I miss being three foot eight. I miss the days when the world was my back yard, when the now boldly defined line between real and imaginary was ghostly, and when war consisted of tattered old playing cards and long afternoons with a friend.
When I was three foot eight, I lived in a different world, a world of unimaginable size, in which I knew myself to be minuscule, a world in which my head was constantly cocked, to see not just the stars, but scarcely above the countertops.
With this short distance from my head to my toes, and the overwhelming heights of the world, came an absence of logic, during which I found it rational to leap, jump, bound, and bounce.
Each night, readying myself for sleep, I cleared a path through my room. Opening the door, I backed into the hallway. With my heels pressed firmly against the wall, my eyes riveted to my target, and a childish smile smeared across my face, I sprung forward. Dashing into my room, with my little arms pumping and my little knees bent, I jumped as high and as far as my forty-four inch frame could soar; gliding through the air for mere seconds, before being consumed by the cushioning ripples of my bed’s pink and purple butterfly comforter.
It was in those mere seconds, my world was complete, mind lucid, thoughts clear, spirits cheered, and problems eluded, I soared. I look back at those seconds now with desire; longing for another chance to jump into an abyss of tranquility and breathe in that peaceful state of mind I will never again obtain.