You gotta have pinball to make it in this life

Every two weeks, I get a paycheck.

Not only does it feed me and pay my bills, but it also serves other more subtle purposes. It's a biweekly reminder that for the youngest kid of his family's generation, the youngest of two brothers, and second-youngest of more than 40 cousins, play time is over and has been over for a while.

There are other reminders, of course. Chocolate long ago stopped being a food group, having been replaced by Pepto Bismol, haircuts don't come as often as they once did, and, of course, "Garfield" and "Papelucho" (the Chilean Harry Potter) have been replaced by readings of "Interviews That Work" and that other classic known as "The Cell Phone Bill."

But the paycheck is the most important reminder of all. Some people may say that it shouldn't be, that it should simply be taken as a slightly bigger allowance. I'll agree with that the day I can blow my paycheck on the pinball machine like I used to do with my allowance. Until then, it's a biweekly piece of string around my index finger, reminding me how much I miss playing pinball.

I miss the pranks, too. Not just the typical ring-the-bell-and-take-off-running, but the ones that took more preparation, like filling a grown-up's work boots with shampoo or like the time I was so embarrassed of having doodled all over my notebook instead of doing homework, that I glued the pages together so the teacher wouldn't see what I had done. Didn't work, but you have no idea the laughs the story gets, even 18 years later.

I miss the blissful ignorance of those days when it was perfectly normal to be entirely disgusted and appalled by those annoying beings with ribbons in their hair and purses with little dolls on them. Oh, man did we have fun hating 'em. I once used discarded Christmas gift wrap, filled it with dog poop and sent it to a girl. We are still friends, believe it or not.

(Boys, don't try that one at home, you might end up having thousands of people read about it many years later.)

I am not on a time warp, don't get me wrong. I enjoy taking a pass on the broccoli and watching TV without having to hear about how five more minutes of Jay Leno would triple the light bill, and how I better get to bed because it's getting cold and you will get sick and there's no money for medicines because we spent it all paying for last month's light bill which was sky-high because you watched Friends AND Seinfeld.

I just miss the silliness of it all, you know? Adulthood is rarely a time for silliness, and when it is, it's under a different title, called "Hobbies," and they are usually expensive, complicated and they are only fun if you're good at it. In other words, they are a job. Without a paycheck, I might add.

Hitting a ball with a stick until it falls into a cup miles away should not cost hundreds of dollars, unless you count the medical bills from the doctor that asks you why you find that fun. Same with acting all excited over a new speaker for a car that already has 10 of them or for that closet filled with evening shoes, when you haven't had a date since your senior prom.

So, needless to say, I'll take the silliness of my childhood, over the oh-my-God-a-hole-in-one accomplishments of adulthood. I will take the wonder that the little goofy kid with the crooked feet and gigantic head actually has a job and a profession in another country and in another language over worrying about whatever bill that may be late. And whenever the next paycheck comes, I'll pay some of it, enjoy some of it, and, like any adult should, save some of it, too.

For a pinball machine, of course.

Sebastian Moraga is the Columbia Basin Herald's city and politics reporter.