Page 13 - Horizon 18-19

The Last Innocence
A child is typically associated with innocence.
I recently saw an old picture of me.
I was eight, smiling and laughing at who is now my brother-in-law at a ballpark field.
It is one of the last pictures where I can recall having innocence within myself.
We don’t know when we stop being pure kids that play kickball in the cul-de-sacs of the development and
never did anything to make mommy or daddy upset besides the occasional temper tantrums.
However, we remember playing outside and always being happy regardless because those are the fondest memories of our childhood.
That’s what children are like.
Sweet, happy innocence.
Yet as we get older, we don’t remember when we started to hide from our parents and yell and bicker when
they are just trying to speak to us.
When did conversations get so difficult?
I don’t remember.
Do you remember?
We can remember the first time we did something we weren’t supposed to though.
That’s what high school kids are like.
Most of us mean well, but we follow.
We follow other people and not ourselves.
Which is why we can remember our first experience of maybe doing something not-so-innocent.
A time to be a big kid.
A teenager.
A teenager does all the big kid things like trying whatever someone shoves in your face.
Peer pressure perhaps made you inhale or drink something you might’ve not really wanted to, or really
did want to.
Did we all get robbed of that last innocence?
Where did it go?
Did we really make that choice ourselves?
How different would our lives be now if we hadn’t made that choice?
When did I play outside for the last time?
When did I start to yell at my mother and father instead of talking to them?
They just wanted to have a conversation.
Whatever your questions may be,
It led you to who you are now;
and it is up to you to keep your last innocence,
if you still have it.
mpm '21
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