01.30.06
The strangeness of childhood
To break in my new car (I have my own car now…how strange is that?), I decided to take a road trip this weekend to visit some friends from school. To keep myself occupied during the drive, I started thinking about things I did when I was little. And boy, was I a strange kid. Or perhaps I was just imaginative. Or something.
The first thing I remembered was the long car trips (10-12 hours) we used to make a few times a year to visit our family in New England. I used to sit in the backseat of the car and watch the trees flicker past and imagine that our car had these giant metal blades that stuck out horizontally underneath the backseat windows and cut down all the trees as we passed by. At first the blades were just really long and straight, but then I kept making them longer and longer until they completely circled the earth and joined together to form a giant metal circle. I have no idea why I thought about this.
Once, someone let our family borrow their camcorder (probably so that we could record some sort of holiday or family gathering). It was one of those big bulky ones that actually recorded onto a VHS tape. One of my friends and I used it to record our own version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. From what I remember, it mostly involved one of us falling down somehow. Over and over again. We thought it was hilarious.
I had an imaginary brother, whom I named Jonathan. Eventually, I got bored with his name and renamed him David. (Or maybe it was the other way around…I don’t quite remember.) My mother still thinks that somehow I had two imaginary brothers, even though I keep telling her that I just renamed him.
Another friend and I used to re-enact TV shows that we really liked. Except that I don’t know if re-enact is the right word. We made up our own characters and plots and stuff and acted them out.
I told you I was a strange kid.