The Windsor Road Dispatch: The Simple Things

It is said that the simplest things in life are the very best things of life. While I would champion anyone’s desire to accumulate riches, spend their money on just about any diversion they wish and indulge to your heart’s content, time and again I do find pleasure from the very simple, the hastily rendered, the accidental.

I happened down the main market street thoroughfare of my home the other night, aptly named Market Street. I have traipsed down this row of stores too many times to count in my years, know every Tom, Dick nook-and-cranny of the place (even though in the half century I have lived in my town lots of those stores have changed) and pretty much do take solace and pleasure from the these places I known so well, selling their various suburban wares.

I happened across a little boy, his mom and grandma sitting outside one of the many eateries down the street on this particular night. Running from the front door of the store to the ladies sitting not a mere few feet from him on a bench, as little kids are want to do, this boy (who I later learned was just a few months last his second birthday) was running to and fro, in the exact same path, to his encouraging mom and grandma, his waddling feet and big grin just delicious to witness. As luck would have it, when I came across the little guy he was halfway into his run, so I stopped, we all laughed and I bade him pass me.

Then I got a better idea as he looked up at me trying to determine if I was friend or foe. I simply said to him, “I’ll race with ya, come on,” and I ran back with him to the bench (he simply giggled and followed, kids catch on so fast as if they are thinking, ‘why wouldn’t you want to run/skip/play with me?’) and we proceeded to run back and forth from the bench to the doorway.

I begged off after about ten times, knowing fully well I could be stuck there for an hour repeating this action. What got me most, though, beyond the fact that I wasn’t as tired as I thought I would have been, is that each half way stop, the little guy looked up and let loose with that specific baby giggle that might be the very best sound you ever get lucky to hear.

I went to conduct my business, came back, talked to the ladies a bit, waved goodbye to my racing companion and literally skipped home thinking that that little moment of play, and hearing that two year’s giggle over my participation in his night, may indeed have been one of the simplest and best things I had encountered in weeks.