Forever Seven

When you are seven you think that, when you grow up, the world will be silver and metallic and technologically advanced. There will be spaceships and aliens and robots. But then you realize at sixteen, as you swing back and forth in the park, just like when you were seven, that when you’re twenty-five or thirty, working, married, having kids, the world won’t be that different than it is now.

You’ll still be pushing your child in the plastic swing across the park just like that stranger. The slide will still be painted bright colours, slowly rusting in the rain. The breeze will still blow the mist off the splash park onto your back. You’ll still have to pump your own swing, and run over to the big red button to turn the water back on when it turns off.

They’ll be no hover chairs, or robots, or mechanics you always imagined there’d be. Parks will still be filled with colours and trees and cries of happy children. There will still be adults reading books, and college students studying in the shade of a huge maple. That tree will still be there when you’re twenty-five.

Then you realize that it’s warmer now than when you were seven. You remember how warm the winter was, and how much more it rains. You remember the tornado that touched down the other day just cities away from you. You would have been deathly afraid if you had known when you were seven. Maybe the world is changing.

You still swing back and forth, just thinking. You see someone you’re age walking on the sidewalk texting in their phone. They smile at something someone probably said without using proper grammar, or even proper words. You would have thought it was silly when you were seven. Mind you probably hadn’t even seen a cell phone before. Society is changing.

And you’re afraid. You don’t like change. You don’t like things you don’t understand and can’t control. You don’t want to face a changing world, changing faster than you can blink. You start realizing you’re alone.

Now you start to wonder why you’re here in the park by yourself. It’s the first Friday of summer, and you’re sixteen. Why aren’t you hanging out with friends? You chose to come to the park. Just to swing and think. There’s not much else to do at the park now. When you were seven, you were taken to the park. You would climb and swing and jump and yell and scream, and hours later, when you’re parents wanted you to leave, you were still full of energy. Now you wonder if your legs will be strong enough to make the walk back home. You’re out of practice on the swings.

The world doesn’t change the way you thought it would when you were seven. It may look different or feel different, but it’s still the same. Just like you. You have changed. And you will change by the time you become twenty-five. But you’re still the same as when you were seven. Forever seven.