There's a group chat you have with your girlfriends that you use to make plans.

"How about we do dinner and a movie?"

"Okay well who's going to drive? I'm not."

"I'll drive but if I do I have to be home by 10:00."

"The movie starts at 9:00 so that won't work."

"I don't know then. Where are we going to eat?"

"I was thinking Chinese."

"I wanted pizza."

"Can't we just agree and go to one place."

"Well I don't like pizza."

"Who's even driving?"

"Why don't we just do something another night?"

I'm not sure when everything became so difficult. It used to be so easy to call your friends and ask them to go to a movie. Maybe you'd grab a slice of pizza before the movie, and that would be that. There was no extensive planning required. You didn't spend hours texting back and forth trying to make a decision. It was all just so simple. And then for some reason everything got so difficult. Nobody could agree on one thing. Your plans were always postponed or forfeited and you never ended up getting to do anything. Why is this?

The other night, my 13 year old sister and 14 year old cousins sent a text to a few of their friends inviting them over to play manhunt. Within minutes, they had replies and within an hour all of the kids were here making teams. I had no plans with my friends, and I didn't feel like spending the night watching Netflix again, so I decided to join in on the game. Boundaries were set. A home base was set. All of us put our cell phones in the house, and we set out to hide and/or seek.

After one long round of this, the kids abandoned the game and decided truth or dare was their next task. Trying to come up with a dare for one another was hard for them, so I decided to pipe up and help them out.

"Why don't you go ding dong ditch across the street?"

The house I suggested was that of our friend's, whose daughter was out with all of us, and whose whole family was still awake. After a moment of hesitation, all ten of us bolted to my side yard. One boy ran over and up the steps, and as he tried to ring the broken doorbell, he fell sideways into their hedges. We couldn't help but hysterically laugh as the kid's head popped up from the bushes. The next few moments were a blur as we all ran in different directions and one of the kids had enough courage to actually do the deed.

Knock knock knock.

I ended up behind the pine tree in my yard with four other kids, laying in the damp grass as we watched the front door open across the street. There were two kids hiding behind cars. The one was still in the bushes right in front of the house. Another hid in the trees, and I don't know where the last one was. A moment of fear set in as our neighbor walked out of the house and sat down on her front steps. Paralyzed with fear, some of the kids looked over to me and whispered

"She's PISSED."

At this moment I definitely didn't feel like an 18 year old college student. I felt like all of the other 13 year olds who just ding dong ditched somebody and were scared for their lives. It didn't make it any better when we heard our neighbor say

"You can come out."

Obviously, she knew it was our group. But still, nobody moved. This neighbor was actually a good friend of mine, yet I was even terrified to walk out and give myself up. She got up and walked back in the house for a brief moment, and that's when everybody ran from every direction to the safety of my house. It sounded like a stampede of elephants entering my house.

All of the kids were panicked that she was calling the police, as they saw her come back outside with her cell phone. And then my house phone rang, and I explained everything, and she laughed as I told her how terrified we all were.

The night went on, and we all sat in the road talking about nonsense, until some of the kids had to ride their bikes home, and some others decided to crash on my couch. We ended the night staying up until 2AM watching a movie.

Confucius once said, "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." The night I spent with a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds was probably the best night I've had all summer. There was something about the innocence and the simplicity of it all that made me realize how difficult everything is made to be these days. Why couldn't I ever put plans together that easily? Why couldn't anybody ever agree on anything anymore?

The night I spent with all of them really made me feel like a kid again. I forgot about all of the things we make so difficult in life, and I partook in ding dong ditching a neighbor's house. It was all just so innocent and simple. I wish we could all live in such a way, where we didn't overthink things. We didn't spend so much time planning, but spent more time living in spontaneity. We could all meet up one night to ding dong ditch with no difficulty. After all, there is a beauty in simplicity.