When I was a child, I was such a tomboy.

I would go running off to the playground with my younger cousins (both boys) and we would spend our afternoons just devising “routes” and “stations”, completing round after round of physical exercise. I would climb, like the monkey that I am, onto the bars and swing myself here and there. I would jump down from the very top of the slides and make believe that I was flying. Or I would push my swing to the highest limit and throw myself off the tiny, rubber seat onto sandy pit, sometimes to detrimental (and painful) results. Sometimes, we would race against one another up trees and then fling our lithe bodies off the highest branches that we could scrape our way up to. Other times, we would scale our way up the rows and rows of letterboxes and perform acrobatic flips and jumps atop the cool, metallic surfaces.

But as I grew older, I shed the boyish self the same way I grew out my hair. I traded in my tatty Ts for pretty bouses. And in that manner, the vestiges of my fearless, feckless nature were gradually wiped clean by the forward-flowing of time. Responsibilities set in and the curious self takes a backseat to other, more “adult” issues like family and finances. My mind grew smaller and more timid, the sky no longer the limit to me. Dreams I had long ago, of marriage, family, career, travel moved further and further out of sight.

Can I find that devil-may-care attitude in me again? The insolence that may, or may not, be buried deep within the excess baggage, shattered memories and forgotten joys?

Dare I take that step forward, ignoring the risks, just to catch a whiff of fresh air?
Dare I sit back and wait patiently, believing that everything will come in its own time?
Dare I let myself stumble and fall blindly, in exchange for a new and unknown experience?
Dare I ask why the colour of the sky is not purple and why dogs cannot talk but bark?
Dare I sip from a mug of Guiness Stout despite its look of insidious poison?
Dare I endure the intense pain to get a tattoo on my behind just for the heck of it?
Dare I tell him that I would like his behind more if it is nice and taut?
Dare I start each day as if it’s brand new, with no care or thought of what happened the day before and what will happen a day later?

Maybe all it takes is for someone to bring out the curious child in us once in a while.
Could you be that someone?

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