Random Ramblings

It's funny the things you think when you are a child.

You think your house was so huge, because from your perspective everything IS huge. But you go there as an adult and think....."Really? How did I ever think that?"

You think the world is so wide open, you think the tiny town you grew up in is a metropolis, and it isn't until you grow up and move to the city that you realize that it was just a small farming community.

I stumbled across a blog today and the name reminded me of a boy I used to know. Eric Garrison. He was short, chubby, dark haired, and I thought he was so cute. He was my little first grade crush. I think I still have, somewhere, the tiny koala bear he gave me for my birthday that year.

The silly thing is, I thought he was "Rich". Where did I get this grand idea? Ummm because there was a foyer (aka a half wall dividing the front door from the living room) with a crystal chandelier in his trailer house (yep, you read that right, his trailer house). I thought surely anyone who could afford a crystal chandelier had to be wealthy right?

That crystal chandelier is also what convinced me that our tiny town had actually experienced a real live earth quake! Because the shaking was strong enough to make the Crystal Chandelier sway!!! Can you imagine?

Now looking back I can't believe I was ever so silly to imagine such things. I also can't believe that I can even remember these things when I seem to forget everything else.

I have been thinking a lot about my childhood these last couple of weeks. We are learning about bugs and butterflies at school and I was telling my students about my sister and I going into the horse pasture across the road and finding all kinds of caterpillars, and shiny colorful beetles, and monarch and tiger swallowtail butterflies. Most of my students have never seen any of these things.

I have been thinking about how magical everything seemed when I was a child. Thank heavens for my sister's wild imagination or my childhood would have been much more mundane.

And I feel bad for these "City kids" who don't have a horse pasture across the street, who won't look at their friends chandelier and think "If I marry him, surely I will be a princess". Do kids these days have any magic in their lives other than Harry Potter? I feel bad for them.

And I wonder what ever happened to Eric Garrison....wonder what his wife looks like....wonder what happened to that fabulous chandelier?