Stuff
Untitled
By Jon Scieszka - November 17, 2008
Have you ever had to kill a yak in the high Himalayas, and then eat its still-warm liver and eyeballs to survive? Well, I have . . . not . . . either. But I did see a guy on TV do that once. And boy, was it squishy.
I think it just goes to show – you never know what people do with their free time.
Myself, I like to enjoy a good nap, a swim, a bike ride, maybe another nap. Who doesn’t, right? But I also enjoy one pastime that I don’t really share with anyone else. And I don’t usually even tell anyone else.
It’s kind of a holdover from playing around as a kid. Because as a kid, you can get away with doing all sorts of strange things. You have a built-in excuse. You are a kid.
So you spin around to see how dizzy you can get. That’s not weird. You’re a kid. You experiment on a sunny day to see what you can burn with a magnifying glass. Fine. You dress up like a giant rabbit and go trick-or-treating in the middle of June. Okay – that is weird. Even if you are a kid.
The one thing I always loved to do as a kid, and still love to do now, is climb trees.
Tree climbing is one of those all-time great activities because it just is what it is. There is no other team to beat. No score to better. No organization to join. You climb a tree to climb a tree.
And when you’ve climbed your tree, you get to look out on the world. Usually a world of more trees. And you sway in the breeze a bit. You feel the sun, or the chill, or the tree bark on your skin. You are part of the world.
I think kids climb trees because they instinctively know this. It’s a good thing to not forget. And it’s way less messy than chewing yak eyeballs.
I think it just goes to show – you never know what people do with their free time.
Myself, I like to enjoy a good nap, a swim, a bike ride, maybe another nap. Who doesn’t, right? But I also enjoy one pastime that I don’t really share with anyone else. And I don’t usually even tell anyone else.
It’s kind of a holdover from playing around as a kid. Because as a kid, you can get away with doing all sorts of strange things. You have a built-in excuse. You are a kid.
So you spin around to see how dizzy you can get. That’s not weird. You’re a kid. You experiment on a sunny day to see what you can burn with a magnifying glass. Fine. You dress up like a giant rabbit and go trick-or-treating in the middle of June. Okay – that is weird. Even if you are a kid.
The one thing I always loved to do as a kid, and still love to do now, is climb trees.
Tree climbing is one of those all-time great activities because it just is what it is. There is no other team to beat. No score to better. No organization to join. You climb a tree to climb a tree.
And when you’ve climbed your tree, you get to look out on the world. Usually a world of more trees. And you sway in the breeze a bit. You feel the sun, or the chill, or the tree bark on your skin. You are part of the world.
I think kids climb trees because they instinctively know this. It’s a good thing to not forget. And it’s way less messy than chewing yak eyeballs.
