From the perspective of an adult, childhood is an illusion. It is that imaginary time during which the weight of the world did not bear heavily on one’s shoulders. It is that fantasy in which pain is a frightening and unpleasant but brief physical sensation, not the perpetual marathon of grueling mental agony that rips the psyche into blood-drenched shreds of fear and regret.
If childhood were a color, it would be mint green. But we all know it’s just an illusory attitude, an attitude of muted sage and rust and end-of-the-world black. Childhood is a coarse wax figure hidden behind a tinted windshield just before that awful crash.
When we were children, there was an Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and Baby Jesus, all of whom we now know were the products of a hundred generations who ingested bad mushrooms and razor blades with a vodka and kerosene chaser.
