#fetus!dan

I love to watch old videos of Dan and Phil together, like the first PINOFs, the AmazingDans, stuff like that, and notice how Dan laughs: it’s almost always this stifled, sputtering, self-conscious little thing … a “Phil’s making me do this and I can’t help myself but please don’t stare because you’re supposed to think I’m too cool for this” kind of laugh.

And then I watch their modern-day videos, especially the DanandPhilGames ones, and I notice how Dan laughs: it’s this raucous, fearless, joyous laugh with his mouth wide open and his whole body moving with the sound. When Dan laughs now, he laughs like the happiest person in the world.

So yeah, I love to watch their old videos and see how Dan laughs, but only because I’ve gotten used to how he laughs now, and so when I watch those old videos I can’t help but notice how far he’s come in being able to relax and be himself on camera. And maybe not just on camera, maybe in his life in general. I like to think he’s happier now, probably happier than he could have even imagined back then.

Sometimes when Dan talks about having been miserably lonely when he was younger (such as in the recent “Creating A Community” panel at Playlist Live), it makes me sad for that poor little kid.

But most of the time, it makes me happy. Because that poor little kid isn’t gone—he’s just grown up, and he’s grown up into a world he could never have imagined for himself. Dan is still the same person, and so that miserably lonely kid is still here, and every day he is living this amazing life, living and working with the closest friend anyone could ever want, with millions of people all over the world loving him and admiring him and wishing they had the luck to be able to actually know him.

Just imagine that 13-year-old kid who still lives inside the heart of 25-year-old Daniel Howell, and imagine what he thinks of this life. Because you know that occasionally he stops and looks around him and sees all this from the perspective of that lonely kid, and he’s filled with gratitude and joy.