"I love doing that," I hear from my right.
Love doing what?
It takes a moment for me to realize that the comment was made for my benefit, this delay explained by my conviction that the Comm Ave Mall is for the people who ignore everything in it. By the time I turn my head, the woman had walked on, or I should say had kept walking, now alongside the squares, then past them, her indifference to my delayed acknowledgment leaving me no option but to speculate on what she meant by the comment. Love doing what? I can only assume it referred to my impulsive callback to kindergarten, jumping with both feet into a momentary recess from the grinding repetition of adult days.
The chalk outline had come up so fast that it almost took me by surprise, again, but on this run I'd noticed just in time. I had confirmed the path was clear, then angled sharply across the mall to align myself ahead of the diversion. I wasn't familiar with this game, I had never played it, but now there was no time to think so I did it - two feet if one square, one each if two squares, and a serious knee injury if three or more squares. Hopscotch bore some resemblance to the agility ladder I'd abandoned years ago, at the end of my playing days, so even in just a couple of seconds my feet had recalled the old rhythm and skipped themselves through to the final square. Like childhood, it was over in a flash. I stutter-stepped over the finish line, ready for the resigned mechanics of my daily jog, but then I'd heard the comment from the person who was now almost out of sight, each stride taking her further from the past.
Why would someone who had just claimed to love doing something immediately walk past an opportunity to do it? This logical question might not be entirely fair. It could be based on some personal ideal for consistency of both expression and action, which isn't a realistic expectation in practice. Who hasn't claimed some new inspiration, yet changed nothing about their creative work? Who hasn't seen the motivation from the morning disappear into another afternoon of inactivity? Maybe a physical limitation or fresh injury prevented her from fulfilling the scribbled prophecies of the pavement. I myself would never jump into a hopscotch game while walking, so maybe that's what the comment meant - like me, she would play if she were running, but being out for a walk was an entirely different matter.
I supposed it's possible I'm fixated on the wrong question. There certainly isn't any way to know, for sure, what was meant in the comment. But I also wonder why the comment was made at all, particularly as it bore some resemblance to a style of commentary that will be familiar to any city dweller - a guarded quip, fired over a shielded shoulder, all without breaking stride as the speaker retreats toward some meaningless appointment. There are so many moments in the city where I wonder for whose benefit such comments are made - the listener, or the speaker? In a situation like this one, I can't see why it helps me to know what a stranger loves doing, so I guess this is at least one example of the latter. I suspect there is something everyone carries around inside them, ignored and silenced and restrained for so long that they eventually forget it's even there, some shapeless remnant of a quality that sits for years in the shadows of the soul, then in a flash it's up and about and before they know it the sound is rising through their chest and picking up speed and it can't be stopped, it's out, at long last, for some much needed air... and wait, I love doing what?
I can't speak for anyone else, I just know that anything you skip for long enough will disappear from your life. I think there have been a few moments for me where, looking back, I unknowingly placed myself in great danger because I was trying to stifle my playfulness, which had always informed and advised my best instincts. I would look for a game to play and, if I couldn't find one, I would invent it; I would look for the humor in a situation and, if it didn't exist, I would create it. Playfulness is a quality that is so far removed from the adult's mind that I suspect most of us don't see it, particularly when we are complicit in leaving it behind somewhere like an assassin dumping a corpse. I remember recently thinking that a friend's new partner was a great match for him because they both shared this quality, but when I pointed this out to another friend it turned out the big revelation was my insight that playfulness was our mutual friend's best quality, or that it was a quality at all. I don't share this anecdote to highlight my powers of observation - it wasn't too long ago that I would have failed to notice this as well.
I don't find it difficult to imagine some explanations for this situation. The responsibilities of adult life leave no room for play - careers, caregiving, and of course that relentless admin, just to name a few, all suffer from too much playing around. I also think it matters that the biggest shift from childhood to adulthood is the way life becomes defined by perpetual competition, which of course is a systemic reality - the ruthless calculations of profit and loss mean any consideration of play is squeezed right out of the equation (perhaps we can add playfulness to capitalism's long list of collateral damages). I may lament the way many around me seem unable to grasp the loss of their own playfulness, but given the reality of modern life it's hardly a surprise.
That said, the most striking thing about it all is that if you look closely you see so many examples of people grasping for ways to bring their playfulness back into life. I think there is an element of this in the way people spend time around children or animals, and then there are the more obvious examples like recreational sports leagues, improv classes, or even drinking games that manufacture excuses for adults to play. I would even entertain the argument that something like TikTok thrives because it fills the void of playfulness that diminishes everyday life. And what is at the core of comedy standards such as standup, satire, or even a dad joke if not an injection of playfulness into the mundanity of daily life, current events, or common language? Somewhere at the bottom of this list, perhaps the very bottom, are the fleeting moments where we veer off-course for just a moment, just to mention that we'd like to play, because if we can't find a way to skip skipping it, and we don't know to just do the things we love to do, then at the very least we can keep acknowledging what's missing until we're ready to jump back in.
