Everyone, meet Hunter.

There will soon be a post about our lovely bank holiday weekend. BUT FIRST, I wanted to make a special post about my new hero.

We spent the day exploring the Dover Castle, which was pretty, dope. But I'll get to that in the next post.

While we were there, we saw this little boy there with his mum. He had on a bomber jacket, aviation goggles, carried around an automatic rifle toy, and a toy airplane that I leanred through observation,  he affectionately called, Sheila. He was truly inspiring.

His name is Hunter.

FIRST, he inspired me to laugh. His mother was in front of us in line to get ice cream, he busted through the line by way of pushing through everyone in the line to reach her as though it was a life or death emergency to choose his ice cream flavor, his outfit was AWESOME, and he had no shame.

SECOND, he inspired me to get a double scoop ice cream cone because his looked so delicious.

THIRD, we were waiting in line to go through the wartime tunnels, and it was about a 50 minute wait. Hunter, party of two, were in front of us again.  Instead of  being a typical 7-9 year old and whining about the wait, texting on his phone, or doing drugs, Hunter walked away to play, by himself.

I watched him shoot at strangers, yell things about security coming, roll around on the ground to take cover from enemy fire, take a break a few times to scratch his butt cheek, and tell his mum to "piss off" once (she shut that down pretty fast though), for about 45  minutes.

When we FINALLY got inside, I was lucky enough to be in his tour group. The tour was about England during WWII, and Hunter had on a jacket that had an American flag, and I heard his mum say something about the wrong country, and then all I heard was Hunter yell "AT LEAST I'M NOT GERMAN!"

They shuffled us into a room where we got to hear the actual broadcast of the Prime Minister announcing to the English people that they were at war with Germany. While the broadcast was playing Hunter was getting really into it, they announced that public places like cinemas would be closed until further notice, Hunter was disgruntled. They announced that school would be closed until further notice, and Hunter cheered loudly. I wasn't convinced that he didn't time travel from 1939.

When we got to the projection videos about the war he even shot at the German planes that soared by on the screen. He was serious.

At some point during the tour, we got separated from Hunter. It wasn't until I heard a little fat girl complaining about how boring the exhibit was that I realized I had taken him for granted. He inspired me to find a sense of wonderment in the little things, and have an imagination again. I want my kids to be like Hunter, (except for the telling me to piss off part) I want them to be interested in history, and be able to entertain themselves for an hour without technology. I want them to be fearless and play pretend war and scratch their butts like no one is watching. I want them to go outside and get dirty, and wear a costume out in public if they feel like it. Then it dawned on me, that not only did I want this for my future children, I want it for myself now. I am constantly working on having a childlike faith, and Hunter was a really great example of that for me.

I am really glad I got to be around this small person with big personality today. Not only was he inspiring, but he was also really entertaining. Unfortunately, I will probably never see him again, but I hope he never loses what I saw today.