Thinking Out Loud, Volume CDLIV

I wanted to see the ship, but the reason I was so excited about boarding really had little to do with me. The United States Navy had retired one of their older destroyers, the USS Orleck, and she had been moved to the Calcasieu River in Lake Charles, Louisiana to be made into a museum. Just a couple years before his death at age 91, my father in law had volunteered his time, expertise and labor to construct hand rails on all the stairs on the ship to get it up to code as an attraction for the general public. One Saturday morning when we had gone down to visit him for the weekend, he decided to take us to tour the ship before it actually opened as a museum. We had taken our grandson with us on the trip, and I got my biggest thrill by just observing his wide eyed amazement as we were about to board. However, none of us could have known that his excitement level was about to double before any of us ever stepped on board. As we started across the gangway leading from the shore to the ship, we looked down to the water below just in time to see a huge alligator swimming upstream, no more than four feet directly beneath our feet! Lake, who was about six at the time, said later, "I liked seeing that alligator as much as I did the ship!" A couple weeks ago, near the end of an extended road trip, my job took me to Galveston, Texas, which is actually an island just off the Texas Gulf Coast. As I started for home that next morning, the route included a twenty minute ferry boat ride that took us past at least a dozen ships that were waiting in line to get to the port, and there must've been a least a hundred sea gulls swarming our ferry, diving down to the water in our wake, looking for food. It was an interesting sight, but the whole time I was wishing I had Lake and Lennon with me. Can you still remember how things excited you so much more when you were a child than they do now? Driving over a really high bridge. Taking a ride on a tractor. Moving your arm up and down, signaling the driver of the 18 wheeler to blow his air horn for you. Eating a Popsicle. The list goes on and on. Then as we grow older, all those fun things gradually begin to lose their appeal and we just settle in for the more hum drum, laid back style of life. Oh, if we could always look at life's experiences through the eyes of a child! The best we can do now is have our kids and grandchildren with us as much as possible, but there's something else we might could try when they're not with us. All it takes is a little imagination, and we became imagination experts when we were kids. I tried it on that ferry boat trip, and it worked pretty well. I just made believe they were with me, envisioning myself showing them all the sights. Most of us adults have lost that wide eyed look at the little things of life, but if we can just pretend we have our little ones with us, we can get it back. When our kids can't be with us, we can "play like" they are. Life is so much more fun that way. Preston