Who squeezed out my sponge?

Little kid brains are amazing things – they soak up everything like a sponge, and somehow, it is ALL still in there. About a week ago, somehow Mer and I got talking about a character from children’s books that we both loved – Ramona from books by Beverly Cleary. I LOVED Ramona when I was little. I read all the Ramona books and other books by Cleary, probably several times. I was telling Meredith that I still remembered how Ramona loved to step on sidewalk cracks because she had learned “step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” She was a great character. Mer owns the Ramona books and dug them out, so I read Ramona the Pest over the last few days. It is still a great book. Cleary gets into the head of a five-year old girl and pulls it off wonderfully. She manages a few barbs at parents along the way (“The two mothers were so busy talking about their children needing to learn responsibility they paid no attention to the argument [the children were having]”). It is a very fun and well-written book. What absolutely amazed me was how much of the book was still in my head. I remembered many of the illustrations – a bunny with a ribbon around its neck, Ramona making her Qs look like cats (with whiskers and ears), Ramona riding her tricycle with a wheel off so she could ride a two-wheeler, and more. I also remembered parts of the story – most notably I remembered how Ramona gets stuck in thick mud the first day she wears her shiny new boots. Absolutely amazing – I have not read these books in THIRTY years!

How is it that I could read every book I could lay my hands on and remember large chunks of them (don’t get me started on The Great Brain and Encyclopedia Brown – I’m STILL upset that there was an Encyclopedia Brown story that could not be solved within the story – Brown solves the mystery by watching a drinking fountain for someone who was thirsty from eating lox, but we don’t find this out until the solution. Humph!), but I find learning much harder now and I can’t remember where I put my keys? I know the brain stops growing and all that, but it is still amazing how much of my brain is storing stuff from twenty or even thirty years ago.

0 thoughts on “Who squeezed out my sponge?

  1. revtransit

    Didn’t Ramona get to school late once because her mother told her to leave for school at a quarter past eight and she knew a quarter was 25 cents, so she left at 8:25?

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  2. revtransit

    When I was in grade school, we had some program where kids could buy paperback books for less than a dollar and every two weeks the books would come in and my order would equal the rest of the class’s. My family went thru some economic ups and downs when I was growing up but SWIDTMB would always spend money on books for us. Even as she and my dad were facing eviction from their very inexpensive house outside Victoria TX I remember her digging into her purse for a few bucks because I wanted a couple used books.

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  3. mriordan

    We always seemed to have book hanging around too. Mom actually would get miffed at us because we would read at the supper table. Now there’s a “problem” to have!

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