Its a Pooh Thing

Recently I was reading my facebook stream and a good friend of mine posted a quote from Winnie the Pooh to another friend.  This quote was and is my all time favorite quote and I had over the years forgot about it, well, put it this way, its been stored in my mind bank collecting dust for too many years.

Christopher Robbins to Pooh: "there is something you must always remember...you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think"..."


Day by day, our lives change, no doubt.  Sometimes they are dramatic times, sometimes they are good times and sometimes they are times which pass us by without us even realizing what just happened.  Do we take the best of times for granted and dwell too much on the hard times?  Perhaps.  I often think as to why those hard times take so much of our energy to process and disclaim.  Its the good times we look forward to and what make us happiest, yet we tend to let them fizzle out of our core too quickly.  


So, after being reminded of the words of Christopher Robbins last night, the first thing that came to my mind, frankly, was being a child and dandelions.  I had friends when was I was just a kid, many of them.  We were all about the same age and lived only steps away from each other.  We had the best block in town!  Everyday after school we gathered around a light post in the corner of Vincent's yard and gathered our teams together for a game of flashlight tag or hide and seek.  We played until our parents stood at the end of the driveways and yelled for us to come in for dinner.  After dinner, we were right back at that light post to resume where we left off.  


On the weekends, it seemed, there were less of us around to congregate into enough teams to get any sort of game going, so I would venture off on my own into the woods, fields and swamps.  I had great adventures trekking through thick brush and tracking Bigfoot.  I would build forts to hide out in knowing I would be camouflaged from the world outside of the forest.  It was so much fun jumping from odd humps in the swamp as to avoid falling into the murky, smelly water.  I would rescue rabbits from snares, albeit they were already dead, but nonetheless, they were "rescued".  Picking cattails and yellow swamp flowers became a gathering expedition and tearing off Springs giant pussy willow branches from the enormous trees for which they grew all in order to bring them home for my mom.  If I recall correctly, she would make me leave them outside - bugs and all.  Frogs would lay huge puddles of eggs wrapped in clear, jello-like casings.  These would be the great find and after gathering them in ice cream buckets I would take them to the garage and watch them hatch into tadpoles.  Now that I think about it, I'm not sure where they disappeared to after they were tadpoles.  I guess its one of those things that parents take care of for you without making much fuss.  Put it this way; I was carefree, without worry and always dirty.  


 Like I said, dandelions were part of my childhood and I am sure I share this with each and everyone of you reading this.  Taking over all the lawns on the block, dandelions were this dreaded weed that every homeowner acknowledged in horror when they began to bloom.  However, as kids, we would relish them as a pretty flower for which we could use to play games.  One such game was called "Mommy had a baby and  her head popped off!".  We would take the dandelion in the palm of one hand with the bloom nestled on the fatty part of our hand between the thumb and index finger.  Then, using our thumb, we would recite "Mommy had a baby and her head popped off" and when we got to "off" we would pop the bloom from its stem...and laugh and laugh.  Another game, if you will, would be taking a dandelion and holding it under a friends chin.  Asking each other if "you like butter".  If the dandelion reflected yellow on your chin's bottom, then YES!! you liked butter.  Um, yeah, it always reflected yellow.  Simple times.  When the dandelion flowers turned into a fragile puff of white seeds, it was time to use them for something much more meaningful.  You know what I'm talking about don't you?  We would use the flowers in there last state of bloom to make wishes.  Crazy wishes like; "I want a horse" and "I want a pair of Lee jeans" and "I wish for 5 bucks so I can buy 20 packs of Charlie's Angels trading cards".  Wishes, simple wishes. 

\

So, going back to the words of Christopher Robbins to Pooh;  As a child I was very brave, brave enough to hang out in the woods wishing to catch a glimpse of the unseen Saskquatch, braver than I believed.  Also, I was much stronger as I seemed when I climbed those grand trees to pluck the best lilac and pussy willow I could find.  Even more so,  I was much smarter than I thought, as I would have the best hiding places during hide and seek (most often lying flat on rooftops, where bravery and strength both came in handy).  As a child I made wishes for only what I knew as a child.  As an adult, with spring upon us, its hard to walk past a dandelion without reaching down and blowing it with a wish in mind.  Our adult wishes are a bit  more complex, but they are still wishes, beliefs, strengths and smarts.  


In case you were wondering:   I never did see a Bigfoot, but I believed it to be real.