Feeling nostalgic about writing and missing crayons

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.”~Tom Stoppard, English writer

I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately.

Maybe it’s the packing and seeing my previous life end up in boxes. Touching these things that are or were precious to me. The Star Wars action figures buried in the basement. The Star Wars lightsaber TV remote. The Star Trek Tribble keychains and Ferengi pens from Las Vegas. My ElfQuest comic books. My college poetry assignments.

I’ve been thinking of writing, or lack thereof with the focus on packing. Do you remember any class in school where you had a creative writing assignment? If so, you may have stressed out about writing that first line. That’s when your teacher would say “Just freewrite,” which meant for the next however many minutes, you wrote whatever thoughts came to mind, without stopping.

Your pen. Remember that? Maybe you wrote with a pencil. Regardless, it was–-and still is–-a stick that you hold in your hand that produces a visual image when pressed down on a surface. I mention this because I don’t think we remember these anymore.

I watched a YouTube video the other day, and the host was a teenager or a girl in her early 20s. She created some art with her hands and then had to write some information down. “My cursive is terrible,” she wined. “I haven’t written in cursive since middle school. Looks like I have to practice my handwriting. It looks terrible.”

First, as a writer or blogger or artist, never apologize for anything you do save technical difficulties or natural disasters beyond your control. Even then, explain don’t excuse.

What made her comment doubly bad was that she made an excuse for not using her talented hands to write. Much of society has lost touch with the tactile, with the real. I haven’t tangled in awhile–-something I miss, and a whole separate topic-–but I do journal by hand. No online diary for me, except for this blog, which isn’t so much a diary as an expression and sharing of thoughts and inspiration. My diary, heck, that first one was a tiny pink plastic book with a small gold-plated lock and the teeny-tiniest key to open those deep thoughts. I write and edit my stories. I use colorful pens to make it more fun. Heck, what happened to crayons?

What book do you recall most fondly from your childhood?
-—A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Your favorite high school trip?
–Cancun, Mexico (seriously!)

What video game(s) rocked your world?
-–Joust, Sinistar, Dig Dug, Mappy and Gauntlet

I have been missing those delightful memories of youth. Seeing them packed away, again, I yearn for the times when I felt young and free and safe. What about you? Is there something you miss from long ago, or just from last year? Times change, but our memories do not.

I want to go home and color.