I see and understand the perspective you are viewing the original post from. However, I took it a completely different way.

I did not think the person truely meant that the person wanted to give up the present, but instead temporarily focus on the difference in what was and what is now. Yes, things were simpler and easier then, and it is a very valuable thing to be able to go back to what was. That isn't coming out exactly the way I mean and feel.I will try again. Life was good, and life was simple, and things were more fun and everything was new and looking back you do see that innocence is bliss. I am able to bring up my perception of the world back then, and also know that I have filtered out a lot of the bad things back then, but also, the bad things are not/were not the important things in the long run. I value and enjoy the fact that I am who I am now, and also can gain more insight comparing what I know now and what I knew then. Like looking through two eyes at once to get a 3-Dimensional view of things. Just the 'images' of then and now are not the whole picture. Just as with two eyes you are able to the sense of something (depth perception) that you cannot perceive with only one eye, and probably would not be able to fully imagine if you had only one eye. Instead, I can see the whole journey from here to there, and know that the same little kid is still there, just changed from experience.

Theres still more to it, if I just plugged into the world now, with no past, or somehow forgot my past, life would be a lot more shallow.

Yes, I would sure like to be able to go back and be there completely. But more of a vacation, rather than staying there permanently. I like where I am there, and I am scared of the death creeping slowly closer each day. I like me, I like who I was, I like who I am now. I look at me in my late teens, going through the major life change of becoming an independent adult. I did do a lot of things that I do not like about myself, but I also liked things I did and experienced, and got out of my system, and learned from it to become who I am now.

I still am not able to convey the impact it had on me. It was very nice and I actually found it calming to revisit, and also know that some other people feel the same way I do about it. I realized that I hadn't thought back that far for a long time. Yes, there are things that I really wish were still here. The learning process I miss, I still learn from day to day, but it is rare to run into something completely new, something completely foundational to my perception of life. Now days it more building on the bricks of myself that have already been placed before. That in itself is cool, being able to reach plateaus of life experience that I would not be able to comprehend back then. But still, the newness factor is not as intense anymore. It was nice to look back. The first time you hit a homerun, or the first time you rode a bike, or tasting a new taste, or moving forward a bit - the first time you kissed a girl, etc.

I just didn't find it a depressing posting. From reading your reply, I totally understand how it can be interpreted that way, and in fact could have been meant that way, but I found it the reverse way that I've been trying to explain. The person was not being entirely serious, but instead was being both reflective and parodical plus something more undefinable - all at the same time.

Try going back and reading it again from the point of view I've been trying (not completely successfully I don't think, but then again, maybe I have) and I think it will bring a childlike happy smile to your face and a calming feeling of happiness, along with a sweet wistfulness as well.

My heart really goes out to the other people while reading the posts from the people who feel that their childhood was not happy or enjoyable or something good to look back on. I do think I have been luckier than some, and I am glad for that, and I also wonder why everyone did not. It is very sad. Yes, there were some dark things, but they did not cripple me for life. There were many times getting chased home from school by people trying to beat me up, and a lot of times feeling like I didn't fit it. But also know, looking back from now, that I also really enjoyed the chase (Nearly every day in 2nd & 3rd grade) as they never once were able to catch me - the aldrenaline rush of them coming after me alway gave me the extra boost to both outrun them and take risks that they were not willing to take being the chasers - such and running full speed through someone's back yard, jumping a full leaping jump at full speed at a chain link fence a couple inches taller (a four foot fence or so, a typical backyard fence) than I and grabbing it in mid-air to flip over it and land on my feet - still running full speed. I don't think I would try that these days - I am now 6'6" and I don't think I'd even try to jump a six-foot fence at a full run these days. I'm sure if a group of adults were after me trying to pound my head these days I would probably attempt it. But then again, I also eventually learned that if I just faced them down and fought back, I would even be able to beat them most of the time. Learning the concept of crowd mentality - no one is completely at ease jumping into a fight with someone else, it almost always turns out that the group catches you and then the group silently make a decision as to who is the best qualified to actually start pounding, that person feels the pressure, and also equally scared but still will generally not fight as committedly as the you will, actually being the person surrounded by a group of people. A lot of the time you will be able to take on that single person, as the energy of fear drives you harder, and as the rest of the group sees their strongest one getting beat, they will fear more and will typically back off and resort to name calling as a face-saver as they being to back away and leave. And best of all, since they know that you will now actually fight back, they will know that there is now more risk to themselves that chasing this scared pussy-boy home who will not fight back.

