On Being a Kid

 I'm reading The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster out loud to the kids. It's a story about a little boy who finds a magic tollbooth in his room. When he rides his little car up to the booth, he ends up in a strange land on an adventure. The book is full of figures of speech that the kids don't get at all but makes me laugh out loud. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time.

 There is one chapter that has stuck with me. Little Milo drives his car to a place where the children float about 3 feet off the ground. Instead of starting at the ground and growing up, they start with their heads at adult height and grow down.

"You must be very old to have reached the ground already."
"Oh no," said Milo seriously. "In my family we all start on the ground and grow up, and we never know how far until we get there."
"What a silly system." The boy laughed. "Then your head keeps changing it's height and you always see things in a different way? Why, when you're fifteen things won't look at all the way they did when you were ten, and at twenty everything will change again." ... 

"Would it be possible for me to see something from up there?" asked Milo politely.
"You could," said Alec, "but only if you try very hard to look at things as an adult does."
Milo tried as hard as he could, and, as he did, his feet floated slowly off the ground until he was standing in the air next to Alec Bings. He looked around very quickly and, an instant later, crashed back down to earth again.
"Interesting, wasn't it?" asked Alec.
"Yes, it was," agreed Milo, rubbing his head and dusting himself off, "but I think I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall."