Impossible Things

[sartorias]

A springtime riff about impossible things.

What impossible things did you want as a kid?

Comments

[bookaddict88]

My most reoccurring wish was to be part of a secret society that I imagined was in a hidden world that was underground and inside walls.

I actually don't remember wanting to fly until I was a lot older.

[sartorias]

Secret societies, oh yes. When I was a kid we were always forming clubs, complete with passwords and codes.

[bookaddict88]

Haha, oh yes, I was always forming secret societies with my friends and siblings. Me being me, they were very organized, with calendars and lists of members and such like that. :P

[smillaraaq]

I desperately wanted gills so I could breathe underwater. Many of the happiest times of my childhood were spent at the beach, and I never ever wanted to come back to shore when called -- and I loved Man From Atlantis when it aired and wanted to be able to swim like that, without having to come up to the surface unless I felt like it.

...ah, who am I kidding? I still want gills, and if I were plopped into a world like Transmetropolitan I'd rush right out to get them installed. ;)

[sartorias]

Oh yes, gills! Underwater kingdoms! Totally.

[smillaraaq]

This gorgeous picture book probably didn't help matters any...not to mention lots of Jacques Cousteau, books and TV alike. But I wasn't even dreaming so much of underwater kingdoms -- the real ocean was magical enough to make me happy, and I wanted to be able to explore it leisurely without having to worry about air.

[sartorias]

I loved the beach as a kid, but didn't know much about underwater life of the real sort until I read about Jacques Cousteau in eighth grade, and oh yes, I was thrilled!

[pyrzqxgl]

At my local community college I used to (I haven't been over there for a couple years at this point) see a mixed-gender group of students hanging out in the cafeteria playing Magic cards and video games, with some of the group wearing long fluffy tails. Some were of the fake-fur sort and others were made of yarn. I also saw one of the students wearing his yarn tail on the bus once, but never found myself in a situation where I felt that it wouldn't be intrusive to ask what the story was with the tails.

As for the rest, I was very convinced I was going to wind up with some kind of magical-being/object-grants-me-great-powers situation, because I had completely no idea how else I would manage to survive.

[sartorias]

:-)

[chant_1]

Beautiful post! I used to have the horse-tail wish, too...sometimes I swore I could feel my tailbone twitching. : )

[sartorias]

:-)

[laransb]

When the Wall came down, for a time, I phantasized about some really exciting relatives turning up out of the East. (I was 9 years old.) They would trek from wherever they hid, Poland or Russia, with their horses to us and set up camp in our (large) attic. The horses would graze on our fields and live in our garages. They would be a large family with several generations and mostly women - really cool women who rode and fence and lots of honor and who never let anyone down, coming to the rescue at swords point. They would have preserved lots of ancient lore, language and family history and would tell me all about it. After some time in our attic they would move into the nearby woods, setting up camouflage part-underground living quarters. They would give me rides to school on their horses, all the one mile of it, so nobody would be amazed. I would be part of the family and learn a lot of exciting stuff.

Sadly, they never came even so I was half-convinced they exist and are on the way this very moment.

[sartorias]

Oh, they sound wonderful!

[laransb]

Of course, a lot of people really found themselves face to face with long lost relatives when the Wall came down and even more were stressed out about the possibility.

Cora

[sartorias]

Yes, I was wondering about that--I wish there was more said about it that I had access to.