It was a lovely Saturday. My dad was at work, my mom was at my aunt’s house, my brothers were outside mowing, and my sister and I were stuck cleaning our room. I was up to my neck in books that I was going to give away and I just happened to glance around at all of the other ‘junk’ I had to go through.
My mom called it junk. I considered it my stuff. No matter what she says, it is important and I’ll end up using it sometime in the future. After I brought my books down, I left a couple of childish ones for sentimental value. I left them on the table without a backwards glance.
Maybe an hour later I came across an old box of mine that my grandma had given to me. I had been thinking what I should put in my ‘fantasy box’ for art, and curiously I opened it. Inside a small compartment was a container made to look like a glass heart. Inside was a large marble and small glass stones a long with a couple of pebbles. There was a circular tin container with a bird on it and then I opened that. There was a lid for a bottle of pop saying that I had won a free sprite…about six years ago. There was also a round, white stone that I had picked up on the lane of one of my friends, and a stamp that had a cat on it that resembled my old cat, Frisky.
Lying next to the containers was a gold-colored pen and a ‘chew stick’ that my first hamster had nibbled on. I looked at the small objects for the longest time. They were complete junk to the world…but they were more precious than gold to me.
I began to think of all of the things people have left behind because they merely thought the items had little or no value anymore. And that’s where most of us fail. We begin to forget what we used to love to make way for the new.
The world becomes harder because we leave behind the dreams that we had as children. The dreams were once new and they could never die, but once you get older, reality hits you and they slip through your fingers. Why do kids want to grow up so fast? Growing up is more fun than being grown up.
You become the shadow that you were to become. As you shut your eyes against the bright, blinding lights, you fight down the bile in your throat and watch all of the smiling people. You put on your own smile because you can’t see they’re wearing masks of their own. Underneath they’re just like you. They’re the remainders of people after they lost their dreams.
I put the box back where it had been. Undisturbed, but never forgotten.
 Rebel Stand · Sat Apr 28, 2007 @ 08:37pm · 0 Comments |
