The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.

Do what you gotta do and stay fly

He was a fugitive, lurking soul, James Leer. He didn't belong anywhere, but things went much better for him in places where nobody belonged.

Every day is like a kid's drawing, offered to you with a strange mix of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, yours for the keeping. Some of the days are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others little more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page. Some you manage to hang on to, though your reasons for doing so are often hard to fathom. But most of them you just ball up and throw away.

My heart was simultaneously broken and filled with lust, I was exhausted, and I loved every minute of it. It was strange and elating to find myself for once the weaker.

See you in the funny papers," he said. Jaunty, he reminded himself; always jaunty. In my panache is their hope for salvation.

If children are not permitted-not taught-to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world...?