In the past three years, I've developed the practice of out-sourcing my memory to my blog. So when I saw a contest where to enter I had to write about an adventure I'd had, I thought "Oh, I'll just go through my blog archives!" And then I realized that didn't really fulfill the
spirit of the contest. So I sat down and thought seriously about all the adventures I've experienced I haven't documented here. This is when I realized the downfall of our-sourcing, which is that I came up with a blank. "Adventures? Me? Try next door."
So I realized if I wanted
to be be entered for the ARC on Beth Revis's website, I needed to go old school. I think this is the fourth (?) contest I've entered for
the book. What can I say? I like mystery and SF and YA. *beams*
Old school adventure. Have at you.
Now I have issues with memory, aside from the out-soursing issue previously mentioned. Because when I think of my past, I am always an adult. It's only when connecting places in my memory to what I know of my personal timeline that I can actually figure out how old I am. You'd think I'd be able to use the traditional "I couldn't see over the table, therefore I must be small," method, but no. Apparently I just decided at one time that tables and chairs were at inconvenient heights, and got over it. Thankfully we moved a lot in my early childhood, so I can pretty much match houses to years of my life.
When I was eight we lived in tents in an old church that we were renovating. I spent a lot of time getting absolutely filthy in the old dock across the street. When I was seven we lived in part of a row house, where we were the envy of the neighbour kids because we had a fence and a tree. I was not quite as enraptured with the tree, because I discovered reading at this age. When I was five, and part of being six, we lived in a tall rowhouse in Florida, but we dwelled chiefly on the beach. There were hermit crabs and you had to be careful not to step on manta rays. When I was five we lived in a row house, and I got to help with the cooking. AS IS RIGHT when one is an adult. When I was four we lived in an apartment in Germany. There were a million steps up to the top where we lived, and you could see a million miles if you stood on the counter and looked out the window.
I hope you're lucky enough to remember being four. Four is an awesome age. You're small and cute enough to get away with just about anything, which is great, because the world is an adventure to be attacked with both fists. Everything is both utterly magical, and easily accepted, at four. I saw that the swing at the park was an alligator, found this to be delightful, and then found caterpillars in the sand to be equally delightful. (Honestly! It was this massive alligator that you rode, and you had to get about five kids working together to really get it going. Best swing ever.)
I think, frankly, we were in an especially wonderful place to be four. There were vending machines at the market that you put a quarter in, and they gave you little TINY cars with wheels that spun. And when we went to the park, we could play on the aforementioned alligator swing, or the massive teeter totters that threw you as high as the trees, or eat pretzels the size of our heads, or poke caterpillars around the edges of the vast tractor tires that made the edges of the sandbox. And then of course, there were those minuscule details, the castles that we picnicked in. I would like to submit that when you are four, exploring consists chiefly of finding every patch of stinging nettles and falling into them. I can find nettles by scent, now.
But there were also adventures that probably would have happened wherever I was, like my discovery of slugs. We were camping, and my little brother had to tell me about these snails that had lost their shells. They were orange. They were the length of my hand, and then some. I almost fell into the stream from sheer fascination affecting gravity and pulling me sideways. Have you ever really looked at slugs? I mean, really? They're all spotted and wrinkled, and they wave their eyes around, all arrogant. Plus they have like six eyes. As a glasses-wearing girl, I have to respect that.
And then there was the adventure I've been leading up to, which is highly anticlimactic, really. It happened because I was eavesdropping on my mother's conversation with her friends, as one does. What, you mean you're supposed to play, at age four? No, I eavesdropped and watched the ants climb the side of the building where I spilled my juice the other day. Hush you. And it came out in the course of the conversation, that a poor boy had stuck his tongue to a metal pole when it had frosted, and this appendage had gotten permanently stuck. They had to get it off with boiling water.
Well, you remember being four, don't you? You don't believe anything that's told to you when you're four! Even if it wasn't exactly said TO you.
It frosted the next day, and with great anticipation I demanded we go to the park, where there was a metal mesh cage. I figured this would work well for the test. So I climbed up to the top of the play centre, and promptly licked the mesh. Nothing happened. I even bit it, with no effect. There exists a sulky picture of me with my face pressed into the mesh, though I don't think anyone knows that I had just conduced a scientific experiment, and found it to FAIL.
So then several years later, when it was blizzarding out, I told my brother that nothing would happen if he licked that metal laundry pole. The laundry pole was not, as the playground mesh had been, coated in plastic. My brother left part of his tongue on the laundry pole, and then I turned up with a black eye at church, which I was only to ready to tell anyone who asked was caused by my brother and I getting into a water gun fight. In January. (Frozen water guns make GOOD weapons for hand-to-hand combat.)
This is not an optimally laid-out post. :D But there you have it, my rambly scientific adventure at age 4, (and 6.) Now I can be entered into the
contest! (Btw, there are many lovely adventures mentioned in the comments, it is fun to check them out.)
