Childhood

Michael Jackson has a beautiful song with these lyrics:

Have you seen my Childhood?
I'm searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Last weekend I reunited with my old friend Rodney Quong who I grew up with in Darwin.  We last saw each other in (I believe) 1976 so it clearly is a long time !  As fate has it a random photo online led me to ask who was in the background with me, that person was Rodney  -- who now lives in the same city as I do.

He hasn't changed, yes we all age and we look a little taller, fatter etc than in our youth. But underneath that we are the same people.  It was an incredible experience and exhausting at the same time, to be using a part of your brain that you haven't exercised to recall stories etc

We had alot of catching up and we connected instantly. The depth of our background relationship runs deep and this allowed us to move quickly into the present.

As children we played 'war'; which was politically correct to do then. Cowboys and Indians was less popular and lacked the same heroic overtones that war  - of the second world war variety embraced. Rodney and I with our families went to countless parties and sleepovers were a very common event.

Despite our choice of 'war'  for play, from my memory we only every fought once in all those years.

Childhood is a wonderful place, caught in our memories. But we need to live in the now so Rodney I look forward to making friends again with my old friend.