Things we’ll never do again and some that we can’t seem to stop doing…

   

      I must have some DNA in me that makes me tell on myself. Sometimes I think that the books that I write do that also. They say that people who write put at least a little of who they are in each book. Hope I never write about anything odd, people will look at me funny – or funnier than they already do.

     This blog is about things I don’t do anymore that I did do, mostly as a child. (The older one gets the more one reflects on old memories.)

I was watching PBS and a man was blowing large glass marbles. That’s what started me thinking. The more I thought about some of the things I tried to do growing up the more I thought most people who know me now wouldn’t believe me.

     I played marbles. Yes, I sure did. I never had anything noteworthy in my marble bag, except for a large ball bearing. Of course, any marble player worth their salt knows that you don’t ever use that playing in a game that “counts”. A game that counts means that everything you win, you keep.

     

     Needless to say, my marble playing days were short lived. I lost most of mine to the neighbor kid who knew how to get right down to the level of the circle drawn in the dirt, squint one eye and fire his lucky aggie. Mine rolled like cowards out of the circle, I swear sometimes before they were even hit!

     Next, I dug tunnels in the yard. I made a whole freeway of interwoven roads and deep tunnels the width of my hands. Not having any little cars, I used bottle caps.  My birthday was coming so I put in a request for some little cars. My birthday came and what I got I would have needed a backhoe to dig the tunnel with. It was the largest red plastic corvette. It was about ten inches long and four inches wide. I cried myself to sleep that night. I was so disappointed. The next day I filled in the tunnels and that was the end of my road working days.

     

     Then an old harmonica was given to me and the light came back into my eyes. I had a goal! I was going to become the world’s best harmonica player that there ever was. I made the dogs next-door bark. I never got the hang of how to keep from spitting all over my own face. Thus, the harmonica world had to go on without me. Yes, I know that this isn't a harmonica.. so maybe that's why I was never good at it!!!

     

     Then one day something came to the house in a small cardboard box. It was quite sturdy, at the start. Now most people might have just seen a cardboard box, but I saw my next big talent, playing the accordion.

I drew keys down one side and black and white buttons on the other side. I told some of my friends that I couldn’t play in the afternoon because I had to practice my harmonica at the time and then the accordion. My parents just won’t let me play until I do. (Sigh)

     I pushed and pulled on that box until even the sides of it believed that they were an accordion! Oh, what sweet music I made with that box. I had just gotten the sides broken in when much to my horror one day when I went to retrieve it from behind the couch in the living room – It was gone!

     

     My mother not realizing that she had a budding accordion performer on her hands had thrown it out while I was at school.  I cried myself to sleep that night too.

     There were other attempts at greatness, too many to mention but this last one. I borrowed my girlfriend’s tap shoes for the night. We had terrazzo floors in our house in Florida  (smooth concrete with colored specks in it) so I knew the taps would ring out my talent. They were two sizes too small so that career only lasted less than thirty minutes. I hung up the taps.

     Then I began to fill pages of notebook paper with what I just knew would become great novels one day. I remember writing a short story of this beautiful young girl who went to summer camp and of course she was the one that all the boys wanted to dance with and help her get on her horse for the night ride. As I recall, and its with complete embarrassment now, as the group rode along under a full moon she was the one who sang a song that was popular back then.

     I say embarrassing because at the time we had a paper due in literature class, writing a story about anything we wanted. So having this great love story already in hand, I submitted it as my paper. It wasn’t until after I handed it in and was on the way home that day that I realized that the teacher would be reading this romance!

     I was humiliated for weeks waiting for the notebooks to come back with our grades on them. Only the A+ and her comments about it being very believable saved me from running away from home.

     This one stuck. I still have files filled with books at various and sundry stages. Some I have pulled out and read and can’t even remember writing them or where the story was going. I have seven self-published and several that will be one day soon. But, the sad thing about remembering all the things that I thought I would end up doing have all never come to fruition.

     I seem to lack the DNA to know how to market what I write or the drive to do that part. So there is one common thing that I still do that links all that I’ve tried to accomplish in my life over the years, - cry myself to sleep some nights.

Maybe one day…. (Sigh)