Childhood Unfulfilled Wish

I don't know why this came to my mind today. Actually I do know. I just realised. One of my friends told me about a picture from one of her Christmases as a child. She told me about this special kind of candy that people used to have, or rather not have ( I will explain) as children in the Communist Poland. They were called icycle. They looked just like them. Long, slim sticks of candy, wrapped in shiny, colourful wraps like nothing else in the Communist Poland, which made it much harder to resist for kids to steal from Christmas trees. They would hang there all holiday season if not hidden away for years and years to return to the ornament collection. Now when I look at it I understand how hard it was for our parents to get anything at the stored and make the season special. Therefore, grown ups just tried to extend the lives of these items as long as it was humanly possible.Because no one knew when one would have a chance to buy hem again. And so my friend remembers these icycle candy hanging there while it was strictly forbidden to take and devour. I had none of those on my tree as a child. And it was ok with me, but my god-mother had a full tree of them and she was usually generous to give me one or two each season. My personal favourites were the gold ones!

So here I am utilising my mental abilities to contemplate about unfulfilled childhood wishes. I remember very often before falling asleep I would lay in bed and think, and create scenarios on how wonderful it would be to have a power to freeze the world and people in time while I go around PEWEX and pick up some items essential to my childish happiness.  For those who have not grew up in Poland, PEWEX was a store owned by the government where you could buy foreign items with dollars or bony). My dear! Just think about all these amazing things like coke cans, Swiss milk chocolate, Lewis jeans, wool, peanut! All this in one store while Polish reality was 1/4 of rye bread and a slab of bacon/lard in a newspaper line up for fresh bun!  I don't think I was the only one to have these thoughts. And I am sure you would find a few grown up thinking the same thing!

I remember one summer when there was a carnival and circus in town. I was about 5-6 years old. My mom bought two tickets for us to go and see the show. I remember how incredible it all looked through the eyes of a child. Elephants that stank in their cages outside of the circus ten, people wearing colourful clothes, beautiful ladies pass me by and I wanted to be them, every one of them! And the most of all, I loved the places where you had to shoot to aim I you could win prizes. There was this one and only that I wanted. I remembered how hard my mom tried, my poor, beautiful and loving mom. But it didn't matter how much she loved me, she was not able to shoot so well to win this monkey puppet at the top of all the shelves. The ultimate prize! The prize of all prize that no one was able to win! Now I know it. But then, all I wanted was the monkey with a drum puppet with strings that moved it's arms and legs. At one point my amazing and innovative mother offered that she would just pay the attendant for the puppet but every time the attendant took me in his arms and over the counter to show him what i wanted I couldn't not see my monkey with a drum! And each time i came back to my mom's arms I could see it vividly! It was frustrating. Now I am thinking that it was probably much higher than me, blocked by a shelf, hence visible only from a distance.

You can imagine my disappointment when both my mom and the attendant got fed up with me and we just left the carnival. I cried all the way home. And then before falling asleep i lay in my bed thinking...yes! You guessed it. I thought how wonderful it would be to freeze the world and people and just jump on the shelves, grab my puppet and ruuuuuuuuuuun!

Today I don't remember if the monkey had drum plates or drum sticks in it's hands. But back them it was the top of my dreams. The unfulfilled childhood wish. Today, there is no more PEWEX, and a little monkey with a drum would not suffice. But you know, if i ever see that kind of puppet, you bet your shoes I will have it! And while it graces my top shelf, it will remind me of the importance of dreaming!

How about your childhood dreams. Dig deep. Go back to it? What was it? Did you fulfill it as a child? As an adult? Just for the sake of fulfilling a dream?