Happy Meal Happiness

I am sitting in front of a computer screen, ye’ tall and yay’ wide, punching away at a keyboard covered in black and white acrylic paint. My words try, try, try to catch up to these flimsy fingers of mine, but fail, fail, fail to reach the innermost workings of my troubled mind. It is as if no sentence, no word, no letter, no punctuation mark! can do justice to this burning need to express myself.

I have dabbled in canvas and paint, an addiction to spicy fish tacos, liquor and love, and a disorder or two, but cannot reach that pinnacle point of promise great writers do. Instead I mumble, stumble, and fumble along into the wee hours of this ever escaping night. Exhaustion fights to take hold of my apathetic brain, but I am too committed to surrender to such wastedness. Sleep? What blasphemy! In fact I am quite fond of these incoherent thoughts that peak their head and come out to play in the dead of night.

Guarded with ignorance and my childhood innocence, I skip and hop in the playground of thought. What heaven such chalked floor holds! I jump on the swing set and fly high into that big blue sky... going faster, and fasTER, and FASTER. I sing to the joyous beat of the jump rope, as it pounds harder, and harDER, and HARDER onto that soft gray pavement. All I want is to find this innocent happiness again, the kind children have before they are exposed to the grit and grime of the outside world.

It is the ooo and awe of a box of crayola crayons, the delight of a warm plate of chicken nuggets, the satisfaction of a gold star, and the joy of cartoons on Saturday morning. It is Happy Meal Happiness: served in a cardboard box with a limited edition shape shifting toy. It is worry free, not shame on me; love is free and let it be. It believes in the Tooth Fairy and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; and understands the power of words in the War for Peace. It is the sweet melody of the ice cream truck coming up the street, and the glory of trading a whole dollar for a bug’s bunny ice cream cone. Real happiness is not having to consciously think about being happy; a brilliant blind bliss for all to miss.

When I stop and examine society as it exists today, I cannot help but distinguish the fallacy behind each fake plastered smile and fictitious disposition. Within each simulated society is the same shattered mess: a group of adults yearning to rediscover their lost childhood happiness. From the middle aged man toking up in the bathroom to get through another day at the office, to the young girl screaming for help in a dangerous eating disorder, to the sex addict looking for love on the internet, it is the same story in a different disguise. We are all the s a m e.