Grant's Store and Boop...
I love days off. Ever day should be a day off. I love lying in bed, knowing I have nowhere I have to be and nothing I have to do. Just lying there wishing I could stop time.
Those are great thinking times. When the morning has just begun and the world outside is still quiet and serene. Before the neighbors wake and open their mouths and slam their doors and destroy everything that's peaceful.
Anyway, this morning I was thinking back to when I was nine years old and hanging out with my friends who lived up and down Tarpey Drive. It seemed like every other house had a nine year old in it.
My friends and I often played this make-believe game called Boop. There was a magical spot in my friend's front yard--in the flowerbed beside the sprinkler controls. All one had to do was stand in this spot and say the word Boop and they'd be whisked away to the land of Boop.
Of course Boop was all in our heads. But when you're nine years old the imagination can be truly magical and so a brick mailbox wasn't a brick mailbox but an argumentative robot named Chowder. And the car in the driveway was really a giant bubble one could hide in to escape from the evil fly swatter people.
When I wasn't playing Boop I was running "Grant's Store." Which basically consisted of a piece of plywood resting across two brick blocks on which was strewn various trinkets for sale.
Grant's Store was located on the edge of the driveway and people could buy all sorts of cool things: paper clips that popped back up when you let them fall, hand-drawn coloring books, frogs and pollywogs, marbles, bouncy balls, ink pens, magnets, plastic baggies filled with iron filings, and raffle tickets--winner gets a dollar.
That's what I was thinking about this morning while lying in bed. The things I did when I was nine. And it dawned on me that twenty-five years later I'm basically doing the same things. I'm still running a store, and after work I visit Boop in my writing.
Okay, it's not the same Boop, but the effect is the same. My head is in a magical place where just about anything can happen. And I tell you what, it's a hell of a lot more peaceful there.
Those are great thinking times. When the morning has just begun and the world outside is still quiet and serene. Before the neighbors wake and open their mouths and slam their doors and destroy everything that's peaceful.
Anyway, this morning I was thinking back to when I was nine years old and hanging out with my friends who lived up and down Tarpey Drive. It seemed like every other house had a nine year old in it.
My friends and I often played this make-believe game called Boop. There was a magical spot in my friend's front yard--in the flowerbed beside the sprinkler controls. All one had to do was stand in this spot and say the word Boop and they'd be whisked away to the land of Boop.
Of course Boop was all in our heads. But when you're nine years old the imagination can be truly magical and so a brick mailbox wasn't a brick mailbox but an argumentative robot named Chowder. And the car in the driveway was really a giant bubble one could hide in to escape from the evil fly swatter people.
When I wasn't playing Boop I was running "Grant's Store." Which basically consisted of a piece of plywood resting across two brick blocks on which was strewn various trinkets for sale.
Grant's Store was located on the edge of the driveway and people could buy all sorts of cool things: paper clips that popped back up when you let them fall, hand-drawn coloring books, frogs and pollywogs, marbles, bouncy balls, ink pens, magnets, plastic baggies filled with iron filings, and raffle tickets--winner gets a dollar.
That's what I was thinking about this morning while lying in bed. The things I did when I was nine. And it dawned on me that twenty-five years later I'm basically doing the same things. I'm still running a store, and after work I visit Boop in my writing.
Okay, it's not the same Boop, but the effect is the same. My head is in a magical place where just about anything can happen. And I tell you what, it's a hell of a lot more peaceful there.
posted by Grant-Will-Rant at
4:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home