Recall a time, a time when there were no repercussions for casting responsibility aside and escaping into nature. You once experienced it. It was in the days when you didn't care whether you caught the rerun of _____ or not, and instead you would race past the television, the kitchen, the desk, and bound joyfully off the back step and into the yard.

The yard was your haven. Every tree, every bush, every blade of grass became molded into something new by your imagination. You changed, too. No longer were you a skinny little boy with wobbly knees and messy hair; you were Charles A. Lindbergh, pilot extraordinaire, with hair mussed by your flights in the clouds. Pausing only to retrofit The Spirit of Saint Louis with the latest in propeller technology (otherwise known as a stray branch from the oak tree), you would zoom around and around and around before collapsing, breathless, onto the ground. For hours on end, you entertained yourself this way, and never reached the point when it became redundant or boring. You were happy. You were free.

Gone now is that time. Today, you trudge through the creaking door and make your way to the desk that holds piles and piles of papers and work. Perhaps you take a slight detour and grab sustenance from the kitchen, or flick briefly through the news on the television. Never for long, though. You have regressed from carefree spirit to bogged-down night owl, and are faced each evening with assignments that, when looked at retroactively, seem to have no meaning or purpose.

Once you have cast your mind back to that time of freedom, joy, and flights through the sky, it is hardly reprehensible for you to long to return to it. And that is the saddest part of all: you cannot. It is a country you can never repatriate; instead, you can only remember it and repine. Have you guessed what it is? Here is my replication: it is Childhood.