When I was five years old, my classmates and I used to play a game on the playground. It was a simple game, because these were simple times and we were simple people. The game consisted entirely of children chasing each other around the playground with the intent of capturing members of the opposing team. The teams were simple: if you were in kindergarten, you were on one team; if you were a first-grader, you were on the other team. The kindergarteners were at a decided disadvantage (at least as far as we were concerned), because the first-graders were bigger and faster than we were. So for a kindergartener to capture a first-grader was a much more celebrated victory than for a first-grader to catch a kindergartener.

I'll never forget the day that I snuck up behind this first grader i barely knew and threw my arms around him and exclaimed with glee, "I caught a first-grader!" Oh, it was such a rush for my young heart. I'm sure my little body quivered with excitement from my unlikely victory. Never in my life would I have believed I could accomplish such a task as capturing a first-grader, even though I had be trying to for the entire week's worth of recesses leading up to that point. Imagine my dismay when he turned around and looked at me with those bright blue eyes and smiled apologetically as he gently explained that he was not, in fact, actually playing the game (which of course makes all victories null and void. See the "you're it, I quit" rule). He was a good sport about it, though. He agreed that I could pretend I captured him anyway, and that we wouldn't tell anyone that he wasn't actually playing. Long story short, this first grader and I remained good friends all the way through grade school and high school, and I still get a big hug from him every time I see him.

The piont of this charming little narrative is that I feel like I'm back on that playground, or perhaps that I never actually left it. The circumstances are a little more different and complex... or are they? It's like I've been chasing after first-graders for all my life and now, at long last, I've finally caught one. And I'm feeling that rush of pride and victory and joy mixed with disbelief that I actually caught one. And I'm just terrified that this one's gonna look at me with those bright blue eyes and tell me that he's not playing, or something equally as deflating.

Is life just one gigantic playground game? Is it true that everythign we need to know we learned in kindergarten?