Today I was having an interesting conversation with an older gentlemen who was playing on my table. We were talking about how much things had changed over the years. I remembered when my parents bought our first colored television. We laughed about the thought of actually having to pay for bottled water, who would have thought such a thing. He was telling me how his parents smoked like chimney’s in the car while the kids rode in back. I told him that I can remember when my Dad would drink his can’s of Busch Beer while we were driving in the car. DUI, what’s that. Smoking is hazardous to your health, you don’t say.
We could play outside from the time we came home from school until we would hear our parents shout out our names across the neighborhood that dinner was ready. Pogo Sticks, jump rope, 4 square, kick the bucket. Putting playing cards in the spokes of our tires on our bikes with clothespins so we sounded like motorcycles. Wearing those old medal rollerskates that you had to strap onto your shoes. Yo-yo’s, barbie dolls, snow angels, skateboarding. Monopoly, Clue, Twister, Scrabble. Oh those lazy days of summer when school was out for three months. I can remember my best friend and I whining to my Mom, “We’re so bored”. I remember one summer we sold nightcrawler worms, 25 cents a dozen. Boy, were they fun to catch on a hot summer night.
I remember how I loved to play school. I had a whole set up in the cellar. Three desks, a big blackboard and school books that Mrs. Fordyce gave to me. Even then I knew I liked to teach.
They say when you are an adult and trying to figure out what your passion is to think back to when you were a child and what you enjoyed. I liked to teach, I loved animals and I loved to write. Nothing has really changed. I have a book I wrote in the second grade, isn’t that kind of funny. I think it was called “The Bald Princess”. Why have I wasted so many years when the answers were there all along. I ponder this question.
Wow, did you ever take me back in time…yes I to loved those lazy days of summer. Your question of wasted time I ponder it also, but at least you are back on the path. So many never get this far.
Trisha