Way too high

What are you doing, I asked the youngest.

Nothing

Nothing means anything special. We watched another DVD with 3 episodes of 'An Idiot Abroad'. It was partly funny but not all of it. We find it hard to laugh about someone else's misery.

Being kidnapped in Israel with a bag over your head, and being dragged into a car is not what I call funny.

Today is another day.

Tomorrow it's back to school again which is a synonym for wasting time.

I have 4 cans and each contains cards with questions. We decide to "play this game" for the last time. Most of these questions are the same, a part of the questions are printed on Pickwick's tea bag labels and the rest is annoying because there's a huge lack of history.

For example the question: Who played Willy Wonka?

Although each can with questions should stand for another topic it's all the same. We seem to know each other's answers well although my child could answer a few I could not (the ones about sports we skipped).

Although I can't remember what I did a year ago (I can check my agenda) I do remember my first swimming lesson and the other swimming lessons.

The first swimming lesson was cold. Back then it was swimming in an outside pool and the water wasn't heated. Those lessons were before school started so around 7 a.m. I still feel the cold, I still feel my cold long wet hair and I still feel how I was shivering, my teeth included.

This might not have been my very first swimming lesson. That first one was given in the sea right after I nearly drowned in the pool because my elder sister forced me to take the slide into the pool. That slide was way too high or perhaps I was way too small, only 3-4 years old. I couldn't swim, my aunt didn't know I could not and my sister who knew had to try to save me (she could not).

They say the past is the past but I don't agree. The person I am today is the product of everything that happened to me and most of the harm caused to me was done on purpose.

They say children are flexible and can bear a lot, more than we think, but I can assure you they can not.

Perhaps I should forget and ignore everything that happened to me, all those people who harmed me but I can not.

I also believe I should not. Bad things are warnings which should be remembered.

What is ignored will show up sooner or later as a never-ending nightmare if not reliving it (once I have Alzheimer's).

2-1-2024

The photo was taken by me

The title is the prompt used.