Things that Fly!

Random memories

- Walking along a beach in New Zealand. There was no moon and it was too cloudy to see any star. It's hard to walk in the dark and near impossible on an uneven sandy beach. I remember taking my sandals off, feeling the cool sand in between my toes, listening to the sound of waves and laughs of friends as we stumbled along.

- I was on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. I rode a scooer along a beautiful coastal beach and pulled off the road when I saw a sign for a used book store. The bookstore was run by an old English guy who had married a thai women and settled on the island with her to do some light farming and trade books. I had a book in my bag I was trying to trade for a new one. The book was "How to be good" by Nick Hornby. The guy was pleased to talk to me as it didn't seem he had a lot of visitors. The book I had brought was actually a Vietnamese photocopy of an original book and as such was worthless. Surprisingly this conversation about photocopied books lasted sometime and in the end I just gave him the book (apparently he was a collector). It occurred to me just now that i might have been equally happy to have had someone to talk to.

- About grade six everyone was making these little bow and arrow type devices but putting a hole in the middle of a thick felt marker, rigging an elastic to cover the hole on one side and using them to fire pencil crayons at eachother. It sounds silly but some were powerful enough to stick into drywall. One day at lunch break a group of several kids were playing with them outside and a bird flew over head, a kid shot and hit the bird. The bird hit the ground and sort of twitched there in pain while a circle of kids stood around watching it. A supervisor came and took the kids away and the principle came and took the bird away.

- The first house I remember growing up in (the second house that I lived in) we had this dog that had this tendency to tear sofa pillows apart in the middle of the night. We would wake up in the morning and there would be stuffing all over the kitchen floor. I remember waking up early one morning and sitting with the dog on the stair case and laughing with him about how much trouble he would be in once mom woke up.

- We had thanksgiving one year about the same time the dog was tearing up pillows. My grandma brought both me and my sister big cadbury eggs. My mom told us we could have them after dinner. I ate as fast as I could and then cried when they told me that my sister had stolen and eaten both eggs.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 2:20 PM