so much.
We got graded on things like handwriting and art.
We had spelling tests every Friday.
Our mothers called out the words every Thursday night, while fixing dinner.
We got naptimes and cookies and reading after lunch and recess.
And recess was always things like basketball and hide-and-seek,
where you never had to dress up and it didn't matter how much you had to sweat.
It was okay to hug our teachers.
The notes we passed in class always had a box to check or a secret code.
We smiled a lot every day, and only cried over little things
that went away in a matter of weeks at the most,
because they were either petty or easily resolved or else we didn't understand them yet.
We played recreational sports, where fun was never dependent on winning.
We never counted calories.
The ice cream man could bring the whole neighborhood running.
We never got embarassed when our parents came to tuck us in at night,
complete with hugs and kisses.
We got our homeworks done in no time and spent our afternoons running in the sunshine.
We played at each other's houses, unless it was to go to the swimming pool or the park,
where the swings and the merry-go-rounds fit us just right.
We told our mothers all our worries, and somehow she could solve them.
We never thought we looked bad in a photograph.
Curls were cute. We bugged the people we had crushes on.
There was no such thing as a bad hair day, no makeup, fancy clothes, expensive shoes.
We never worried about getting old too fast.
Instead, we wished we could grow up and be like the "big kids."
T h e n o n e d a y...
We grew up, and we were the big kids.
Suddenly, dreams were left by the roadside
and stepped on those we thought we trusted(and sometimes we stepped on those who trusted us).
School became something theoretically important,
where we had to prove ourselves with letters on a piece of paper.
Money entered into our everyday vocabularies,
as we wrestled over matters of allowance.
We forgot how to have fun by ourselves or how to party innocently.
Our hearts were hurt everyday, and the wounds never healed.
Our friends changed before our very eyes, some for the bad,
and there was nothing we could do, no matter how much we wanted to.
We lost sight of the little things that made us and everybody around us happy.
We learned hard lessons about life and love.
We began to fear a world that we realized was not as wonderful as we used to think.
We learned our parents weren't perfect.
We said and did things we'd grow to regret.
Slowly we lost our innocence never to gain it back.
Then we began to wish we could go back to the easier days,
where we could be happy without doubting in the sincerity of the feeling.
At least we still have each other to lean on.
That's one thing that never changes.
At least we still like sunshine, and music, and can still cry at a sad movie.
For the most part, love still rules our hearts.
"After awhile you learn that what you really are is all the experiences and all the thoughts you've ever had,
and all the people who have touched your life, no matter how briefly."
