Bliss.... A Return to the Past

As I questioned myself on how I was going to approach this assignment I first was scared that I would not be able to come up with anything.You see I think this assignment is great for people who really have something that truly can occupy there time in a straight block like that but for me it's not that easy. I get real bored if I do something for too long. What I tried to do was think about something that would make me smile and generate some happier thoughts so I decided to take a drive through my old neighborhood where I grow up for my first 13 years off my life. I'm in my mid thirties now so it's getting harder to remember those times when I was a kid. I haven't been back in this neighborhood for years and things have definitely changed. All my family pretty much lived in one concentrated area and now that both set's of grandparents have passed and my sister has moved up north to Lafayette there really is no one left there on that side of town. I took a walk through the old park where my friends and I used to play baseball, my old house was right next to it so we could just climb a fence and just spend the whole evening after school over there. The park looks nothing like it used to they're all these fancy swings, slides , and monkey bar things.I had my first kiss over there when I was 12.Oh yeah, the romance of 1984 with the girl that live a few houses down from my house. I can't even remember her name for the life of me. I looked across the fence where my old house still stands. The people that own it now sure have let it run down a bit. They did take my old basketball goal down. My dad and me used to play HORSE in the driveway and I could hit this shot where I threw it over the edge of the roof and sink it right through the net. I guess when I got back over to my old neighborhood I started thinking about how I wish I was a kid again and that life moves so fast now. There is no time for play and having fun. As you get older more responsibilities are thrown you're way and now you got to worry about how you're going to pay for school, rent and put food on your table.Well anyway, I drove by my old elementary school and it's as big as a high school . They've added on and built like two other buildings around it. I used to go sledding down this big hill in back of the school and guess what it no longer there! They smoothed it out and the hill is all but non-existent. It brings back so many good memories when I think of the place where I grew up. There's a episode of the Twilight Zone called "Walking Distance" where a guy that has a stressed out job gets a flat tire on his way to the city and he stuck in his old neighborhood where he grew up. He ends up going back in time and sees himself when he was a kid. That's the way I feel sometimes I just can't stay there very long. There was something quite therapeutic about this assignment I know some of these other people in class probably did far more interesting things but I choose to do something that I thought my have a nostalgic but happy feel to it. In the end it made me forget about how crappy things have been lately and that just swinging on a swing for a couple of minutes could take you back home .