There’s an advantage to being very, very young. I’m talking about younger than you are now.
When you’re really little, you discover new things all the time, things that seem old or boring to you now. Everything is amazing; everything is new.
The following is a passage from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. It’s about a woman remembering back to her youth, thinking about the first time she had discovered . . . well, I’ll let you read it:
Standing perfectly still like that, I discovered my shadow. At first it was just a dark spot on the bamboo mats that covered the courtyard bricks. . . . When I shook my head, it shook its head. We flapped our arms. We raised one leg. I turned to walk away and it followed me. I turned back around quickly and it faced me. I lifted the bamboo mat to see if I could peel off my shadow, but it was under the mat, on the brick. I shrieked with delight at my shadow’s own cleverness.
Do you remember discovering your shadow?
Now it’s your turn: As a little child, what discoveries did you make? What were “aha!” moments for you when you learned something new or discovered something that had been there all along? Write what you remember about that moment.
