Photo Albums have it right.

Where on earth (or off it) did innocence go? What happened? When did this life appear?

I can remember back before evil and sin tainted every moment of my life. Back when the plants were greener, everyone was friendly, and there was nothing bad in the world. Back before there was politics, and people being cruel and hating people they'd never met in their lives. Before we destroyed each other incessantly and did unimaginable things to innocents. Before there was a world built up around sex, and sex itself was just a concept. When no one swore, and hearts hadn't begun to harden.

What happened to those days? They seem to have disappeared entirely, beyond any chance of returning.

Do you remember them too? Do you remember the tickle of the wet grass on your arms and your cheeks as you lay on the lawn with your best friend in the whole wide world? The running in and out of everyone's house as you pleased; the lemonade and the homemade cookies..? What about summer storms where the sky filled with white clouds, which then turned grey, and then darker, darker, darker until they were black, and finally exploded out, flooding the street and soaking everything. Did you run out and play in the rain? Did you burst out of the house in bare feet and no coat, or did your mother make you dress up in boots, rubber jacket, and then handed you an umbrella as you left the house? Or maybe you just sat in the living room, watching the storm through open windows, deeply drawing in the fresh, wet air. And the 4th of July! All the families in the neighborhood gathering on the one streetcorner, the mothers sitting on lawn chairs with the littlest babies on their laps, and everyone else running around waving sparklers, while the fathers placed a firework safely in the middle of the street, calmly lit it, and then dashed back for cover as fast as they could. Whenever one of the firecrackers that flashed the bright white light and screamed went off, everyone would wince and put their hands over their ears. There were popscicles enough for everyone, and it would go on until the policeman drove through and told us we weren't allowed to light fireworks here. Then one or two of the braver dads would light a few more, and then it was off to bed. And in the fall all the trees were more beautiful than any painting, and there were huge piles of leaves in every yard. And in the winter it snowed a huge amount, and you would run out in blizzards for snowball fights and cave building.

What happened?

When did the world get this much colder, this much more complex? It went from your grandma's house with cookies and milk to your grandma's house where you argue about things with your relatives. Why did this happen? When did growing up mean getting burnt out?