As far as feeling like I don't fit in with people. I once day finally came to the realization that no one really feels like they fit in, unless with a group of longterm close friends. Everyone feels that, and if you just get up the nerve to act confident for a while, even if you don't feel confident, you will find that it has a cumulative effect on you and the people you are around. You will start to realized that the insults and verbal jabs are not because the person is mean an truely dislikes you, but instead feels just as insecure and knows that the jabbing makes the person look nd feel more secure himself. And once other insecure people notice that confidence coming from you (even though you know that you really don't feel all that confident) they will begin to create their own illusion that you are indeed a confident person and the psychological effect of this is that they will slowly begin to feel that - Wow's that person seems really confident and other people seem to respect and like that person because of that, so maybe if I respect and befriend that person that other will think better of me by association. It's a snowball effect, and a game of balance as well. If you gain that confidence and then use it to bash/pick on others, then you will lose that illusion and people will lose there respect and you'll end up back at the bottom again. The hardest thing for me in learning how to do this was to not at so much weight to what the other's say, and relax a bit. My reaction was originally that I really took mean things said to me as "Wow, I really must be a weenie or a loser or a dumbass (or whatever they just said)" and it really hurt and my reaction was to attempt to come up with something just as decimating to the other person that would hurt them just as bad. Eventually I learned that it's simply a pecking order dance, and typically the insults the person is throwing at you is actually a projection of their own fears. But, they have a boost of quick confidence of successfully making the first strike, therefore you won't do a whole lot of damage by tossing a similar thing back in their face right then. Instead, the best thing to do is get a smile on your face, half ridiculing the stupid thing they just said and half friendly, like "Hey, that's cool, you just admitted that you have the same fear/thought that I have". Give them an out of "Hey, that was a good one, it hit the mark so close that I am going to laugh about it, since we always laugh at sudden things we don't understand" Use it to bring them a bit closer, rather to push back just as hard. If you don't give them an out, and totally fire back agressively, then the emotion builds and the ego is questioned, and their own fears of what other people think become magnified and then figure that they need to prove to the others around that they themselves are indeed confident and it always seems to come to throwing punches at that point. Instead, present yourself good naturedly, laugh, and even throw back a lesser insult that you can tell will not really hit one of their weak spots. Like if they call you a dorky little loser, don't say some like "Well so are you and even more" but what usually works for me is to fire back something nonsensical like "Well, your shirt is made out of thread" or "At least your shoes cover your feet" that is phrased like an insult but really interrupts their thinking process or what reaction they get. They start to react from the beginning of the sentence "Well, your shirt is" or "At least your shoes" and prepare for defense/agression mode (Actually, at a lower level, they trigger that off of just hearing the "Well, YOUR" or the "At least YOUR") and expect to then be ready for something truly insulting about themselves, but instead, when they finally hear the complete sentence and their brain tries to parse the meaning out of it, it hits an unexpected, and then kicks in more of the brain on more complicated processing based on "Uh oh, I don't think I heard him right" and then reanalyzing it and realizing that it was indeed what you said and then switching into "What on earth could that mean" which invoke more mental cross-association processes that finally will come to the conclusion that you actually meant to say what you did, which then leads to a process of "How can that be insulting" combined with "Well, yes, my shirt IS made of thread or of course my shoes cover my feet" which leads to makes the brain jump into the stop-runaway-logic-process state which typically leads to the laugh reflex and a small amount of self-uncertainly, typically defusing the problem. Quite often, you'll both end up laugh WITH each other rather than AT each other. Especially if you give them a look of "I can't believe I said something so ridiculous" (even though you totally meant to say something so obscure) which then phases the confrontation of you are both laughing at yourself, even though you know inside that you are laughing because you totally meant to do that!

OK, enough rambling, go back and read the original post again! :)