when I was a kid. . .

my friends and I dreamed of someday working at baseball stadiums and amusement parks. We spent many a summer's day contemplating whether a comic book store or a video arcade would be in our future once we turned fourteen and were able to legally seek employment. My friends and I are the ancestors of Puritans and therefore work was a necessity, but it could be fun too. Maybe these places represented escapes from the world our parents inhabited. Maybe they were simply meant to be extensions of the innocence of our childhoods. I look back on those days with a deep sense of nostalgia. Nostalgia because these dreams were not monetary in force. Video arcades and baseball stadiums reminded us of laughing with friends and of having a place in this world just for us. These memories came crashing down today as I heard of group of high school students having a similar chat to the ones my friends and I used to have. They were all hoping to be hired on at the new Costco once it opened. Am I really this old?