Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Craving for Adventure

Today at about 8:30 on a Facebook chat I asked one of my longest friends this question:
"Do you remember two years ago, and you'd been gone for Christmas, and you missed the first week of dance because of Missoula, and I waited for you after the show forever so I could see you again?"
It resulted in a rather long discussion on all the things we used to do together.  She and I had been fighting all last year, and only resolved the issue after a prolonged silence, when we both had a chance to think.  Both of us were at fault, of course, but that's a different story.
Still, the chance to talk about all the pretend games we used to do, exploring the sheds, hoping to find a dead body, or buried treasure (all we ever found was dust, and dust, and more dust), playing two-man baseball, law court, writing stories together...it made for a very good Valentine's Day, and it ended with this comment from me:
"You know, [Friend], I think I write stories now, because I miss playing pretend with you..."
I've always had a thrill for adventure, a yearning to find a trapdoor that led me to another world, or find out I have some mysterious power.  Not only did I play pretend with my best friend, my sister and I concocted hundreds of plots and characters with our stuffed animals, I wrote short stories, my sister and I would run around pretending to be heroes in training, Indians, or explorers all afternoon.  I still have such a fascination with knives, swords, bows and arrows, explorers, jungles, deserts, dinosaurs, outer space, that it's almost pathetic a times.
And yes, I write for the emotional impact, but also to fulfill that craving to have adventures.  Stuffed animals have lost their touch, I no longer have time to run around all day, but I can still have any adventure I want by reading and writing.
Words are a beautiful thing.

~Charlotte Grace, the Mind Traveler

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