Long ago, before there were video games and internet, children played games with each other outside—hopscotch, hide and go seek, jacks and guessing games. We ran races and competed to see who could jump the farthest, or if we lived in the city, we competed to see how many steps you could jump without injuring yourself. So what, it didn’t matter if you bit off more than you could chew and busted your knee. It was all in good fun, you would make it next time.
Children had chores to do, so sometimes you would have to wait on your steps or theirs for them to finish the chores, before they could come outside to play. Those were the times when a kid might be a little bit still—a quiet time, when they would drift into the world of imagination and wonder.
It was on one of those days when I was alone, a child of 6 or 7, that a dandelion seed floated by. I gently caught it and began to examine it. The thought came to me that I had a life, with a mom and dad, and grandparents and cousins. Then a question came to me: what if there was a teeny tiny world on this dandelion seed, and there were teeny tiny people living on it? Well that would mean that I could destroy or damage them by the way I held the seed. I was aware that if there were other worlds—other beings—maybe they were like me, but really tiny, and that I should be careful with them, to not destroy their world, just because I was bigger.