Zebras and Penguins

So, within the past few days my brother put out the majority of our outdoor Christmas decorations. It's a pretty strange sight to the uninitiated: plastic penguins with green or red lightbulbs inside line the stairs up to the front door, and there's a plastic snoopy as well as some angels and the obligatory lights along the railing and in the trees.

Let me state for the record that I love it, even with all of its tackiness. I think that no matter what my religious beliefs ever stabilize into, I will always love Christmas. I don't think it matters that much that it's largely a cultural celebration - it's still a celebration, and it's still something that helps us shift our perspecrtive into something really spirited and magical for a few weeks.

Anyway. I was saying. The other night, soon after the penguins has been lit for the night, we found one of the (many) little kids in the neighborhood outside on our steps making friends with the penguins. I mean, he was absolutely falling in love with them. He was walking up and down, talking to himself and them, standing back to look, coming forward for inspection and interaction, totally lost in whatever fantasy world he'd dreamed up around himself and them.

The best part? He was dressed in a fuzzy little zebra suit, which was evidently a halloween costume before it became part of his permanent outfit repertoire. There were a few other kids that came by and poked fun at him for the zebra-ness; he came back with a few dismissive responses, and didn't seem too overly upset by them. I noticed that he spoke with a stutter, and probably some day he's going to be "that kid" in class that stands out a bit.

Well, good for him. Watching him made me remember days of playing "school" with a bunch of stuffed animals, or hanging out in the forest building forts and fighting off imaginary "enemies" with my brother, or building habitats for my beanie babies out of scraps of wood. It made me remember how easy it is for kids to take something simple, like some plastic figures, and create an entire universe around them, and actually live there for awhile. It's like they have this determination that says that the fact that something isn't physically or immediately apparent isn't at all a good enough reason for not still trying to experience it, especially if it's a really good idea, and I think there's a lot of (unintended) wisdom in that perspective.*

Plus, hell, it's just fun. I'd be lying if I said I didn't go back inside and spend awhile in my own universe.


*That wasn't intended to be a religiously oriented statement so much as a statement about just not letting one's self be limited by what might seem to be insurmountable constraints.