The Days of Innocence - Can We Get Them Back?

As young children, my brother and I used to play a game on the weekends. The game was called, The Two Men in Bed. Every Saturday morning, we would jump out of our beds and run hastily into mom and dads' room. There, we would plant ourselves in their much bigger and softer bed and tuck ourselves tightly under the covers. Mom and dad would always be up by then, doing chores around the house, but we kids loved to sleep in on Saturdays like every self-respecting grade-schooler does while watching cartoons. I was seven and brother was four. Boy, did we have fun!

We took a videogame joystick from our Atari 2600 and put it on the bed. We pretended we were two wealthy men who were crippled and had a special bed built for us. Instead of a wheelchair, it was a "wheelbed"! This bed would drive us around town anywhere we wanted to go...to the store, on top secret missions, across deserts and forests...absolutely anywhere. We drove the bed with the joystick, of course, and underneath the covers was an underground compartment where we kept all our possessions and food.

Mom would usually be cooking in the kitchen, and she'd pop her head in the room and say, "What are you two doing?" We enthusiastically responded, "We're playing The Two Men in Bed, mom." Then I would see her smile and begin to giggle. Sometimes she would say, "Aw, that's cute, guys!" I didn't know why she would laughingly say that. I just supposed it was like any other parent or grandparent who thought their kids were cute. It didn't matter to us anyway. Our minds just moved on with the fun.