does everyone remember the twits by roald dahl? i actually don't remember the plot very much at all, but wasn't there a part where someone glued all of the furniture to the ceiling so they thought they were upside down? hardly an unheard of prank these days, but to young elementary school me, it was the the funniest and smartest idea in the world. aside from the furniture on the ceiling part, which i'm not actually sure was from that particular book in all honesty, there was one point that got lodged in my brain and never really left it.
there's a part in the book that says that if you have ugly thoughts then they show on your face and you get uglier and uglier until people can barely stand to look at you, and if you have nice thoughts then you get prettier and prettier because they shine out of your face. that idea used to haunt me.
now, i had an amazing childhood, but i was a slightly weird little kid with a fondness for melancholy. i remember being in fourth grade and laying on my bed with my windows open, there was a cool breeze blowing in just a few degrees too warm to make it chilly and birds were chirping just outside. my sisters were somewhere in the house or yard playing, and i just stayed in my room listening to music that made me sad. because apparently i was always like that. and to this day, whenever there are clear blue skies and a breeze and chirping birds and solitude, i am transported to my nine year old body laying on my bed, staring up at the canopy, and enjoying that particular satisfaction of digging yourself into a hole of sadness.
anyway.
when i was still really young (think first or second grade) and first read that line, i one hundred percent believed it. if a single thought that was anything less than pleasant crossed my mind, i was terrified that everyone around me would see me getting uglier and just know. i eventually grew out of that, but the echoes of the fear still lingered in my mind, and once i hit fifth/sixth grade, it kind of came up again. i knew that whatever thoughts i had were not changing my physical appearance, but i also knew that there was nothing hiding in the dark to kill me and that didn't stop me from turning on every single light on my way upstairs and flying into bed when i turned the light off in my room at night. (it also didn't exactly help that i was entering that lovely awkward stage lol.)
that went away, too, after a while, but the excerpt still sticks with me. and at random times i'll suddenly remember the twits and how they got uglier because of their thoughts. usually it's just a passing thought or a one-liner in response to something someone said/did, but today it stirred up the other memories. there are so many bits and pieces from books that i can barely even remember anymore that have stuck with me my entire life. a lot of them seem pretty pointless, like a scene of picking up baggage at an airport or gluing a napkin into a scrapbook, and i start to wonder why. why my brain decided to store that little snippet but lose the rest of the plot. what was the point?
and those are the deep introspective thoughts that have kept me from working on my dissertation. i should've chosen a topic related to children's literature. maybe then i could have at least pretended i was doing work.
*Everytime - Britney Spears
there's a part in the book that says that if you have ugly thoughts then they show on your face and you get uglier and uglier until people can barely stand to look at you, and if you have nice thoughts then you get prettier and prettier because they shine out of your face. that idea used to haunt me.
now, i had an amazing childhood, but i was a slightly weird little kid with a fondness for melancholy. i remember being in fourth grade and laying on my bed with my windows open, there was a cool breeze blowing in just a few degrees too warm to make it chilly and birds were chirping just outside. my sisters were somewhere in the house or yard playing, and i just stayed in my room listening to music that made me sad. because apparently i was always like that. and to this day, whenever there are clear blue skies and a breeze and chirping birds and solitude, i am transported to my nine year old body laying on my bed, staring up at the canopy, and enjoying that particular satisfaction of digging yourself into a hole of sadness.
anyway.
when i was still really young (think first or second grade) and first read that line, i one hundred percent believed it. if a single thought that was anything less than pleasant crossed my mind, i was terrified that everyone around me would see me getting uglier and just know. i eventually grew out of that, but the echoes of the fear still lingered in my mind, and once i hit fifth/sixth grade, it kind of came up again. i knew that whatever thoughts i had were not changing my physical appearance, but i also knew that there was nothing hiding in the dark to kill me and that didn't stop me from turning on every single light on my way upstairs and flying into bed when i turned the light off in my room at night. (it also didn't exactly help that i was entering that lovely awkward stage lol.)
that went away, too, after a while, but the excerpt still sticks with me. and at random times i'll suddenly remember the twits and how they got uglier because of their thoughts. usually it's just a passing thought or a one-liner in response to something someone said/did, but today it stirred up the other memories. there are so many bits and pieces from books that i can barely even remember anymore that have stuck with me my entire life. a lot of them seem pretty pointless, like a scene of picking up baggage at an airport or gluing a napkin into a scrapbook, and i start to wonder why. why my brain decided to store that little snippet but lose the rest of the plot. what was the point?
and those are the deep introspective thoughts that have kept me from working on my dissertation. i should've chosen a topic related to children's literature. maybe then i could have at least pretended i was doing work.
*Everytime - Britney Spears
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