It’s a curious thing about childhood—you rarely recognize its endings in real time. You’re just too busy being a kid. The shift happens invisibly, like tectonic plates moving beneath your feet, and then one day, you look back and think, Oh. That was it. This is especially true when it comes to that quintessential suburban ritual: going outside to play with your friends.
For years, it was a constant. Summer afternoons melted into evenings while you and your crew roamed the neighborhood like a pack of untamed, gloriously mediocre wolves. Bikes became spaceships, cul-de-sacs turned into battlegrounds, and someone’s dad mowing the lawn was the soundtrack to a life unburdened by consequence. You’d meet up without planning, knocking on doors or just showing up in someone’s backyard like an uninvited but totally expected guest. It was chaos, but it was also seamless. Effortless. And above all, infinite—or so it seemed.
And then, one day, it wasn’t.
The funny thing is, you don’t remember the last time. No one sent out a memo saying, “Hey guys, this is it. Last one before we all start caring about homework and acne and who’s dating who.” It wasn’t some epic final showdown where everyone walked away in slow motion, the sun setting behind you like the end of a John Hughes movie. It was probably stupidly ordinary—a Tuesday, maybe. You played kickball or built a fort, then someone’s mom called them in for dinner. You yelled, “See you tomorrow!” and nobody thought twice about it.
Except tomorrow never came.
The reasons are mundane and universal. Someone moved. Someone got a Game Boy. Someone discovered they were kind of good at soccer and started going to practice every day. Suddenly, there was no critical mass to sustain the magic. And without realizing it, you started spending more time indoors, more time alone, more time thinking about how you were supposed to be growing up.
This is what’s so tragic and perfect about the whole thing: you never knew it was happening. There’s no mourning for the moment because the moment wasn’t marked. It was just swallowed by time. And now, as an adult, you try to understand what it means. Was it the loss of innocence? The beginning of the end? Or was it just life moving forward, as it always does, with or without your permission?
You’ll never really know. All you know is this: at some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it. And somehow, that feels heavier than if you had known, because at least then you could have savored it. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe part of what made it special was the fact that it could slip away so quietly. A secret you only discover years later, when you’re sitting alone on a Sunday, wondering why adulthood feels so hollow.
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