Childhood is better than adulthood in a trillion different ways. As a child, you have nothing but time on your hands -- time that endlessly stretches out before you like the thousands of horribly old, horribly tall, horribly worldly adults who surround you. To a child, such a bounty of endless time invariably means that every single one of their dreams for far-off adulthood will come true. When I was young, the very idea that I might not become exactly what I wanted, go where I wanted, or even eventually happen upon the ever-supposed "someone where we/I/folks belong" was completely foreign to me. (Girls grow up being told that their ultimate goal is being beautiful and finding someone where they belong. Boys grow up being told to expect success of the monetary or sports/war/superhero kind. So thanks a lot, Saturday morning cartoons. It's no wonder none of us understand each other.)

Jiminy Cricket, you lied to me. That's what us twixters are so angry at, you know. The cricket lied. The cricket wasn't supposed to lie. The lederhosen-clad puppet was the liar, while the cricket was merely telling him to avoid the brainless donkey pleasures of life and everything would come a'right in the end. What utter bull, Jiminy. What utter bull. Worst of all, as a child, I certainly never imagined I could sink so far down as to curse Jiminy Cricket. Sometimes it seems as though I'm so far down that I've hit rock bottom, and people are still telling me to shovel. You know what's at rock bottom, though? An inscription reading "Look here, dollface: it ain't permanent." The unknown spelunker who inscribed that was cheeky, brainy, and full of care, and I'd salute them if I didn't have so much shoveling to do.

In other impermanent-shoveling news, Dan made me a song for the Christmas season. Isn't he some kind of fellow, that Dan? Many happy here's-looking-at-you-kid chin-chucks to him, for as long as he lives. Maybe less, though. Just in case any painful chin-welts arise.