Children are very impressionable.
Children are very impressionable.
My bike was everything.
I was feeling petulant, so I did what petulant people do these days. I left a snarky post on Facebook: “There’s nothing worse than adult-y chores,” I was thinking. I had to go to the dentist and get a filling. I had to have the rear struts on my car replaced. I had to go …
The other day I was walking up the bridge to work and I realized I wasn’t stepping on any of the cracks. “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” I took that very seriously when I was a kid. I spent most of my childhood convinced that my mother would die at any minute, …
Since I’m not a kid or a Christian, Easter tends to go by without my taking too much notice these days. Like Halloween, it’s kind of a non-holiday holiday for me. But when I was little, I absolutely loved coloring eggs. (Come to think of it, I’d probably still find that fun. Therapeutic, even. ) …
When I was 11 years old, I brought some candy to school. They were those little, sugary mints that most kids have seen a million times. My best friend back then was kind of gullible, though, so when she asked me what it was, I told her it was drugs. I thought it was kind …
Every day here in Seattle I drive past little homeless encampments. They seem to be everywhere. They gather under the overpasses, in the little clumps of forest, and even on the sidewalks. Their tents are ragged and dirty, and usually they sit amongst a field of garbage. It’s heartbreaking to witness, especially during a pervasive …
To say I had a dysfunctional childhood would be putting it mildly. Purely to save myself, I spent a great deal of time dissociating from my daily reality. In fact, I really can’t recall much from ages 11 through 13. I can say that I watched Mr. Rogers until an embarrassing age. He was the …
I seem to have stumbled upon a new fad: coloring books for adults. These are books of very elaborate line drawings that you can then color with pencils or crayons. I even heard on National Public Radio yesterday that it’s become so popular that there’s currently a worldwide shortage of colored pencils! I discovered it …
When I was 12 years old I was growing up in a semi-rural, semi-farming community, and one of the classes they insisted we take in school was agriculture. I vaguely remember having to identify various breeds of cow, and planting trees as a community project. It was the 70’s. Times were simpler. And Florida schools …
The View from a Drawbridge 