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CHAPTER 21
DRIVING TO A TOWN CALLED YESTERDAY
I may not be a great traveller, but when I do choose to travel, I could travel any distance. I only travel to “future” but this time was different, I had to journey to the town called yesterday.
I had walked a long distance to get to the center of a green park in my city. As I sat down on the molded seats under one of the huts that characterized the park environment, I was hit by the sudden blow of yesterday. My eyes steered at some young kids who were busy at the fun machines that dotted the park. As I watched those little ones, I reminisced time when I would have jumped on those machines. Now it would be odd jumping on them. I’m grown
You might have had one of such dotting mind travels. The words “I wish” come through your vocals. You wish you could go back to when you were a child and repeat the same games you played. You still wish the skipping ropes could go rolling over your head and the street ball games could continue as you run feverishly under the heat of the sun.
Remember those days of playing squares or hitting nails, carrying toy babies or flying paper airplanes, jumping on mummy’s back or sitting on daddy’s neck, playing the mummy daddy game or keeping a large collection of wallpapers of famous heroes. Now you are grown.
If you had an opportunity to go back to yesterday, to that time when you were a kid, what would you love to do again? Lionel Richie gave his own answer as “if I could turn back the hands of time, I would like to dance with my father again.”
Pondering over how much has changed, I remember praying along with my peers that we should grow up fast become fathers and mothers and create the change we want. We have grown, some of us have married, others are hoping, and then it hits us that we have missed something. Yes, we have missed something. We no longer can play the hide and seek games, listen to tales by moonlight. We are no longer thrilled with Barney and friends, Superman, Spiderman, Robocop, and all the frills that caught our fancy those little days.
What happened to our soccer gods, the ones we idolized when we were young? Where are the Jayjays, the Olisehs, the Kanus, the Bechams, the Zidanes, the Ronaldos, the Robertos, the Figos of the football world? These were men we idolized whose shirt numbers we made claim to on the back of our school seats. You are iconic if compared to those famous ones in style of play. Their time is long gone.
When you listen to the giggle of a child, you wish you could giggle along. But you are so encumbered with thoughts of “how do I survive?” You seem dazed by tomorrow’s needs, things that were not part of life those growing years.
As we grow older, we begin to desire to grow younger. We want to return to yesterday and lay there for as long as we can. Ladies want baby looking skins that will make them look under eighteen forever. Men want to be forever young. It is a great desire that falls in the “I wish” class. It is impossible. We will give way somehow whether willingly or unwillingly to the cold hands of ageing.
Here is a thought that pricked my heart as I pondered on having an opportunity to get on the merry go round in the park without being considered too young. Having a child with me was the answer.
If I had a child, I would have taken him or her to the park and then say honey let us play on the merry go round. I would be returning to childhood playing football with my son, skipping with my daughter, running the bag race with my children and having us play the football console. I would not have looked odd because I was doing it with someone who has a right to it. I would be considered a great dad
Your children could give you the yesterday you want to have if you choose to make their today better than what you had.