Adam Blatner

Well, one way to cope with them is to bring them from the preconscious, hardly articulated “mood” level to explicit and expressed consciousness, so here are some that have come up lately. They’re minor, residues of childish desires, but saying them neutralizes them a bit:
– Having to put away stuff. I don’t mind taking things out and playing with them or preparing them to eat in a way I like, but then… what?! The bread needs to be put away again?? Awww, man. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
– Having to give away toys that my grandkids didn’t play with. Before I could get to these, they shifted over to electronic gadgets and sit with their thumbs poking some little thingamajig. I want to say, but these other toys are so cute that even I want to play with them. Then we’re reminded of that little section of the song, “Christmas is for Children.” 
      “That electric train / That no one could tempt papa with…
        Will someone explain, why it’s all that papa will bother with!
        I guess Christmas is for children—but aren’t we all children
       Christmas day?”

Reflecting on annoyances, there are some others:
– Gravity. That darn gravity is trying to get me, trip me up, throw me off balance, make everything seem so heavy, it’s everywhere. You gotta watch out for it.
  – Having to fight gravity even in my own body: Stand up straight! All around me are peers who have given in to slouching, bending over. They don’t seem to worry. But not me! I’ll just raise my crown to God, pull my shoulders back, and stand at attention! Take that, you ol’ gravity!
– Wondering about inexplicable decay, in the house, among my teeth, in my body. A little extra flabbiness here that wasn’t here before; a few wrinkles there that weren’t there before. At least I didn’t notice them. It’s not fair!

Another part of me observes all this critically and yet indulgently: Ah, yes, traces of emotional swirls are still attached to primal cognitive processes, which is another way of saying that we’re all still kids in our heart, a little bit.