Yesterday I found out my child told their therapist they used to live in a cardboard box.

I burst out laughing!

This child has been through a lot.  But, thankfully, not living in a cardboard box.  Turns out, they’ve always wished they could live in a box.  Who knew?

When I was little, I wished (and prayed hard!) for a life full of adventures.  I also wished for red hair and freckles.

I remember sitting in the back seat of our station wagon with my friend, Kathy, when I was pretty young.  She asked how I would describe myself to someone who’d never seen me.  I’ll never forget my mom’s shocked look in the rear view mirror when I said, “I’d say I had red hair and freckles.”  

I finally got around to dying my hair red, gave up on the freckles, and wonder what the heck I was thinking about the adventures.

No- actually- I know exactly what I was thinking.  I’d read somewhere about some famous author who’d been kidnapped as a child. I assumed that in order to write about adventures, you had to have experienced them.  I knew I wanted to be a writer, and figured the only way to get there was to have a life full of wild and crazy “adventures.”  Years later I read Louis L’Amour’s autobiography.  He actually did experience many of the things he wrote about.  One line jumped off the page at me.

I should have read that a lot earlier.

Dear child of mine, I hope you never “get” to live in a cardboard box.  =)