Potpourri

I have very specific memories of things from my childhood.   I'm not sure if they're the original memory, or a memory of me remembering the memory again and again, each time overlaying the new memory on top of the prior one.    Even so, I do remember things and they seem just as real and tangible as they were when I remembered them years ago.

One memory is of the word "potpourri."  My elementary school had a large library.   There were books on tall shelves all the way around.   As I remember those shelves, they have all sorts of ominously large, boring looking, no-pictures, adult-type books on most of the walls.  This was an elementary school, so most likely the books were for children, but I suppose reference books and encyclopedias didn't look that fun to a child.

At one point, we went as a class to the library for our weekly visit.   This particular week the librarian had set up stations for us to visit.   We could go to any of the stations we wanted, in any order.   Sometimes you had to do a lot of work at the station and other times you could do something quick and easy.   When you finished with the task at any given station, you returned to the librarian or your teacher and got something like a star or a stamp.   At the end, perhaps we got a bigger star or a bigger stamp on our paper to commemorate our newly-expanded knowledge.   I don't remember that part.

What I do remember is the librarian telling us about the stations and getting us excited before she let us run off and start work.   She told us there was one station that had a special word.  The only thing you had to do was figure out how the word was pronounced and you got your reward.    "Hey," I thought, "that sounds easy.  I like easy."   I dashed off to the station when she released us and found out what the word was.

The trouble was, "potpourri" doesn't look hard to pronounce.   But there was a dictionary at the table and a sheet with how to interpret pronunciation symbols.    We had to look up the word and figure out how it was pronounced in the dictionary.  I did the research and happily ran back to the librarian and blurted out the pronunciation.   She smiled at me and told me I had gotten it correct.

I still drive by my elementary school when I take my children to school, but the library is gone.   The whole school is gone.   They tore down the original building and built a new school on the side where the playground had been.    That library seemed huge to me as a child, I wonder how big it would seem as an adult?

The Big Boy Update:  My son saw his sister was wearing leggings tonight before dinner.   He suddenly wanted leggings.  He was upset that he didn't have leggings.   He told me he wanted to get some leggings and could they be dolphin leggings, please?  I told him I'd look to see if could find some.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came down in the middle of the night two nights ago.   She was upset about it being dark or she was cold, I wasn't sure because I was fairly asleep when she arrived.  I let her get into bed with us and told her she could stay for a few minutes until she got warm and then she could go back to her bed.   Our children have never slept with us.  That's been by intention.   A few minutes later, she got out of the bed and went back upstairs to her room without me saying anything.    I'm glad our children prefer and are happy and content in their own beds.

Fitness Facts:  I get a monthly update from the app I use to track my runs.  I was surprised at the numbers for March because I didn't remember running as much as it told me I did.   I ran over seventeen hours and tracked more than ninety miles.   Wow.