“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
― Neil Gaiman
Not just the stories we read but all the stories we were exposed to when we were younger whether they were television, movie, comic books or I guess more and more often video games. We carry those memes inside of us. That can become pretty scary when you realize how much the media is controlled and how many people blindly use the television as an electronic baby sitter. But I digress which means it might be another blog topic somewhere down the line. I know it freaks me out when I discover I’ve been whistling the theme song to the Monkees or Scooby-Doo or Mr. Ed and then I realize I can remember every word despite the intervening 30-40 (sometimes very) odd years. I was lucky. My parents put up with and indulged my reading habits so I became exposed to anything and everything but mostly things that involved myths and legends from different countries, comics and other heroic legends and on television the ouvre of Sid and Marty Crofts (H R Puffnstuff, the Bugaloos, Lidsville, wow they had some serious psychedelics there) In a way so much of who I am now was generated by those stories. I’ve tried to expose my son to as wide a range of influences as possible with the result that even tho he is at the age of ultimate conformity, he still very singular and very individualistic.
What stories did you grow up with and how did it shape your life?
Blessings, G
