Regina

One day in college, I was leaving CVS and crossing the street back onto the campus. CVS was part of a bank of stores just off-campus, a place I rarely went. Off-campus was like this netherworld where you had to fear muggings and spend your own cash.

When I returned to the grassy campus area, I spied, a little bit in the distance, my friend Regina.
What was unusual was that rather than her walking on the paved path through campus, she had stepped upward onto one of the high, thin, long raised gray curb-beams that bounded it. And she was balancing on it as she walked, as if it was a balance beam.

That's something you do as a kid, walk on any balance beam-like thing you see, with your hands out. It's sort of like the kiddish need to hold your arm out in school when you walk through the hallways, barely glancing the wall with the ends of your fingertips. Jumping up and balancing on something is not what you're supposed to do as an adult, and yet, Regina just happened to be doing it. And she didn't expect anyone to see her. I thought it was pretty funny, the way she was walking along like that.

It was kind of charming. I still do childish things like that too, even though I suppose I shouldn't. But why not? Sometimes at work I take the stairs two at a time, jumping onto the floor at the end. If I'm not supposed to have that kind of energy anymore, I say, bah!