When I was your age

I had a friend over on Sunday. She’s 15 years old. She wanted to try mineral water, so I let her open a bottle o’San Pellegrino. She poured a wee dram and took a sip. She looked at me and said, “You drink this?”

I said, “Not when I was your age.”

I got a box of books from a friend in KC. We went through the booty (like pirate's booty, people!), which was about 17 Regency romance books and a hard cover book from 1942 called Claudia. I jokingly asked her if she wanted to read one of the romance books and she said, “You read those?”

I said, “Not when I was your age.”

This is she. Isn’t she lovely? I pulled my camera out of my purse and took this picture during church yesterday morning. She’s singing with her dad. Shhhhhhhhh. She’ll kill me if she finds out I put it online.

On Friday, I went to a Valentine’s Day party for a friend of mine who is in the fifth grade. The party was in the music room and afterward we went into his classroom. There was a huge selection of books on the floor and each book had a sticker on it with the teacher’s name. I exclaimed (I know, exclaimed sounds so dumb, but I didn’t gasp…what would you say?) when I saw them and he said they were his teacher’s. I looked at all the titles and pointed out the books I had read.

I reminded myself of my mom who turned me on to some really good books she had read as a kid. At the far end of the room was a book I had read called Blue Ribbons for Meg. I still have the book.

I said, “I read that book, wrote a report and made a diorama out of it when I was your age.”

I kept all the books from my childhood that I couldn’t part with. Over the years, I did let some of them go. In 1986 a flood in my apartment ruined a book I loved called The Dragon’s Quest. I was so mad, I moved out. I found it on ebay a couple years back along with others in the series about a dragon who lives in Cornwall, but I couldn't find it in hardback anywhere. I have written before about my collection of Perry Mason paperbacks I inherited from my father’s mother. I read those when I was in the sixth grade.

But these books are what are left from my original collection of childhood books. All of them have been saved for a reason. Blue Ribbons for Meg’s cover has gone missing apparently. I didn’t realize that. I hope you see a book that makes you smile. See the book called Claudia? It isn’t the same Claudia as the one I got in the box from my friend, Anne.