A Shot of Reality in a Simpler Time

It was an overcast day. Me and some friends of mine were at Cahalan Park in San Jose. This park was not far from where we all lived, and it was one of my favorite places to go. I think I was about 9 or 10 at the time. Hide and go Seek at this park was always awesome.

This is not about a fun game of Hide and Go. This is about throwing those orange-red little berries at each other. I don't quite remember how this all started, nor do I care. All I remember is for about a half hour, we had fun.

I am sure you, the reader, knows the berries I am talking about. They are a bright orange-red and grow on bushes. You are not supposed to eat them. Parents, if you see your kids picking these berries, make sure they do not put them in their mouth.

No, none of us ate them. We had smart parents who told us not to eat them.

My friends and I, and I am sure my brother was there as well, got in a berry fight with another group of kids. Our aim was excellent that day. One of my clearest memories was nailing one of them in the cheek with a berry as he was running and him looking over at me and saying "Hey!" Good times.

When it was over, my friend and next door neighbor Nathan and I talked about how awesome it was to nail those dicks in the face with berries. I mentioned how I want it to happen the next time we went to the park. I mean, who wouldn't? It was fun, and nobody got hurt. Then Nathan, always the wise one(a lot smarter than me and a year older), hit me with reality.

He mentioned that he has found that things like that tend to happen once, and then never repeat themselves. Basically, as much as I would love to do that again, it would not happen again, ever. That was not what I wanted to hear, and it is something that stuck with me ever since.

Was it that lesson that turned me into someone who is constantly thinking about the past? No, I do not think so. I was doing that long before I realized it. It could explain why I am almost never as happy as I should be, and why I often push people away from myself. Messed up, isn't it?

So, did I ever get into another fun berry war at the park? Nope. It never happened again.