Monday, September 8, 2008

I Haven't Changed A Bit...

On Friday night I went to my mom's house for stimulating conversation (my stepfather suggested that "My Girlfriend is a Virgin" would be a good name for/theme of a country song...I'll leave that one to someone else to write!), good food (actually, I brought my own dinner over, but my mom did have some dark chocolate M&Ms, and those were good) and a trip down Embarrassment Lane. Did I say that? I meant Oh-My-Gosh-There-Is-Alot-of-Stuff-Here Lane. In other words, Memory Lane.

Mom brought down a big-ass box (must take after me) of art and projects and reports cards from my youth. I have to say, I haven't changed a bit. Here is a story that I wrote about a week after I turned seven:

Snow Red and the Nine Monkeys
Once there was a little girl that had nine monkeys. She liked her monkeys. But there was a problem. They ripped things, and she didn't like it at all. She wanted to buy new furniture but she did not have enough money.

That's it, that's the whole story. For ease of reading I added some punctuation and fixed the spelling on the word "furniture" but otherwise that was all me. Monkeys??? What's with me and monkeys? I mention them with some frequency, I'm starting to wonder if that was me in a former life or something.

There was also a "book" of poetry I'd made, it was called "Pumped up on Poetry!" and I even drew some barbells on the cover. I have chosen this selection for you, since I was discussing Haiku a couple of weeks ago:

Okay, maybe I have changed. My haiku skills were way better in the sixth grade, when I crafted those four beautiful poems.

Going through all that stuff (we actually didn't finish because I got tired and decided to go home, but I'll look through the rest of it sometime soon) reminded me that the things about me that I consider my real self were always there. In a description of myself, also written in the sixth grade when I was 10 or 11, I wrote "Weird, Imaginative, Artistic, Funny". Still me, to a T. The only thing I'd do different now is make other odd phrases out of the first letters of those words like "Wicked Ingrained Afros Flew".

I am funny and artistic and even when I feel as uninspired as I did last week, I know it's still there somewhere. Hey, maybe it's at the beach, waiting for me to catch it!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i LOVE going thru old things - so revealing! If I may humbly submit this story I wrote on the subject for Women's Health - I bet you'll related to it :-)

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/self-discovery