#roberteospeedwagon

July 11th 2019

Yes

OK, sure

A long time ago there was a boy

And he loved a girl in a blue dress

And there wasn't very much that I recall

Except that it was long ago

When I was little, before we had the internet, a very popular book in my household was "The Wizard of Oz."

I loved it, of course, and I've gone back to it now and again.

But more than that, it was full of things that would become staples of my childhood: the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman, the Witches and the Winged Monkeys, the Emerald City and the Wicked Witch of the West – all of these things were treated with reverence as a child because they were so familiar, so there, and I never had to learn about them. They were "real" in a way I felt the world around me had become less real, as all of its magic and strangeness was bled away for time.

I think I've never had the sensation that anywhere I was was special in that way. I had a friend for a time in elementary school who was obsessed with UFOs and alien abductions and Bigfoot, as I was. It was like this. It just was, in the way that the whole world itself was.

In a way, it's nice being "born into the world" rather than it being born into me, because it's all just there, and I can have it all the time. If something comes along and demands my attention, I can respond to it. "I don't know much about UFOs, but I do know about X." If it's a new hobby I can pursue it, and if it's something I know about already, there are no limits except my own.