Ceiling Wax

Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea.  Remember him?  There was a song and Puff was a very real dragon to me when I was a child.  I haven't thought about him in a long time but something triggered that memory the other evening and I started singing the song again.

I am doing everything I can right now to not look up the song or the dragon or any details about the story (was there a story or was it just a song?) because as soon as I do, the memories I have will be modified and updated and I want to remember first.  Then, I can go back and find out just how wrong or misplaced or skewed my memories were.

So there was the song, and then there was a movie that combined a cartoon drawn dragon named Pete overlaid on a normal movie.  There was a boy and he could see Pete and they were at the beach and lived in a lighthouse, only Pete lived in a cave I think.  There was some story, but I don't remember that part.  I do remember that when I sang the Puff the Magic Dragon song, I always thought about that dragon Pete.

Back to the song though...and the lyrics and the words that were tough on a small girl who didn't understand their meaning.  Puff, "frolicked in the autumn mists in a land called Honalee" if I'm remembering it correctly.  Where is Honalee?  And is that what the word was anyway or is that what I thought it said?  There was no Wikipedia or internet for quick look up back then.

But the one thing I remember most was that there was "ceiling wax" in one of the lines.  I can't remember the whole line right now and darn it, I'm going to have to go find the song when I get done writing this but enough about my degrading memories from my youth.

You know how you build a mental image of something in your mind and if you find out your mental image doesn't match the actual facts it can be hard to update that image?  So there was ceiling wax and I had all kinds of ideas about why you might put wax on the ceiling and how you would apply it and what colors it might be (it was beeswax colored, obviously.)

One day I asked my mother about this mystery ceiling wax for more information only to find out that the song was talking about something called "sealing wax" and it was for closing an envelope and, well, that just made no sense.  None at all.   She must be wrong.  I was certain of it.

It's fun to remember those innocent things from childhood; those little things that make no difference or sense and yet left a mark on you in some way.  And now that I'm done writing about ceiling wax, I need to go listen to the song... 

The Big Boy Update:  It's ABC's!  As adults we can read, or at least I hope you can if you're currently staring at this blog post.  It's hard to imagine a world in which we can't read or even know that little black lines can represent thoughts and words.  Children have to learn language both spoken and written.  I was wearing my Luxor sweatshirt the other day when my son pointed to the Luxor word on the front of the shirt and said "ABC's!"  I told him he was right and I was proud of him for knowing those were ABC letters.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Gramps soup.  She is a lover of food, or should I say "cracku" as that's what she terms all things food at this point.  My father made some bean soup last week and my mother brought some over for us.  My son liked it, but my daughter loved it.  She finished off his bowl when he had moved on to other food pursuits. 

Fitness Update:  Day three with our personal trainer and he worked us harder, but not for much longer.  We had to do more recovery between sets.  I really want to run sometime, but I'm not sure if I'll make it out tomorrow morning if the last two workouts are any indication on how I'll feel tomorrow.

Someone Once Said:  All any philosopher ever comes out with is what he walked in with—except for self-deluders who prove their assumptions by their conclusions.