Mr. Peter Pan

       Peter Pan was my favorite movie as a kid. I loved the impish Peter and the caricatured pirates. It’s still my favorite movie as an adult. But now I love it for the wishing children and the bumbling Lost Boys. It might be a kids’ movie, but sometimes as I look down at my professional black high heels and my colleagues’ manila folders I realize that I’m the one following the leader. 

       We are the Lost Boys. I know exactly how to get to the bookstore but I forgot how to get into the book’s story. We are ageing children, old but never grown up, pretending to be adults to hide the fact that we’re still Lost and that we’ve always been Lost. Past the secretary’s nametag there is a secret heartbeat drumming out I won’t grow up I won’t grow up I won’t grow up, trying to block out the constant ticking crocodile clock that has an alarm set for every possible mistake she’ll ever make. The boss is Mister Peter Pan, shadow stapled to his feet, dragging dejection behind him with every step he doesn’t fly. In our endless, desperate quest to find the buried gold, we ignore the treasures in our lives—we make ourselves grow old. We fight with politics, not pirates, and mermaids fade in the face of our paycheck. It doesn’t pay to check for interesting clouds when you could be playing Angry Birds. I no longer look up. I walk with my head down and my heart down and my voice down and my dreams down, past more people with eyes on their shoes and no wishes to use on even a lucky penny.  Professional black heels click-clack-splash in puddles, muddling all reflections of the daydreams adulthood stole from us. We never look up, at rooftops or the sky, let alone the second star to the right.
       I don’t believe in faeries.
       But sometimes I clap anyway (to turn on my remote-activated ceiling light) and when the light flashes on as if by magic I secretly hope that someday, I can take the never out of Neverland and remember that to live is an awfully big adventure. And someday, I can go from the second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning—and I won’t get lost on the way.