Regression

I wish I was in primary school.

In primary school, you never get cold. You get to walk around in shorts and a t shirt all day, and play after school at night at a friend's house in your shorts and t-shirt and you'll never feel the cold. Even when your mum nags and nags you to put your jumper on, you'll only put it on to shut her up, then when she's walked away again, you'll rip it off and go back to playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Shop, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saving the shop from Shredder and Krang - whatever takes your fancy.

I'd also like to be in primary school, because you can get 'rostered' on to play Dinosaur Discovery in the afternoon. You and your partner get your floppy disk with your saved game from last week, and you'd sit down in the hallway to try and beat everyone else. And how good did it feel when you finally negotiated a safe passage? Almost as good as when you finally caught Carmen, I'd imagine.

In primary school, they'd give you a pack of coloured pencils. And one of those 'gummy' erasers too. They were ace. You could break bits off and throw it at people when the teacher wasn't looking. You would also get to sit at special lifty-up-py desks where you could hide secrets, and pick a new desk partner every fortnight from the teacher's Itty Bitty Bin, and hoped and prayed you picked Stuart (again). If you were really lucky, you could hear your teacher call Jonathon a 'moron' and think it was the MOST SCANDALOUS THING EVER!

So, considering all this fun stuff, it's no wonder there's kids walking around in t-shirts when it's 7 degrees. I wonder when you start getting cold. Probably when you get to high school, and there's boys and 'non-understanding' parents and science homework to worry about.

Obviously that's why adults are feeling the cold the most. They're the ones that are wrapped up in thermals and warm clothes and coats and scarves at even the hint of some fresh Autumn air. It's because they've got the most to worry about. Jobs, and partners, and money, and kids, and mortgages, and politics, and car crashes, and weight, and getting old and....

Or maybe, these kids are getting about sans jumpers because they've lost them for the 100th TIME THIS YEAR ALREADY?



PS - In primary school, I made up a game. Imaginatively titled 'Car'. What you'd do, is get a group of friends together (4-6 is ideal), and sit in the playground at lunch time where you could see the road. You'd then pick an order, and each car that drove past would be allocated to each person in that order. Then you'd play and play and play until the bell rang for you to line up and then you'd decide who won, based on the following:
- colours of the cars that you 'got'
- exciting-ness of the cars that you 'got'
- occupants of the cars that you 'got'.
I once 'got' a bus full of grammar boys on their way to sports. That day, there was no question of who won.
I'm giving you all free range to play my game now - in fact DO IT this weekend. It will possibly help if you are a little drunk, and maybe even a little bored, but tell me how triumphant you will feel when you get a Ferrari, a fat-ass 7 series BMW and a car full of saucy members of the opposite sex, and you can go 'WINNER'.

Bonus points if they wave.