Are you a Player?

I enjoy visiting Robert Fulghum's website. Fulghum is the author who wrote All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I love his insight and zest for life; I enjoy his open and free writing style. You should go check out his journal notes on his web site- http://robertfulghum.com, it will make you chuckle and go "Hmmm."
Today Fulghum talked about "players," but not the kind of "players" that may immediately come to mind. I have teen age daughters, when they call someone a "player" they are referring to an unscrupulous male that is out for one thing. That is not what he is referring to.
Fulghum uses the term in a much more innocent and child like way. Remember when we were little and we would ask anyone, "do you wanna play?' It didn't matter if you just met the kid on the play ground or if it was your Granddad, you gave the invitation to anyone. Playing… running, chasing a ball, swinging, playing pretend, and spinning a make believe world! Those were the days!!!
Not all grown-ups have lost the ability to play. I am reminded of the scene in the movie Hook, when the grown up Peter Pan remembers how to imagine and starts a food fight with the lost boys and regains his ability to FLY!! Get it? Those who have retained their ability to see past the boring reality of the tediousness of life and to find the humor that is present all around us are "players." I am hopelessly a "player." When I taught pre-school I turned carrot sticks into "monkey fingers' to get the kids to eat their snack, I took them on walks though the "swamp" and the "rain forest' on the way to our playground. I indulged my own girls when they played dress up and I helped weave an imaginary world where they were living in that little house on the prairie. Now I have our grand baby Cole to play with…it is gonna be fun to play "boy stuff!" I will make a great pirate or cowboy!!
To this day I love talking in an accent and pretending like I am famous when we go to New Orleans. I have been known to have conversations with my dogs. I love to say something off the cuff just to catch someone off guard and I have a long list of occupations I'm going to try out when I grow up. I always thought the word that someone would use to describe the way my mind works would be more in the lines of, senile, coo-coo, nuts, and weird. Today I discovered I am none of those things… I am a PLAYER!! Sounds much better doesn't it??