Be a Kid by Leo

Be a Kid by Leo - July 2025 Scholarship Essay

My younger self would be jumping his bike off a ramp one hot August day before school started again. He built the ramp with his friends out of the scrap wood they found in the garage but he’d be the only one brave enough (or maybe the only one dumb enough) to try it, and I’d catch him right before he hit the ground to prevent the deep gash in his left knee that left a scar and wrist that still makes a clicking sound when I twist it. But I’d catch him right after he’d been airborne for just a few seconds, to give him the opportunity to do something stupid and fun with his friends.
And before I dropped him back on the ground I’d tell him to not worry so much about growing up. I’d tell him not to be afraid of failure, of judgement, of not being good enough, of getting hurt. Because I don’t remember the pain from hitting the blisteringly hot concrete and slicing the skin of my knee open anymore, but I do remember the feeling of flying for just a moment and the sound of my friends screaming because I had gotten at least four feet of air (according to them).
I’m not sure when, maybe when I was 13 maybe when I was 9 maybe when I was born, I became obsessed with trying to grow up. I imagined going to high school or college or having a job or marrying my best friend or buying a house where I’d have a big backyard for 8 dogs and 4 cats and 2 birds. At some point I didn’t want to be a kid anymore.
And at some point I grew up and realized that there’s good things about being older, but there’s something special about being a kid that I didn’t appreciate then and now I’m afraid I missed out on.
I rode bikes around town with my friends, but what if I didn’t do that enough? I played little league sports, but what if I could’ve played more? I sometimes wrote silly little stories to entertain myself when I was a kid. But what if I didn’t put pen to paper enough times because I was too afraid of it not being good enough; what if there were tens or hundreds more stories I could’ve told but didn’t? I had friends, but what if I didn’t meet enough people or try to make more friends because I was nervous?
I’d tell my younger self to stop being afraid, to do things even if it was bad and even if it wasn’t good enough and even if it was embarrassing and even if it was scary. I’d tell him to always tell the truth and to tell his best friend he loved him, even if that was something they both were afraid to say. I’d tell him to take risks and to do fun things and to try to jump his bike off that ramp he built one hot August day because he was bored, even if he scraped his knees. I’d tell him to let himself be excited about Taylor Swift and the color purple and the other ‘girly’ things he liked.
I’d tell my younger self to stop worrying about growing up and just be a kid. There would be time to worry about growing up later, but I was only 9 once.