Theme: childhood places

I thought about my favorite places as a child, and realized I didn’t have one. I had all of them. Except for places which I felt were evil, there were no places I didn’t enjoy.

I had a photographic memory for geography and location. When riding in the car as a VERY young child, as soon as I was able to talk, I used my vocabulary to describe where we were, relative to where we were going, or where we had been.

As an adult, I use this same skill for spatial geometry as a private GPS. All I need to do is establish a local waypoint, one that I can relate back to home, and from that point forward, I can never become lost (provided I can always see where I am).

Anyway, I was thinking about childhood places, and I realized something new about my personality for the first time. I am not a possesive person – this I have known. If I identify things as mine or yours, I am most likely labeling responsibility rather than ownership authority.

But, instead, I am possessive of place. Of location. Everywhere I go, becomes mine.

This is my city. My office. My route to Phoenix. My home. Home region. Home apartment. Mine. My Chicago. My Phoenix. My Dallas. My KC. My restaurant. My bus.

Not that I actually believe that I own it, but I do take on responsibility for it. It becomes mine. Mine to ward, mine to encourage, mine to help grow and change. Mine to enjoy and protect.

I believe I am doing my best to describe this, but I fear that unless you share the same kind of…quirk, you can not truely understand the sensation.

For example, there is a place in the mountains in Colorado, not far from Leadville (3 miles to the Southwest) where my father, uncle, and nephew camped on a gold-prospecting trip. I remember the location in order to remember the story, or perhaps the story is remembered as a string of locations, and the events that happened there.

In any case, that place in the mountains is someplace that I consider mine. Whenever I drive that hiway, I look over in that direction. I care about what is happening to that place. Are the building there? Has there been a landslide?

Don’t misunderstand. I am thinking the very same thing about the hiway itself, as it is also mine.

It comes back to something I was telling WH… everything in my life has a story. Pseudo suggests that this is because I am supposedly a writer.

A writer of what? My life? *chuckles* Then I am sorely behind!!