Perspective is everything.

I spent much of yesterday evening in a community meeting with neighbors trying to get information regarding the construction planned in and around our home for the next couple of years. Our quaint little town is becoming more accessible to the outside world and as traffic increases, so must the roadways.

Some of our concerns involve safety, noise pollution, land grading and flooding potential, HOA involvement, speeding through and past our community, egress in and out of our neighborhood, impact on property values, among many others.

When my family first moved into the home I lived in during my grade school years, our little Maryland suburban neighborhood was just getting started. I remember living with a construction site in our back yard for what seemed to me to be two or three years. It was great.

Bear in mind, as a mischievous young boy, I had none of the concerns mentioned above. All I saw was a vast, untamed playground with enormous dirt mounds, plenty of rocks, and giant machines that could double for anything from alien spaceships to parts of an abandoned western ghost town. I spent many after school hours there, lost in my imagination.

As an adult, I seem inclined to want to control my surroundings – shape them to my liking. As a child, having no control, it was easier to accept things as they came and find the enjoyment within them. It may be a little wistful naïveté speaking, but I miss those days.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit www.homevideostudio.com/mtd