This kid is probably four or five, not yet in kindergarten and still in the "this many fingers" age range. He's rocking that deep summer tan and bleach blonde hair that only a kid can achieve, but don't let his cute appearance fool you. No, you have to keep your guard up around this little guy. He has a mouth like a sailor (in that oh my goodness, you have an unbelievably strong command of the four letter vocabulary kind of way) and he loves to deliver hay-makers to the baby-makers when you lose focus, if you know what I mean. Which works out perfectly, because an average adult male's future children are about fist high for him.
You know how with most little kids you tease them little, poke them in the ribs and they laugh and think you're a little funny and one of the cool adults... that's not this kid. If you even think about joshing with him a little he wants to literally knock you unconscious, laugh at you, and make out with your girlfriend... and then laugh at you again. Maybe I'm embellishing a little bit, but only in the sense that it will be a couple more years before he starts making out with girls. Mark my words that before he graduates high school he will have knocked a kid out with one punch and stolen someone's girlfriend. I'll bet you five bucks and if both happen to the same dude you owe me double.
So now that I've attempted to paint this picture, I'm sure it's totally believable that this kid would say one of the most inspiring, uplifting, motivational things I have ever heard.
It was the Fourth of July and I was in the side yard helping this kid's dad (host of the party) set up a slip and slide for the young ones. It was your run-of-the-mill slip and slide, nothing spectacular and some of the older kids were helping drag the hose out and were altogether patient, surprisingly enough. Right as the water feature was about to open for business, this little guy (the ball buster) comes sprinting out of the house running towards the group of me, the host, and a dozen kids. He sprints right up to the middle of the pack and says one of the most profound things I've ever heard from a human being, let alone a child.
I suppose it was what he said, but even more than that, it was how he said it - with conviction, with every fiber of his being. What I mean by that is that he yelled at the top of his lungs. No that's not descriptive enough - he screamed it like a 10-year old girl watching a spider crawl across her arm. Someone on the other side of the development probably thought there was a chain saw massacre about to go down. So with clenched fists, neck veins popping, and eyes slammed shut he shrieked, "this is Going TO BE AWESOME!"
Fourteen year old girls at a Bieber concert could not have been more excited (and not half as articulate). And after collecting myself (I had nearly passed out from laughing so hard), I felt the impact sink in: I want to approach life with that much enthusiasm. Heck, even half that level of enthusiasm would be an improvement! I want to wake up in the morning, thank God for another day on Earth, and scream (silently to myself [at least most days]), "this is going to be AWESOME!"
This kid is at that stage of life where your biggest concerns are "how many juice boxes can I suck down before mom cuts me off." His days consist of meal, play, nap, repeat. Everyday he wakes up and plays as hard as he can until he crashes, takes a snooze whenever and wherever he feels like it, and someone's always around to cut his PBJ diagonally for him (obviously that makes it taste better, brings out the tannins in the grape jelly).
Seriously, in the context of a kid's life this slip and slide should have been mundane. He could have approached this water feature with the "this is just what we do" attitude. Given the serious put-downs this kid is capable of throwing down, it would have been totally legitimate for him to have delivered an expletive laced, "you call this a slip and slide?"
But no! He wasn't just excited, he was strap-concrete-blocks-to-my-feet-and-drown-me-in-an-ocean-of-enthusiasm excited. As an adult it's not easy to be that enthusiastic, even about really fun things. In fact, people look at you weird when you get excited. But as they say, "haters gonna hate." So I'm going to make a concerted effort to attack life like it's the world's greatest slip and slide. And let me tell you, it's going to be awesome!
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