Friday, September 29, 2006


It looks so easy, the business of being a kid. What synapses in our brain die as we age? We stop growing, eventually (except our noses, ears and waistlines: the uglier parts), learn and move at a slower pace. The older we get the more pruned our brains become, shedding the "unneccesary" connections. Essentially, what appears to be simplicity in childhood is actually complexity, unrefinement, the happiness of a brain yet unformed but forming by a small world of experience.

Yesterday I spun in circles with my arms out until I got so dizzy I fell down. The second-grade girls next to me fell down a few seconds later, while my head spun in a spun-drunk dizzyness, the nauseous feeling finally fading about an hour later. The girls got up right away, ready to invent some other game involving a tennis ball and a pair of plastic flip-flops while I sat in the grass wondering if I ever truly thought that game was fun and needing a small helping hand to get up. Evidently a few of the nerves connecting my enlarging ears to my brain have died, making the sense of equilibrium harder to acheive after a good spin. If I spin like this every day can I re-learn to not get quite so dizzy?