Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/docia-shares-a-story-grown-up/5015875/
In “Dear Diary,” New York Times (January 5, 2004), is a story from a woman who collects and wears Mickey Mouse watches. She is on a train going to New York. At a stop, a five year old and his mother board the train and sit next to her. As the coach was crowded, the boy sat on his mother’s lap. The woman wrote, “He noticed my watch and looked up at my face. He repeatedly glanced at the watch, then at me, as though working out a difficult problem. Finally with a very puzzled expression on his small face, he tapped me on the arm and said, ‘Excuse me, but are you a grown up?’ ”We may never know what her response was, but I wonder if the child would have been even more puzzled if she had said that she wore Mickey Mouse watches because they brought pleasure to the child in her.
No matter what our age, I believe we all carry a bit of the child around with us. I don’t know whether that is why we chose the early childhood field as a profession, but I do know that even at 90, I still love participating with ...