I started laughing as i saw these old pipes that twisted out of this building and plugged into a meter reader and took on the exact shape of a horse. If i remember right, that horse took me on many great adventures. Shaking my head as i remembered how hard it was to mount that rusty stead; i continued onward. Soon i was met by the ever scary dungeons or rickety old bridges formed by old window wells that were no more than 4 foot deep. Depending on the day and if i had enough courage to walk across those taunting window wells, sometimes i was the hero, but most the times the damsel. I remember i used to throw toys down into those window wells and then spend the rest of the day figuring out how i was going to rescue them. Then came the ever famous staircase. An odd little staircase attached to the back of this building, that lead up to an odd little cement porch that contained one rarely used back door of a dance school. How that space attracted me. If i wasn't building forts and defending my pride from the neighborhood boys; i was repelling off the side of that porch to escape whatever made up jail i imagined i was in. As i walked up to that staircase, i remembered the best part about my time spent on that odd little cement porch. it was what i could see through that doorway that always attracted me the most.

The red door. It's painted red every summer. The true spender of the red door comes when she would gracefully leave her locked frame and fulfills her purpose by allowing entrance into another world. My little gleaming eyes were like magnets for that open red door. If she was open, you were sure to find my face smashed up against the black screen door that denied full access to her world. and there i would stay perched and wait.... wait for those wonderful childhood moments when you experience life and the rawness of dreaming and hoping and longing... the moment i would see the red door's mystery. It only ever came in pieces. a bit of pink netting there, a spotting of silk covered feet here, the lively and random music that would draw them away from my secretive view of their world. Ballerina's, thats what they were... real ones... and they were my age... little.

I loved those moments of my childhood, because they were raw. No one told me to want that, no one forced me to smash my face up against that screen, no one pushed me to get excited for that red door to open... i just did. In the rawest and most innocent of ways i remember experience life through desire. And i watched and wished beyond everything that i could be one of those girls, dressed in a tutu and dancing ballet. But i never did. I stopped rushing to the red door, i stopping wanting to look in her world, I stopped wanting. so i didn't ever dance with those girls, I never walked through that red door.

I smiled today as i looked up that staircase at the closed red door. Then i looked down the ally at my childhood world filled with dungeons, horses, bridges, and loads of potential adventure... and i smiled again at how much shorter that ally has become.

I might not have ever walked through that red door, and i might never have stood in that mysterious world... But I smiled again

i've danced!! and i'm going to keep on dancing even if no one but me is watching. The red doors opening again and I'm walking in.

I'm going to Graduate School!