Hocus Focus | Flash Post 382

What about it? Don’t tell me you still look for visual differences in that comic strip!

That’s what I’m doing, Button. You seem shocked? Want to join me? I’m still looking for the sixth one.

I can’t, for the life of me, get why an elder like you would do that! Those are meant for kids!

That’s exactly the reason why I write this diary along with you, Button. You’d be hard pressed to find a senior citizen like me who cuddles a teddy bear, tweaks his nose or hugs him tight every morning and feels she can handle a really bad day! Well, I do and I am not the least bit ashamed! In fact, I love it. It takes me back 60 years when I was a young girl of 5 and loved playing with the only teddy bear I had. She was tiny and had piercing eyes just like yours.

I am still confused.

Button, ageing by the digit does not age your heart. It shouldn’t age the child that’s lurking inside each one of us. Being childlike and doing some of the things we loved doing as children can bring a lot of joy. I’d love to assemble Legos to put together a beautiful object or ride a tricycle or play hopscotch—if my crackling knees permitted me—or play blind man’s buff or even hide-n-seek. Remember how the two of us played hide-n-seek once upon a time? I don’t know if you recollect but I had a lot of fun playing with you as it took me to my childhood years. Being childlike, irrespective of how old we are, is the most fascinating thing one can experience. In that sense, we never grow up. Childhood is anywhere between 5 and 125.

What are some of the games you played as a child?

I was good at a game of gilli-danda I played with other children in the colony.

Gilli-danda? Never heard of it. How do you play the game?

Well, it is played with a long danda or stick with which you hit one end of a much smaller stick and, as it leaps up with the impact, you hit it as hard as you can and send it flying. The person who hits it the farthest obviously wins.

A bit like cricket, I would think! Any more?

Hopscotch is a game you can play solo so I indulged in that when the other kids weren’t around. I was also very good at spinning tops as well as spinning a hula hoop perfectly around my slim waist without letting it drop to the floor even once.  The hoop was a gift from an uncle and it was green. At one of our company offsite a couple of weeks back, I almost dislocated my aged hips trying to spin the hula hoop at one of the contests organised by the team! You must try this one for sure. I also played a mean game with glass marbles where you need to hit a target marble by flicking another marble with your thumbnail and potting it.

You want me to try the hula hoop! I don’t even have a waistline so it will be wasted on me.

Do you know there are adult colouring books, Button? I was gifted one by Dost and I was aghast as to why he had given it to me. That was the time I was going through my bad phase and was completely befuddled because I felt that the whole exercise of putting colour to pictures in a colouring book was a kiddie thing. I later discovered that adults are given these colouring books to get them to focus and be mindful of what they are doing in old age that can get very lonely for parents whose children have grown up and either got married and settled elsewhere or children who have migrated to faraway lands to pursue a career or whatever. Adult colouring books were brought out sometime in 2017, meant only for adults and did not compare in any way with children’s colouring books. They are much more detailed and need total focus and concentration.

Interesting.

Would you now like to spot the final difference in the comic strip below? I’ll do it too. Let’s see who gets it first.