David

He was probably only 10 years old, 12 is my oldest guess. Big, dark brown eyes that seemed confident and frightened at the same time held steady on your face as you, an adult of any age, tried not to stare into too long. He had a way of making every adult- those newly out of college, those mothers and fathers, those retirees- all feel like they lacked that stamina of character to look into someone’s eyes, to ask them to dance when a majority of them were twice his size. How is it when we grow up we grow into unease and embarrassment? Did we forget that it’s scary to be a child in a room full of adults, perhaps it’s because he, like other children, don’t acknowledge as we do the propensity for embarrassment in a room filled with music and stamping feet and moves to follow in order. How is it we forget that we’re all like him at one point in our growth? Oh many children can’t hold the their eyes steady on an adult for long for fear of being dismissed, for being wrong, for being ignored; but it in general it seems their eyes can hold steady longer than an adult can bid their eyes to do. Children, like this dark-haired boy with a video-gaming, cobalt blue t-shirt on spinning woman twice his size and thrice his age, want to take in and take on the whole world. Children, most not present in this contradancing hall, know what they want. They know when and how to ask, Will you have the next dance?

Written 03/07/12

This work by Sarah Holmes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License