Dirt Under My Fingernails

I was doing my yearly gardening recently, which for me means dumping seeds and plants in pots and hoping I get something useful and/or pretty out of them. The next day I noticed all the ugly, impossible to remove dirt under my fingernails. I do realize that putting on gloves would solve this yearly problem but, whatever.

This reminded me of one random summer (I can’t remember which) when I had decided that I was grown up so I wanted to grow out my fingernails like my Mom’s. One day I came in from a particularly exciting session of digging maple tree helicopters out of our sandbox while Meg buried my feet; when my Mom noticed something. Dirt – under those longer fingernails (actually only half were even remotely long because most broke off making mud pies or playing neighborhood snot-berry war or something.) She warned me that if I wanted to be grown up enough to have long finger nails then I would have to keep them clean. I needed to decide between long fingernails or playing in the yard.

Would that I could go back to myself at that age and tell me to cut those suckers off and dig in that sand to my heart’s content. “Watch Peter Pan one more time and try to grasp it’s meaning before you are 25, little Ann!!”

Peter Pan is my all time favorite Disney Movie (and also favorite ride at Walt Disney World) and all you have to do is see me ride or watch to know why. The memories attached, coupled with the message of cherishing and then later longing for summer days with no responsibilities fill my already overly emotional self with emotiony emotions. At Disney it is not only acceptable to act like a child but it is encouraged and rewarded! Who wouldn’t want to do that? Mean old Scroogie Captain Hook types, that’s who!

All of this is totally cliché and children will never fully appreciate what it is to be a child until they are standing there 20 years later in a kitchen with crusty dishes in the sink, paying bills while screaming at a washing machine that gave up on life and just stopped spinning. But that won’t keep me from sitting with my nieces and nephews and making them watch Peter Pan while cutting their little fingernails and reminding them to never grow up. Even if you must grow up, don’t ever really.



"Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought - sometimes it isn't much, either."

- Walt Disney