It’s amusing to me how age affects the things we say or do, particularly how young children feel free to say things adults normally wouldn’t. I recently thought about a time when I did that myself as a child and had no idea that what I’d said was wrong, since I fully didn’t understand the whole situation in the first place. The memory makes me laugh but at the same time, I can see why it was cringe-worthy! Here’s what happened.
One day when I was about 6 or so, my mom and I went to visit a neighbor in our building who’d invited us over. Soon after we got there, we sat on her sofa and the woman offered us each something to drink. When she went into her kitchen to get the drinks, I put my arm on the sofa’s armrest and noticed that when I did so, a little powdery cloud appeared from the fabric.
I hit the sofa arm again on purpose and another little puff of powder appeared.
I was fascinated, and began hitting the sofa repeatedly.
“Look, Mom, POWDER!” I yelled with delight.
To me, this lady’s sofa had a magical quality to it — what fun it was to produce this mysterious powder with just a slap from my hand! What was it exactly? And why wasn’t our furniture interactive like this?
I couldn’t get enough — until my mom quickly hushed me and gave me a stern look that clearly indicated I should stop what I was doing, although I wasn’t sure why.
The whole incident only lasted a minute or two, but I remember it clearly since I found the sofa so enthralling, having never seen furniture do something like that before.
Plus once we were home, my mom explained that the powder had been dust, and that it would embarrass the woman if she had heard me pointing it out because that meant the sofa wasn’t too clean. I kind of got it then, but it took a few more years of laughing about the incident whenever it came up for me to fully see why this could have mortified the neighbor had she been in the room to witness it.
Ah, the wonder of youth — only a kid can see dusty furniture as magical and think nothing of pointing it out!
Note: This post was created as part of LindaGHill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt was “young, old, or anything to do with age.” I chose to write about youth, having recently begun enjoying thinking back on and writing about my childhood!
Some Kernels of Truth 