Everyone seeks a happy ending. What is yours?

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Craving Childhood

Oh to be a little kid again. To be the first to dive down a dark hole under the old farmhouse and explore what would soon be our hideout and storage space for our harvested (stolen) cotton from the countless acres across the street. I cringe just thinking about what sort of creepy crawlies lived in the absolutely cavernous and ancient crawl space. I played in huge piles of leaves that Mom raked up despite there being VISIBLE SPIDERS there with me. God, I'll never do that again. Ew.

I was a unknowingly mean child who put tadpoles in a garden hose and then blew them out the other end back into the pond. I just thought that I was showing them a world outside the weeds near the banks but unwittingly I was basically shoving them in a cannon and not even having the decency to have a count down to lift off. Never roasted ants with a magnifying glass, but only because I wasn't patient enough to hold it still for the required heating up process, otherwise I'm sure I would've fried more than a hill or two.

But I was a brave little girl who could leap long snakes with a single bound, but only because I didn't even realize it was a snake and when I was informed, promptly burst into tears. That same little girl rescued tiny mice from a mean old barn cat, until one bit her and she hurled it into the woods out of righteous anger and has never touched a mouse since.

My sneaky lovely daddy taught me how to do a mean Richard Nixon impression and even procured photographic evidence of it, probably to use as blackmail at some point in the distant future in case I don't put him in a good Old Folks Home. He also took a year to build me the world's only triangular tree house and made sure I had my own work bench and THREE tool boxes in his work shop.

I was a hopeful kid. I spent hours after school one year sitting in the clover patches of our yard searching for any that had more than 3 leaves. At one point I had a 7 Leaf Clover. Beat that bitches. Also I carved my initials on ancient Beeches down by the old creek bed and informed the world of my crush on the underside of the Hwy 264 Bridge.

I climbed trees and had my own one woman spy network on the next door neighbors. Considering the kind of people they were, I should've turned my notes over to Jerry Springer ASAP. I read 10 books a week because my mom must've heard that Albert Einstein said,

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales"

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

But what I like best about back then is the fact that I had big dreams and a crazy imagination. I still have those and I am never letting them go.