Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker carovee: "What's one item you wish you still had from your childhood? A book, a toy, a blanket, a desk, etc."

When I was really little, I used write "books" on stapled-together scrap paper my grandmother brought home from her job as a high school secretary, and then sell those "books" to my grandparents for 10 cents each, which I could then use to buy candy at the corner store on Myrtle Avenue.

When my grandmother died, my mother brought me a bunch of that scrap paper, and some of the spare notepads on which I'd sometimes write and doodle, which my grandmother had kept in her desk, for as long as I could remember, and probably longer than I'd been alive.

They smelled like her desk, at which I used to write my "books."

I kept them in a box, which was later destroyed in a flood. And I sometimes wish I still had that paper, and the smell of my grandmother's desk it carried.

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