Grapes and Googly Eyes

Small, random things, all fitting together, woven with words and strung together with adventures. Stories. When I was little my dad used to tell stories all the time. After dinner, during car rides, or when we were all just sitting in the living room together as a family, he would tell us stories. They weren't tales from his past. They weren't long-forgotten things he had read in story-books as a child. They weren't fairy tales he was re-telling from a book. They weren't traditional stories past down through the generations. They were just stories. Adventures he made up on the spot. I don't know how he did it, and perhaps he was drawing on past stories or knowledge he had acquired through the years. But to me, they were fantastic. And they were ours, specially told just for us, only to us, never to be heard again, as the plot would almost certainly be forgotten in a few days. We would each get to pick something, or if we were lucky, three somethings, to be in the story. I remember things like grapes and Peter Pan being frequent visitors to our stories. Peter Pan was, and still is, my favorite, so I loved to hear new adventures about him. Sometimes the tales would stretch on too long, and we would have to save Part Two for a different car ride. They were such good times, riding along in our suburban, dad's deep, strong voice filling the car with an adventure we became part of through his words. Sometimes they had morals, admonitions to us children through story, like when my little sister used to steal things from me, so I began to assume whenever anything went missing she was the culprit. The stories were simple, and today I'm sure they would seem silly and childish. But when I was little they were wonderful, sweet, and magical. A memory I will never forget.