December Talking Meme, Day 3: treehouses
Dec. 3rd, 2014 11:59 amDecember 3: treehouses (for Vicky) [Tumblr crosspost]
This is a very random topic, but whatever! :-D
When I was a kid, I sort of vaguely wanted a treehouse, in the way I think a lot of kids vaguely want a treehouse. Part of the appeal is the idea of a little secret place of one's very own (well, I probably would've shared it with Vicky...) removed from everyday life, and relatedly somewhere that adults either couldn't or likely wouldn't go. (Have you noticed how few people climb trees once they're grown up?) The other part of the appeal, though, is that trees are crazy awesome and kind of... soothing, I guess? It's hard to feel truly depressed when you're sitting up on a tree branch -- at least for me, anyway.
But nothing ever came of that, because treehouses are expensive and tricky to engineer, so our parents would have required a lot of persuading to build one, and neither I nor Vicky ever pushed. (We did try to dig an underground fort one time -- which may have doubled as a tunnel to China; I don't remember exactly -- but all that produced was a two foot depression in the backyard that didn't get filled back in for several years.) I didn't need anyplace special to get lost in a book, and she didn't need anyplace special to have fun with her friends. And even during the couple years we actually had neighbors to hang out with, we tended to play board games, or play ridiculous LARPing-style games (without realizing that was the term for what we were doing: someday I should write a story about the Far sisters, the warrior Kuch, and Niloc Emptier, Wizard at Large) or go exploring in some 'wild' local areas that have since been turned into housing developments. Treehouses were largely irrelevant to all that, so the idea remained a vague 'hey, what if...?' rather than solidifying.
These days I like looking at pictures of people's fancy conceptual adult treehouses, but I don't think they're particularly practical -- I like them in the same way I like fantasy art of impossible castles.
And that's all I have to say about treehouses.
(Hi, Vicky! See you in three weeks in DC!)
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December Talking Meme: All Days
This is a very random topic, but whatever! :-D
When I was a kid, I sort of vaguely wanted a treehouse, in the way I think a lot of kids vaguely want a treehouse. Part of the appeal is the idea of a little secret place of one's very own (well, I probably would've shared it with Vicky...) removed from everyday life, and relatedly somewhere that adults either couldn't or likely wouldn't go. (Have you noticed how few people climb trees once they're grown up?) The other part of the appeal, though, is that trees are crazy awesome and kind of... soothing, I guess? It's hard to feel truly depressed when you're sitting up on a tree branch -- at least for me, anyway.
But nothing ever came of that, because treehouses are expensive and tricky to engineer, so our parents would have required a lot of persuading to build one, and neither I nor Vicky ever pushed. (We did try to dig an underground fort one time -- which may have doubled as a tunnel to China; I don't remember exactly -- but all that produced was a two foot depression in the backyard that didn't get filled back in for several years.) I didn't need anyplace special to get lost in a book, and she didn't need anyplace special to have fun with her friends. And even during the couple years we actually had neighbors to hang out with, we tended to play board games, or play ridiculous LARPing-style games (without realizing that was the term for what we were doing: someday I should write a story about the Far sisters, the warrior Kuch, and Niloc Emptier, Wizard at Large) or go exploring in some 'wild' local areas that have since been turned into housing developments. Treehouses were largely irrelevant to all that, so the idea remained a vague 'hey, what if...?' rather than solidifying.
These days I like looking at pictures of people's fancy conceptual adult treehouses, but I don't think they're particularly practical -- I like them in the same way I like fantasy art of impossible castles.
And that's all I have to say about treehouses.
(Hi, Vicky! See you in three weeks in DC!)
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December Talking Meme: All Days