I Wish I Could Meet My Kid-Self And Thank Her For Loving Dinosaur Bones

Image by author

I love kids like crazy. I’m not sure if I would make a good kindergarten teacher, but I’d make a stellar playdate-for-hire. I can’t get enough of kids these days — probably because I haven’t had little kids in a long time. Mine drifted into teenage bodies, which then morphed into the adult form. Now they walk around mature and behaved while I squeeze myself into their old cocoons and call out, “Hey! You want to be goofy together??”

When I’m out in public, all I want is play with the kids I see roaming the planet with their parents. I might offer a funny face or a wave hello, hoping they’ll engage and we’ll have an impromptu playdate right there, but at best it’ll last mere seconds before they’re whisked off. Then I’m left fiddling with the imaginary cocoon they left in their wake because kids metamorphose by the minute.

I know some things from my never-ending coaching training about human development that allow me to understand how perfect and faultless young children are. There is no evil in a child. They act to the best of their ability, and they’re far more beautiful than they could ever intentionally be. This is because we see them through adult eyes — innocent newbies to the demands of life, endearingly clueless, and entirely themselves. This creature looks amazing to us — enchanting, admirable, and loveable.

We say they’re “edible,” that we just want to eat them up. Why? It’s not because it’s lunchtime. It’s because we want this quality of untouched genuineness inside of us. These unmapped, unacculturated beings are the closest thing to purity we can find.

Given how much I love children, it’s a surprise how counterintuitive it’s been to transfer this love to one particular child — me. Or the one who was me long ago.

I’m not talking about the concept of an “inner child.” I’m talking about the historical person who used to be me long ago. I only have a small record of her via my faulty memory, photos, and other’s faulty memories of her, but this is enough to imagine this person and wonder how it would be to run into her one day as she followed her parents in the store and glanced up at me as I made a goofy face or waved. Would I love her just as much as I love the other kids? After the shock of meeting her, you’d think I’d love her most of all.

She’s the only kid I owe everything to and the only one who can tell me how she created me, one cartwheel at a time. In this sense, I’m most intrigued by this incredible child. You’d figure I know her intimately, but no. She’s a three- to four-foot-tall enigma.

She was the sixth grader who was the shyest of the girls invited to the coatroom by Kim Jensen to see Kim’s big bra reveal — the first bra in our class! My kid-self never felt so stunned, so included, and so underdeveloped in her life, which is why she kept her mouth shut.

Good job, kiddo. If it were me now, I know for a fact I’d have said, “Whoa. Way to rock the Victoria’s Secret, Kim,” even though Kim’s earth-shattering bra predated America’s introduction to the underwear chain by a good ten years. And looking into a crystal ball, no doubt I’d be the last of my friend group to walk into one.

I’d love to be with my kid-self in Indiana when she stood listening to Gina from next door yak on while she ate her boogers. I’d put my hand gently on my kid-self as she dry-heaved at Gina’s snacking tendency, and try to normalize for her with a face that said, “Seriously, what the heck?!” I’d try to break it to her that life will be dotted with these moments — though they get more horrific and less booger-infested — and that she’s good and right to get nauseated.

Those are bigger memories from my life, but the smaller ones might be even more interesting to see, notably dinosaur bone hunting in the driveway gravel of my childhood home. I’m curious to know about my understanding of statistics back then. Dino bones could be crushed up among the gravel, but what were the chances of this, and what were the chances my kid-self would notice?

I’m ambivalent about what value her answer would have for me today. Instead, I’d rather stay on for my parents’ response to my kid-self’s insistence in the middle of the kitchen that what she was holding in her hand — taken straight from the driveway — was indeed a dinosaur footprint. When my parents weren’t buying it, what I wouldn’t give to whisper in my young self’s ear, “Even if that isn’t a dinosaur footprint, your love for wanting it to be so is why I’ve always wanted to thank you with every inch of my heart.”

I know my kid-self was as much as she could be given her circumstances and biological make-up. I know there were times when she loved her circumstances and others when she didn’t so much. She was just a regular kid — cut from the same cloth as the kids I see goofing around in the big wide world today. I bet I would have adored her — but it wasn’t all fun and games.

How hard would it be for me to spy on her saying something bossy or mean to her younger siblings? Would my eyes tear up when I saw her chewing anxiously on the skin around her fingernails? Would I take a few nibbles on my own as I watch?

Answers: hard, yes, yes.

But this is good. The more I try to meet my kid-self in the imaginary, the greater my compassion for her grows — the same compassion I feel when I see any kid do any darling, bossy, anxious, or brilliant thing today.

I hope I can thank her for laying the foundation for who I am, even if she did it because this was simply what it meant to live. She was the one who scraped her knees and feared Bigfoot. She was the one who loved the sky and tried to learn — and the one who loved and wanted to be loved back.

What do you say to someone who does that for you? I’m not sure yet, but I know I’d love to make a goofy face at her and wave hello. Then I hope we’d sit down and play, because I love kids like crazy, and I’d to love play with that one most of all.

---

Hope you're doing well, friends.