There are those times when one must simply just stop and think about the days gone by. About those long ago days when you were a kid, with no worries, no real problems suffice to say where you were gonna go that day, who would you play with and when dinner would be ready.
Where your greatest joy was NOT a flashy sports car or Armani suit or how much money you made...but rather, that old rickety raft you made out of discarded lumber just so you could see "if she'd really float" on that lake you knew like the back of your hand. Or riding your bike to the furthest reaches of your "territory" (which was never more than 5 LONG miles from your home. And when you were home, watching TV shows, eating whatever you found in the fridge (without hesitating for a single moment whether it was "bad" for your health), or otherwise annoying your sibling just because they were there. Summer vacation was a 3 month ecstasy filled with hopes and dreams, days of sunshine and outdoors.
Your greatest "fear" was not getting that homework or chores completed BEFORE the adult "supervison unit" found out, but inevitably you ALWAYS waited until the very last minute to begin, hoping that you could mindlessly whiz through it and STILL have time to go out and skateboard or find a friend to hang out with. A time when you LONGED for the day never to end.
Yes, those days now long gone, have been replaced by days of traffic, bills, buildings with cubicle walls surrounded by walls of cement where you rarely see the outdoors, "political soap operas" we typically call "work" and hoping that the day goes faster today than it did yesterday.
Still we have those memories of days gone by, to bring us back to that simpler time where we still see those kids running in the surf, pedaling those bikes and sailing those high seas of yesterday.
, tomorrow is just a dream yet to be dreamt. 
This would "cushion" the landing under the now nearly bare trees from which we would then jump. Our squeals of glee ever heightened by the higher and higher we would climb. But sooner than later, my grandpa would appear and shoo us kids away so that he could then "burn" the pile. That's how they use to get rid of the unwanted leaves back then. It's too bad that we now find ourselves confronted with NOT rakes, but rather the incessant drone of the mechanical leaf blowers. This is due to our view nowadays that leaf "clutter" is unsightly and unkept. Long gone are those squeals of joy, the excitement of climbing that oak tree for your first "jump" and the scent of burning leaves in the autumn air.
