“My Energy Never Runs Out”

Yesterday, as I was doing nothing more than literally standing around at an outdoor street fair / fundraiser for a local elementary school, being brushed about by children running to or from a bouncy castle and screaming at each other, I reflected on how much less stressful it had been to be in the actual emergency room, missing two teeth and bleeding from my face, than it was to be in the midst of five hundred parents and their children in a line for face painting.

A retreat to the adjacent playground with Kina and her friend Runa was, by comparison, a visit to the spa. There, at least, I could sit while Kina and Runa ran around endlessly, pretending to leave the parents in the corner of the playground as they sought out “some Rosé”. The actual parents had no rosé, but at least they had a seat and six square feet of personal space.

I don’t remember what it was like to be almost six and in a crowd. I wish I could at least recall what it was like to have as much energy as Kina has. When I think about it really hard, I can feel my legs just moving, limited only by the coordination of my muscles, unbothered by the hard ground. Notably, I do not recall being tired at that age.

I had to convince Kina on a few occasions yesterday that I just couldn’t play tag, and that clearly she knew somebody she could play tag with. Any other reasonable adult probably would have blanched at the series of activities we blew through together yesterday, but one reasonable five-year-old was not only unfazed, but insulted that we couldn’t do more.

This, as she says, is her superpower. A lamp that never goes out.

Idea, hers. Production, assembly line. Some of the bats are hers. One is mine. I think those red things are apples.

dad