I almost always skip breakfast, and sometimes, by the time I pour milk over some cereal, it is already past noon. And I believe people have all sorts of things to say about it, but then, they have all kinds of things to say about everything. I don’t pay much heed to what people have to say, and I have people to thank for that. When they tell me I behave like a child if I make a pun too many, or drink myself out at a party as if it was my first, or continue to carry with me the interests I had as a little boy, I do not care for it, not anymore.
Perhaps, it is because they are correct. After all, only a child is bold in the most harmless, softest of ways. A pun does not hurt anyone; it only makes them feel the envy of never being able to let go of their adult pride to say something ridiculous and mildly funny, and the other things have similar results. Whenever someone calls you a child for doing something, they secretly wish they dared to do whatever it is, too, and when they realise they have been living wrong all this time, they have no choice but to paint it wrong, but it is not so; it is only different.
There are parts of me that do not fit well with most of what we call the world, and it is none of my concern. All trees are the same to us, but to all trees, every tree may be different in ways we do not understand, even beyond the superficial turning of their branches or the colours of their leaves—things that we do notice if we have it in ourselves to look up on any given day, which rare for most people, but it does happen.
Of course, as is with all things, this is a game of balance. For every bill you struggle and pay, you must climb a wall for no other reason but to check if you can do so. For every difficult conversation you have, you must splash on a puddle to wash the dirt of age. And for every impossible situation you face, you must make a harmless pun that makes them roll their eyes. Where do you get all these terrible jokes, they ask me? It is an urge I cannot resist, I tell them. It comes to me, and I must say it out loud.
Between you and me, if I don’t, I might grow old like all of them. Now who wants that, I wonder.