~When I was your age…~
I used suck on salty pickles, eat olives off of my fingertips and munch on little buttercup flowers. I was probably one of the strangest children known to mankind, and I honestly didn’t care. Afternoons, coming home from school, I would grab a can of black olives out of the pantry with my petit little hands. My parents never understood my actions, but nonetheless they opened up the can for me so I could stick my fingers into the cold shadowy olive liquid and pluck out each of the coal colored fruits. Popping them into my mouth, I grinned with jubilation at the salty taste that burst on my tongue as I bit down. When I was a child I was nearly obsessed with eating olives, and now I absolutely hate them.
I truly adore the fact that my past has made me into who I am today, and that I got to experience the best of the 90’s. Back in the day, there were so many things that kids enjoyed that kids nowadays don’t have a clue about. Like ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’, ‘Hey Arnold!’ and The Oregon Trail. I’d always get angry when I couldn’t kill a single deer, or when little Jimmy got lost in the storm for 3 days and someone ended up dying from Cholera, I would start growling at the computer and furrowing my brows.
So many things that I used to play with are now almost extinct. I love having the ability to tell people that I’ve memorized the Macarena and played Super Nintendo. Any time I find my brother’s old Annimorphs Transformers or look through my entire collection of Goosebumps, a gigantic smile spreads across my face. I can’t read them anymore because I find them so incredibly boring, but I won’t bring myself to give them all away. When I got the whole set in the mail, it completely made my day and I didn’t want to do anything else but sit and read those spooky stories. Sitting on my bed while having my back against the wall, my knees holding the pages close to my face while I quietly chewed my worn down fingernails. My eyes darted from page to page as I sunk deeper and deeper into the suspense, only to be disappointed at the end. This happened for every single book of the series, yet for reasons unknown I kept on hoping for disaster. There never really seemed to be much of an ending to it, either the monster would be fake or everyone survived, and I would look up from the book with the most saddening puppy dog face you could possibly imagine.
It always amazes me how the biggest part of who I am changes over time, like my interests and pet peeves, my goals and dreams; yet the little details that lie far behind the surface still remain. The little details such as I still won’t eat the crust of a sandwich or straighten my hair. I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that no matter who you are, some things just never change. And I believe that those things that never change, make us truly unique from everyone else, and we should be proud of our strange quirks.
