Writing should be easy

Much like Tucker Carlson I believe that anything and everything should be simple. Which reminds me, at some certain age, we all long for those simpler times.

When I was a child I rode a donkey around our neighborhood. This was Southern California, but we were lucky enough to live on the outskirts of some sort of upwardly mobile artists community, so a lot of eccentricity was allowed. Donkey owning? Sure. People who goats? Of course. Now, one thing I learned as a child is donkeys are incredibly slow. Horse riders would use spurs or whips and their animals would take off for a nice long trot. Donkeys do not care what you do to them, they meander for everything, or so I thought.

I was once riding our donkey, whom I believe was named Taco, and this donkey was meandering ad donkeys often do. Then Taco, dear sweet slow moving Taco spotted my eccentric neighbors goat, which was just kind of standing still, eating weeds, which is what goats tend to do. Taco had a thing for goats, which was something I was about to realize. Once donkey saw goat, the race was on. I held on for dear life as Taco sprinted around the neighborhood, under low hanging branches, into dry river beds, up into a rednecks useless and discarded car collection and back again. It was the best ride ever. Taco never caught the goat, and after a time, the race was over.

When I hear news commentators talk about simpler times I think of Taco, because for the most part, our lives were on the same sense of necessity. I was a young kid with little homework and even less ambition to do it. Taco was a donkey who cared only about food, water and interestingly enough, goats. It was a simpler time, because now I have to worry about drugs and crime and dangerous schools and stalkers and climate change and unwanted pregnancies and conservative talk show hosts and our first black president and our former stupid presidents and on and on. When I was riding Taco I am not sure I worried about anything, until I became aware of Taco's lust for goats. Until that time, a ride was slow, plodding and uneventful. Life was a lot like that.

Simpler times, sure. But also, childhood times. I did not think to worry about our neighbor, who it turns out, was indeed a pedophile. I never bothered to worry about our school safety, because everyone who attended was the same bland color, with pretty much the same bland background. Money was never an issue for me, but it certainly was for my parents, but they never talked to me about it. The world was never about to end, although I heard at some point about nuclear weapons and other wars, but I never paid it much attention. My focus was riding my bike to the lake for fruitless fishing, riding Taco in search of a goat chase high and swings. I was a swing junky.

So, when I hear people talk about simpler times, I guess I know what they are talking about, but I also understand the self imposed safe-box most children live in. Other than a wild running donkey, my childhood was simple and boring. No stray bullets, no neighborhood rapes, no drunken older women asking me to taste some cake.

What happened? We grow up. Those lecherous older women, the neighborhood pedophile, the wars and pollution, the real world, makes itself known and we no longer have blinders on. Simpler times never really exist, except for dump people and selective memories.