It’s Never Too Late To Have a Happy Childhood.
How thoughtful play can improve the quality of your life.
The abrupt sound of women laughing and splashing caused me to look up and to my right.
I was 10 years old and hanging out in my friend’s backyard in Merritt Island, Florida. We lived in a suburban neighborhood, filled with green grass and colorful brick houses. Kids roamed free and without worry and every house had a pool in its backyard.
The sun blazed in the sky but ominous clouds threatened to block it out soon. I stood in the grass surrounding the netted pool enclosure, looking for bugs in the dirt— and that’s when I heard the splashing and laughing.
I felt like a cat who’d just spotted a laser dot on the carpet. A sudden, irresistible sense of focus came over me. I pushed a wooden box against the brick wall. Then I carefully inched upwards with my chest along the bricks like a secret agent.
I knew I was likely intruding on something. But I suspect the hormones in me were already burgeoning, and converging with my early habit of rule-bending.
My eyes inched up over the wall and stretched wide. In front of me in the pool were four beautiful 20-something women — completely nude and unashamed. Two of them had sunglasses on and were talking while standing waist-deep in the water. The other two laid on floats, on their stomachs, with their rear ends bare to the sky. Margarita glasses sat near the edge of the pool, just waiting to fall in, break, and ruin the owner's day.
I had trouble comprehending the enormity of what I was seeing. I knew I was probably doing something inappropriate. My buddy Bryan noticed my stunned face and came running up. He hissed, “What is it? What is it? Are they naked!?”
He tapped rapidly on my leg, “Let me up! My turn!”
Before I could move, I heard a deep voice shout, “Sean!” I turned and saw an older neighbor with flames in his eyes.
“Get down from that wall!”
That night I had a pow-wow with my grandparents during dinner. I was staying with them for the summer as my parents endured another chaotic military move.
Grandpa was a towering, funny, and temperamental man, who worked at NASA as an engineer and who pulsed snark and sarcasm. He put down his fork and turned to me with a wry smile, and said, “So shall I tell your parents they’re raising a talented little peeping tom? You definitely got that habit from your grandmother.”
He gestured to Grandma, who was sitting at the other end of the table. She fired back a disapproving gaze, which was well-worn and unaffected by his antics. She knew well who the true purveyor of troublemaking genes was.
Despite the chaos and annual loss of friends with each move, I was fortunate. My childhood was a place where the days yawned wide, and life was mostly fun, funny, and good. This is true for many of you and yet, inevitably, something changed.
The demands of adulting rolled over us slowly and then all at once. One can easily lament all that dies alongside your childhood, and look back wishing to reclaim all that vibrancy, imagination, and mystique.
Don’t forget that you are still that same person. I’m still the same person who spied on a bunch of skinny dippers. I’m still the boy who thought a homemade ant farm would be a good idea (it wasn’t). I’m still liable to start daydreaming mid-conversation and start whistling, perhaps more so.
It’s all there.
As a child, it didn’t matter if I bumped into a kid I didn’t know on the street, or if we just made eye contact across the fence. We all traded in a singular currency: fun.
“Does this kid play?”
“Will he play with us?”
Every stranger was a candidate. Nobody gatekept against each other or came up with a list of reasons they couldn’t associate with someone. There was even a boy down the street, Dustin, who had severe cerebral palsy and could barely move, yet we’d even hang out with him sometimes.
His parents liked that we were around and that we’d just play as he sat there in his wheelchair, smiling. To us, all that mattered was that he was another kid and that he was down (sadly, he passed away at age 12).
I remember constantly thinking, “Why are adults so serious all the time?” I especially noticed it in our daily drives home from swim practice with my dad. He often got this distant and serious stare in his eyes. It could come at any time, even after we’d been joking moments earlier. He would switch from talking to nodding and giving one-word answers to my endless questions, or say “…uhu…uhu.” He seemed like he was in another world.
I know now, that he was.
He had life and death matters on his mind, which he mostly insulated from us. He was commanding a SEAL team during one of many conflicts to come.
And perhaps a bit of seriousness can be forgiven. In the tribulations and calls of everyday life, we can’t afford to just goof off from wall to wall. But how do we reclaim that youthful joy and energy?
We can’t realistically go strike up a game of tag with other middle-aged folks, though I suspect it would be more fun than you’d expect. But there must be a happier state than the one so many float in today.
You can start with your partner or friends. Use playful teasing. It’s a proven way to improve relationships and reduce stress. It promotes a sense of security and can even help you both move past disagreements.
Sometimes, I play characters. For example, Laura had a hyper-jealous Turkish boyfriend who essentially wanted a tracking unit on her ankle. I marveled at how insecure the dude was.
One of my characters channels him. I call myself ?eanitürk, and will randomly turn to her during a movie and, in a thick accent say, “I know you are cheating on me.”
She’ll smile and say, “Oh hi ?eanitürk, and who would that be with?”
“Everyone.”
Or I’ll jokingly ask for her GPS coordinates and the names and phone numbers of everyone she’s with. It’s less about how funny the jokes are, and more about the vibe it creates. Think about how a dog plants its chest to signal that it wants to play with another dog. This is the human equivalent.
It’s also important to stop talking and thinking about work 24–7. It’s a total vibe kill. We challenge ourselves to have (at least) one day a week where no thought or discussion is given to work after we get home.
The exercise is harder than it seems. Try it.
Embrace throwback activities
It can be anything you consistently loved in your childhood.
I still love the water as much as I did back then. Whether I’m at a hotel pool drinking beers with a friend, or jumping into the waves at the beach, I always feel free — like time doesn’t matter, and everything is good and right.
Laura gets that same release with horseback riding. It connects her back to her childhood and she is never in a bad mood afterwards:
One of my friends, Karen, who is in her 50s, actively LARPS — meaning, she dresses up in various medieval warrior costumes for pseudo battles — and seems much happier than most adults I know.
Play is fundamental to mammalian growth, happiness, and development. It’s also how we learn to cooperate with others and develop emotional intelligence. Being playful as an adult is even correlated with being more likable and improving your sense of humor.
I’ll add one final caveat: remember that play and teasing should be done with restraint and consideration. Avoid pranking people or doing things that will hurt someone’s feelings.
So if you want to feel young again, a great way to do so is to act young — within reason, and with good, kind intentions.
As Tom Robbins wrote, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
No spying on people skinny dipping.
I'm a former financial analyst turned writer out of sunny Tampa, Florida. I began writing eight years ago on the side and fell in love with the craft. My goal is to provide non-fiction story-driven content to help us live better and maximize our potential.
