My Childhood Oddity

What were you obsessed with as a kid? I mean, serious? Do you remember anything from your childhood that was big with you at such a small age? I have always been in love with caves, dirt, and rocks ever since I can remember. I remember making mud pies with my sister and cousins. Whenever we were at my nana’s, she’d have bubbles, chalk, and spoons. I was into the bubbles and spoons. We only used the spoons to dig up the dirt around the edges of the sidewalks. Every weekend we would do this and I’m starting to wonder how majority of the spoons she still uses are slightly bent. We were a bit rough when it came to certain ones. I had my own spoon that had a gripper so it wouldn’t be such a pain to really down deep into the ground. I loved seeing as you dug your spoon into the ground that there was a narrow line of tan dirt. Sometimes we’d pull up worms and then stab them a hundred times to see it squirm. I‘m going to hell, ain’t I? I remember once that we had share spoons because we kept dirtying nana’s spoons in one or two days that she didn’t want to run out of them before they ate supper. That ended up causing a bitter fight between my sister and I, because one of us didn’t want to share. I’m not throwing the blame on her though, it was probably me not wanting to share with her in the first place. We also had fun with chalk and bubbles too. At the time, I had very good flexibility in my lower half. So I could do the bubbles myself without anybody else holding it for me. Chalk wasn’t my forte. They were either too thin or too thick for me to use. so I only played with the bubbles and dirt.

As a kid though, it wasn’t just those things that kept me entertained. The start of my love with rocks had to start around I was six years old. I can’t think of myself older and be collecting them. I remember as the years continued on, my little tin can stayed in a corner of my nana’s house collecting dust, just waiting for me to cone back. Almost like that scene in Toy Story 2 where Jessie and her original owner Emily loves her and plays with her but once as she grows up and discovers makeup, her love of her childhood things fades. She ends up saling Jessie along with the rest of her childhood things. Instead of me throwing it away in the trash, I grabbed it and when I got home, dad unhinged the lid and opened it up. My nana said it hasn’t been opened for 15 or 16 years. Which mom told me I would have been 7 or 8 years old at the time. These rocks are old. When I took them out of the box or can, I had ten pieces of little rocks. I actually 11 of the bigger ones with the lone little sea shell. I’m still confused about the shell and how it ended up in there. There were so many differences in the rocks, I do think I snatch one from my grandparents driveway, but I have no idea where I must’ve gotten the rest. The textures from the bigger ones are kind of interesting. Two are incredibly smooth and there’s a big one gray rock that has circle edge at the top of it that’s white. If you hold it up to good light, it kind of sparkles like it has diamonds in it. That’s why as kids, we used to think we were pirates and that nana’s dirt had gold in it because of the tan line in the dirt. We were a little nutty! I must’ve been able to grab a hold of the smaller ones easily when I was younger as to why I have so many. I was trying to pull them off my floor and I couldn’t get my toes around them to get a good grip. Now it’s actually difficult to grab them with my toes, they didn’t want to go back in the can.

I was thinking about something. Our neighbors have a little girl named Chevy and she’s fairly smaller in age than I was when I became so interested in rocks, but she loves them! However, she loves throwing them at people more than anything, but I thought it would nice to get her to collect them instead of throwing them. Inside the barn are rocks everywhere, there are fairly large rocks inside and I thought it would neat to get her to collect maybe these bigger ones. I might be getting ahead of myself as she is only two years old, but my mom and I just don’t understand how much she runs around in the barn without shoes or socks on, because to us, even I was thinking it, that would hurt the bottoms of our feet being stick with those rough and sharp edges and all the running she does! No wonder she’s been wanting rides on my wheelchair! Now that the temperature’s dropping in the evenings, I’ve actually seen her with tennis shoes on and it’s so different because I’m normally seeing her barefoot or in somebody else’s flip-flops. My mom had to go to the house one day while she was over at the barn, Chevy just went with her and came back with my mom’s flip-flops on. Tiny feet in big shoes, you would assume she’d fall on herself but she never did. That takes some talent, at least it’s got to, because I’d think it would hurt to have bigger shoes on. I’m just glad I don’t have to wear any kind of shoes. Socks drive me insane whenever I do have to wear them. Anyways, back to the rocks thing. I might talk to her momma and see what she thinks if it would produce good results or not. If not, it’s cool!

the smoothest rocks

the roughest and biggest.

the lone sea shell