For today's exercise, Karla gave us a set of movie titles to use a prompts: Snowcake, You Kill Me, After the Wedding, First Take
when I was a kid, I'd fill a bowl with snow and my mom would put vanilla extract on it, a real snow ball
(snow cone for those you you not from baltimore)
childhood innocence ritual
i remember eating this at the kitchen table (how is it that our kitchen was big enough to have a table back then? and the same kitchen, in the same house, is not now? the mysterious topology of growing up, where you old school gets smaller, the trees you climbed get shorter, and the issues that once ruled your days become petty questions) sitting at that same kitchen table under the red hanging lamp where I remember eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white break with my friend Peter form down the street
at the age of six or so we thought we'd be best friends always
or maybe it was five? I remember old photo albums of my fifth birthday...my first girlfriend was there, she lived down the street from my grandparents, we played together all the time, I still remember the time she said goodnight an kissed me on the cheek and ran off home
but I'm digressing away from the snowball...you probably couldn't do that now, not if you wanted to live
all the toxins in the rain are in the snow too -
acid snow, killer plagues, heavy metal remnants, radioactive fallout, all the subtle pollutions we place into the air come falling down when the sky freezes and shatters
so, I don't know, maybe it's sensible that kids don't play outside anymore
when I was a kid, when Christmas came all the kids would be outside, riding new bikes, throwing new footballs, something; now a generation huddles around the TV, the computer screen, with new DVDs, Wii games, whatever. I saw the best minds of the next few generations destroyed by video
I'm glad I was a kid when I was.