This I Believe

People say immature as if it is a bad thing. I for one wish I never had to be mature or take on responsibility. It seems to me like the best times of my life are always behind me. In childhood everything seems so simple probably because all of the important decisions aren’t made by you. ‘Yes it is a very limiting freedom from one perspective, but it’s also a very enjoyable convenience.

I have done some pretty dim-witted things in my life on behalf of my ignorance, none more notably then the time I visited “hobo city”.

Barely anybody in the neighborhood knew what goes on down there. “Hobo city” is a damp dark village that is across the canal from my house in the middle of a marsh. You probably won’t believe me and even if you do you probably think it’s finny, but the inhabitants are not your average shopping cart begging for change homeless. They are savages that eat and drink only what they can find. They live off of fish, iguanas, snakes and even alligators (you think I’m crazy? Well go to the bar down by the pier near my house and look at what’s at the top of the menu “gater on a stick”).

One day my friends and I decided to see this city for ourselves. We walked along the railroad tracks that led to the entrance. When we got there the archway in the thick brush was only made more horrifying by the dead of the night. All of my friends went in to the opening and told me to wait out from in case any of them try to come in.

I waited a good fifteen minutes until the boys came running up the path out of the brush. I tried to question what had happened, but if they were running then there was probably good reason for it. I look above my and up nearly twenty five feet in the air the are people climbing up on the tree tops. I begin to run and suddenly I hear a horn. The two bright lights from the train are fixed on me. I dash as fast as I’ve ever run before and nearly get clipped by the train.

It was one of the biggest risks I have ever taken in my life, but I would rather have been hit by the train than stay their and have who knows what done to me by the villagers.

This may seen like a contradiction to my point by I feel that the only way we grow is through experience. And it may seem like a stupid childhood over exaggeration it was my first life and death experience and it wouldn’t have happened if I had known better. So what I believe is that no one should ever grow up