She's the best one that we've ever had
She sits on her hair and she's tall as my dad
And she tie-dyed my shirt and she pierced her own ear
And it's peace, man, cool, yeah, the babysitter's here.

Today was a different sort of day for me in Second Life. A friend invited me to storytime. Seven kids sat around in Second Life. Some on the floor, others on their parents lap and listened to a teenager with magenta hair read parts of Alice in Wonderland.

Aldon in Wonderland, originally uploaded by Aldon.

Most of the stories about people portraying themselves as children in Second Life have a distinctly unsavory aspect to it. However, there is another side to people portraying themselves as children in Second Life. My friend who invited me had previously pointed me to a blog post entitled Mere Child’s Play, which puts the whole subculture in a very different context.

The blog post talks about how many of those involved in mere child’s play had rough childhoods. They suffered abuse as children or were beat up in school. They were finally having the chance to have the joyful innocent childhood that had been denied them the first time around.

For me, my brief experience in kid’s land captured the joyful innocence that too few of us remember. It is a joyful innocence that I find with my daughters and I called Fiona to come listen to the story of Alice in Wonderland with me. She has spent time sitting on my lap before as I explored Second Life, and this was a great setting for her to observe. It was closer to other games that she has seen online than other times I’ve been in Second Life.

And we all went to see her go dance at the high school
We made her a big card
And she told us that she'd be the unicorn wearing the pink
leotard, and
There she was leaping up just like she said
With a sparkling horn coming out of her head
And she's oh, oh, oh, oh
(I can't wait to give her the card, I can't wait to give her the card)
She's the best one . . .
(OK, so the play was called "The Unicorn" and she was the
unicorn so that means that the star was my babysitter.)

So, the teenager reading Alice in Wonderland finished the story and went on to read Free Bird as if it were a poem.

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
There's too many places I haven't seen
And if I stayed here with you, now
Things just wouldn't be the same

It made me think of the great song by Dar Williams, “The Babysitter’s Here”, which captures the innocence of childhood facing the complexity of adolescence.

While my childhood had its bumps and bruises, it was mostly a happy childhood. I have been blessed to have three wonderful daughters, so I get to re-experience, as a parent, many of the wonderful moments of childhood. Others have had a less happy childhood or have less opportunities to experience the joys of childhood. The kid’s scene in Second Life provides a great place to experience some of the joy and innocence of childhood. It is a rich and nuanced scene that is profoundly different from the mass media portrayal.

So, I’m glad my friend invited me to check out the kid’s scene in Second Life. I expect I’ll continue to spend most of my time in Second Life as the grown up political activist, businessman, blogger. However, I will stop by at other kid’s scene events when I hear of them. As the old saying goes, it is never too late to have a happy childhood.