There are plenty of groups you can split humanity into cleanly — the “toilet paper over” people vs. the “toilet paper under” people, the ones who would load the salsa with cilantro and those who say “hold the soap,” the “I think gif is pronounced like the peanut butter” people and the ones who are wrong.

Then there are the people who will cast a judgy glare at the parents of a toddler roaring like a dinosaur in the grocery store and the people who will loudly announce “Oh my goodness, it’s a real live dinosaur” and wait for the giggles from behind the stack of crackers. 

This is a story about the second kind of people. 

Maybe they have kids themselves. 

Or maybe they don’t, but they remember what it was like to be a child bursting with imagination and still young enough to have no qualms about sharing it with the world. 

Maybe they are, like me, a parent whose child is now grown but who fondly recalls late nights preparing for a visit from a Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny or Santa only to be rewarded early the next morning by a grin spread wide across their child’s face. 

The abilities to imagine, to dream, to wonder and to experience unfettered joy are perhaps the greatest gifts of childhood and the most fleeting. 

By age 10, most kids have moved on from their once steadfast belief in magic and already their worries about what other people will think of them have set in, chasing away their flights of fancy — in grocery stores and elsewhere. 

Is it any surprise then that the median age of onset for anxiety in kids is 11? 

All too soon the kids we see in the grocery store, on the sidewalk, in the library or at the bank are going to face tough lessons about the world. They’ll learn about wars being waged across the globe and the devastating effects of climate change, experience devastating losses of loved ones and experience the pain of broken friendships. 

It isn’t a question of “if” but when the magic will melt away like a child’s snowman on a warm spring day. 

It happened to us all once, and there’s no going back. 

But there is the chance to get a tiny taste of that wonder once again. 

All you have to do is answer back to the tiny dinosaur roaring in the grocery store and wait for the giggle to fill your soul with a bit of long lost joy.