Both kids remind me of me sometimes, but in totally different ways. William reminds me that as a kid, I was hard to handle at times. Quick to anger, quick to forgive, he is very like I was as a kid. High energy would be an understatement sometimes.

Julia reminds me of the quieter side to my personality - the side that seems to have emerged as I got older, but was always there when I was younger. She’s got a temper too though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I could substitute her name in the first paragraph in a year or two. Often she reminds me of a particular memory I have from when I was a kid.

Flashback wavy lines

I remember only parts of the scene - I was likely between 6 and 8 years old. We went somewhere with a bunch of people, and we had a bonfire/hot dog roast type of thing. Each kid got a bag of Old Dutch potato chips. While the rest of the kids were off running around and playing or something, I sat there with a stick, roasting each empty chip bag in the fire. Completely absorbed by the beauty of the fire and the incredible process that resulted in a miniature potato chip bag on the end of my stick. I wasn’t totally unaware of my surroundings, but it was close. At one point, one of the parents made the comment that I was “off in my own little world” which I was. As a kid, I spent a lot of time with my imagination - either alone or with friends. Julia seems to be very much like that. She’ll sit and play by herself without paying any attention to the chaos going on around her. Laser sharp focus on the task of playing in “her own little world.”

Here’s another childhood memory - this one was from when I was 3 or 4 I guess, because it was at the house at the corner lot of town - I don’t think we were living there when Bryan was born, so that kind of dates it a little. Mom used to babysit “Inch” whose real name completely escapes me now. Inch and played pretty hard. One particular game we loved to play was to “ride the train” any time it came through town. We weren’t close enough to the train tracks for our game to be dangerous, but living on the edge of town, we could see the trains and obviously hear them. Whenever a train was going, we’d rush out to the garbage can holder thing (that wasn’t used to hold garbage cans) and jump on it, pretending to be on the train. We’d rock back and forth on the rickety structure, and I can almost feel the old worn wood swaying back and forth under my feet right now.

One other memory I have from that house was a big hail storm. We were rushed inside to get out of the hail, but for some reason I wanted to go outside, so I put an ice cream bucket on my head and ran out into it to pick up some hailstones. The stones were big, and I came back inside pretty quickly. Once the hail had stopped, we went back out with pails and picked up some of the bigger ones.

Don’t get me started on the time(s) I got my head stuck between the bunkbed and the wall because I didn’t want to use the ladder to get back down from the top bunk.

So, that’s a little bit of insight into me, and a little bit of insight into how I see myself in my kids.

Simpson’s quote of the day:
Bart: “Grandpa, why don’t you tell us a story? You’ve led an interesting life.”
Grandpa Simpson: “That’s a lie and you know it!”