Childhood Nostalgia

Childhood Nostalgia...a smell, a song, a toy you haven't seen since you were a toddler-all of these can bring on childhood nostalgia.  Its a hard thing to put your finger on, but when it happens, it can affect all of your senses and almost transport you back to when you were 4 feet tall without a care in the world.  It happened to me just the other day.  I was dogsitting for my sister.  She lives in this little neighborhood with lots of kids who play in their yards and in the street-she calls them the Sandlot kids.  I was walking Cali late one evening and I noticed 3 kids run across the road and into a backyard. I didn't think much of it at first, until I got to another part of the neighborhood and came upon another group of kids.  When they saw me, they stopped and one of them dove behind some bushes.  And then, it dawned on me-they were playing neighborhood hide and seek.  As I realize this, one of the kids said, "Hey, its not them; its somebody else."  I was instantly transported back to my neighborhood in the tiny town of Bishopville, SC, where for years, all of us neighborhood kids would play hide and go seek all over the neighborhood after dark-Nostalgia.  It started by playing "The Dark Game", which was inside hide and go seek in the dark and then it moved to hide and go seek in that person's yard, which then turned to neighborhood hide and seek, which we affectionately called "War."  This was a different time; this was when neighbors all knew each other and kids played outside, after dark, all over the neighborhood...or at least I thought it was a different time, until I was standing in Lauren's neighborhood, watching these kids do something that to this day is still one of my favorite childhood memories.  Nostalgia is one of those things...one of those "good hurts."  It represents the memory of a happy time, but in a way that makes you miss something that only exists in your memory; which can be sad.  Maybe its because I'm getting older, or because in recent years I have found the adult world to be tough; or maybe its just because a part of you will always miss that piece of childhood where innocence, safety, friends and endless possibilities abound, that I stood in the street and watched those kids with gladness and sadness.  Childhood nostalgia...maybe I could convince someone to go play neighborhood hide and seek with me!