The Best of Times The Worst of Times

Puddles.

Why not begin this account with a bit of philosophical rambling from the the ADHD author who penned it? One day I was walking across a North Dakota street to the store around the corner from my sister's house were I'd taken up residence when, all at once, I looked down at a puddle left over from a rain.

This got me to thinking: at what point in my life did I stop playing in puddles? At what time in all our lives does the nature of puddles change? I propose here that puddles may be used to mark the passage of time.

During the childhood years those little collections of mud infused rain water are a source of gaiety, of entertainment. We laugh and splash our siblings, friends, or other relations in innocent glee. I sure know I did. Then one day that all goes away. Puddles become a nuisance. They make us slide, they ruin our brand spanking new footwear, or they are splashed upon us by passing cars in a seemingly malevolent mockery of our own childhood splashes.

When in a person's life does this happen? That's hard to answer because it's such a gradual and organic process most of us don't notice. I noticed, for I fancy myself something of a philosopher. I wonder what happened to my childhood love of puddles.

I've died and come back( that when I was only a dopey toddler). I've been in and out doctors offices. I went to college. I've made friends that became brothers, brothers who became write offs, and seen at least one write off get his crap together.

As of the time I Penn or rather type these words I've escaped from a purgatory that almost ended my life via my own hand. I've been a paraeducator trying to help kids who didn't always want it. Only God who brought me back from the otherside knows what I'll be from there. You'll see a little of what I am. a little of what I'd rather not have been and perhaps we can solve that riddle of the relationship of puddles to the changing of life's fickle seasons.