"What a Kid Is"

My class is reading Jerry Spinelli's "Loser" right now. There is a line in one of the chapters--in the middle of the unlikely hero's selfless quest--that sticks out to me each year. It describes the time when the main character's little sister ran away:

"But in the end she stopped. Funny thing, she never slowed down, she just stopped, in the middle of the street. She stopped and turned and looked at him and his father and just plopped her apples right down on the street, one car coming to a stop, another swinging around them.

She had been utterly pleased with herself. "I runned away!" she chirped, and the sun was no match for her smile. And Zinkoff saw in that moment something that he had no words for. He saw that a kid runs to be found and jumps to be caught. That's what being a kid is: found, caught."

Found. Caught.

There may be something to that.