How to be a kid again? Tribune columnist advises to disco and spin your way back
How long has it been since you’ve felt like a kid again?
No, I don’t mean flinging yourself on the floor of the supermarket and having a heel-kicking, temper-tantrum meltdown because you can’t have a bag of sugar bombs, aka iced, sprinkle-topped animal crackers.
My nephew Allan nailed it recently, posting: “I get annoyed with people assuming I’m an adult just because of my age.”
There’s something magical about returning to childhood, especially if it can be repeated often in times of trauma and stress.
Remember chasing bubbles, running through the sprinkler, tossing snowballs, speeding down the water slide, cannonballing hard enough into the pool to splash our parents?
We adults really need to allow ourselves some kid-ishness once in a while, seeking out opportunities to share their glee.
We need to temporarily not be weighed down by taking out the trash, cleaning out the fridge, the price of groceries and gas and the pain life throws at us so unexpectedly.
Our grown-up lives are overstuffed with mandatory, stand-up meetings for work, paying bills and waiting forever to get into the exam room to actually see the doctor.
We are starved for whimsical, child-like fun.
I’d even slide down a banister again if I wasn’t afraid of butt splinters or winding up with something crucial in a cast.
Water slide? Maybe not.
Dang. There’s that pesky adulting again.
Fortunately, some things can make me feel young and carefree, even if only for a moment or two at time.
If we can arrange it so those youthfully delighted moments happen often enough, they can counterbalance all those hours spent being an adult.
If something can make me smile and feel good every time I see it or do it, it’s a top-notch winner.
Put some light on it? Better yet, lots of them
Case in point: I was walking around in a San Luis Obispo deli in late 2023, finding some things that appealed to me.
Then I spotted the mushrooms. Yes, three mushrooms, ranging in height from about 5 to 8 inches.
No, no, nothing psychotropic, except the glee I felt when I saw them.
These were covered in reflective, mirror-like, disco ball dots, hearkening back to bars and parties from the 1920s to the ̓80s and beyond.
Lights that were focused on the mushrooms bounced Tinkerbell’s stars on the surroundings.
I smiled, then started to laugh. I walked away, but kept going back to them.
They were irresistible happy-makers.
Yeah. I wound up buying them.
How could I not?
Sitting on our kitchen counter, despite limited light sources, the glittering fungi reflected the illuminations on whatever was nearby,
Then we picked up a mushroom and put it in the direct line of an afternoon sunbeam. Magic!
Like indoor fireworks, the many reflections lit up our ceiling, walls, even some furniture and nearby clothing.
As the sun moved through the afternoon, so did the sparkles.
We were grinning and giggling like 5-year-olds with triple-decker ice cream cones and no annoying parents lecturing us about drips, smears and eating sweets too close to dinners.
But where to put the ̓shrooms?
We moved them around from place to place, seeking the sweet spots.
You guessed it.
We now have a forest of mushrooms, plus other disco balls that range from a glittery, 12-inch globe to some marble-sized disco-ettes less than an inch in diameter.
Each one looks decorative early in the day.
But, because most of our home’s big windows face west, the effect in the upper reaches of our living and dining rooms near sunset is absolutely enchanting.
It fills our lives with fairy dust.
Even now, more than a year later, every time I see them and the sparkles they flash at us, the joy they spark makes me happily laugh like a kid again.
It really feels good for a moment or two … especially knowing that if the sun shines, the fairy dust will be back tomorrow, and also knowing that my late son Brian adored them and my late husband would have, too.
For more kid-like joy, watch something go ‘round and ‘round.
Recently, we found another youthful pleasure.
On our regular driving route home, we pass a multi-colored, double-wheeled garden spinner. Each ribbon-strung circle was about a foot-and-a-half across.
In the slightest puff of breeze, the lined-up wheels whirl around independently in opposite directions, like a rainbow on speed.
We’d smile and comment joyfully to each other about what a happy sight it is.
We asked the man who owns the garden spinner where he got it.
Alas, the store that sold it to him had gone out of business.
But undaunted (that means temper-tantrum stubborn), we eventually found them at … wait for it … The Sky’s the Limit kite store in Pismo Beach.
Makes sense: Kites are joyous, too, after all, if you can get them off the ground.
Again, one thing led to another. We wannabe young ‘uns don’t have a lot of restraint, do we?
The Tanners now have one triple-stacked rainbow swirling on the back deck, a tie-dye patterned one beside our entryway path, a fetching lady-bug spinner in the Zen Garden.
They multiplied like Tribbles.
You get the picture.
If not, I’ll send it to you.
So, I say, if something’s legal, doable, relatively safe and it makes you feel like a kid, go for it. Get it. Enjoy it. Eat it. Do it.
What makes you feel like a kid again?
Channel your inner 6-year-old, minus the ubiquitous parent or cellphone.
I do, however, still draw the line at temper tantrums for grownups. We adults look so idiotic doing that.
And we have so many other ways to make fools of ourselves.
