Wind In My Head: Childhood ambitions
Wind In My Head
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Childhood ambitions
Last night, we were at an old friend's house. I've known him for about 14 years and by extension of that, I know his family pretty well too. He's got a younger sister, a couple of years younger that I am. This meant she was a kid when I first knew the family and I was pretty thrilled to have this younger girl follow me around a lot. After all, I had always wanted a younger sibling.We shared a bunch of stuff. My sister-in-law had always given me stuff, old clothes, books she thought I might like etc. So, I saw it fit to do the same with this friend's sister.
These friends have recently moved and in the process of the packing up and moving, the sister found a bunch of my books that I had loaned her as a kid. Among other things, it showed that she hadn't cleared out her room in 14 years but that's not the point of my story.
These were some of the books that she returned me yesterday.
I smiled goofily at them because I think they reflected all my little childhood ambitions. Note that none of them had to do with being a doctor, a scientist or an astronaut. But then again, these weren't things I wanted to do when I grew up, they were more things I wanted to do then. Gymnastics because all the cool girls in my class were doing gymnastics. But my mother was adamant about that one because she was convinced I'd land on my head and split it in half revealing the lack of brain matter- a fact that she was, at that point, not ready to deal with.
Then, there was ballet, since I wasn't allowed to prance around on the balance beam and do somersaults. Once again, I begged my mother. It wasn't my first choice because it was a little bit girly for ol' tom boy-ish me of yore but it had enough attractive qualities, all those big leaps and turns and impossible leg positions drew me like a moth to a flame. Once again, my mother vetoed it. This time, her logic was even more bizarre. Because I was such a tom boy, she didn't think ballet and I were a good match. I don't know, wouldn't one think ballet would knock the tom-boy out of me then? Well, whatever it was, once again, my childhood dreams were thwarted. This one, however, stayed with me long enough that once I had my own money and discovered these things called Adult Ballet Classes, I seized the opportunity and took it as far as my dollar and my body could take me.
The ice-skating one, was pretty much a none issue except for my fascination over ice skating movies and triple axels. Singapore didn't have an ice skating rink when I was a kid and by the time they had one, I had pretty much outgrown the fascination and was deeply entrenched in my ambition of taking a ballet exam that would allow me to teach junior ballet.
So for the next few days, I will read all these little paper backs that'll take me about half an hour each and remember what it was like to be enthralled by these little childhood dreams. It's all fluff and promises to be somewhat lame but fun at the same time. It always is fun to be brought back to a time when life was much simpler.
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Ondine tossed this thought in at 10:06
2 thoughts...
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At 11:20 pm
seriously! said... Am I one of the cool girls?? :)
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At 10:11 am
Ondine said...
Well, what do you think? You were on the gym team, the teachers liked you, you could cartwheel all over the classroom floor and I was the awkward new girl who only spoke English. The only thing I had over you was height. And I still do. Mwahahah. :)