Soft Porn

You know, I love a good story. Actually, I love bad stories and mediocre stories. I guess I just love stories. Good stories are great because they are good stories. Mediocre stories are worthwhile because they are pretty close to good and with just a little imagination, I could make it into a good story. The bad stories would generally have the kernel of a good idea and have taught me that having a good idea doesn’t mean that you will have a good story.

I am sure this was so when I was a small fry, but my memories of those early years is spotty at best. I don’t remember mom and dad reading to me, but I do have some books I saved when I cleared out mom and dad’s place that are definitely pre school books. I like to think that they kept them all of those years because they had fond memories of reading to my brother and me. Of course, they could be from later in their life when they looked after neighbours kids. No, I’m going with the happy memories of me when I was a toddler.

I remember that Gram used to tell us stories to pass the time in the car ride up to the cottage. It was amazing to me that she knew all of those stories by heart. One of our favourite ones was about these two kids who were marooned on a desert island with an older sailor. She told of how they survived and how that older sailor eventually died leaving the two kids alone and afraid. Looking back, I am sure that she would have made up parts as she went along, but we loved hearing the story over and over and over again. I knew that Gram was from an island (Newfoundland) and in that secret place inside; I was convinced that she was the girl in the story.

Hollywood made a movie from that story in the 80’s, called “The Blue Lagoon”. It was a kind of soft porn coming of age story that starred Brooke Sheilds and Christopher Akins. I think that when Henry De Vere Stacpoole penned his masterpiece in 1908, adventure was what he was going for, not soft porn.

I have loved reading since Mrs. Cunningham’s class in grade 6. She was the one that really opened my mind to the magic of stories I could find no further away than the local bookmobile that came to Parkway Plaza every Wednesday.

Now, there are so many venues for me to hear, see and read good stories it is difficult to choose. Maegan pointed me in the direction of pod casts when she visited this summer and although I have yet to master the how’s, whys and when’s, I do keep thinking about them. The libraries are filled with more books, movies and magazines than I will ever be able to get to in my life time. I do keep trying though.

I have stories rolling around in my head that have been there for decades. I am not getting any younger and if I ever want to see those yarns in black and white, I had best start putting them down on paper. It would be kind of cool to have someone’s grandmother telling one of my stories on a long trip to keep the kids entertained. Then, to have one of those kids find magic in the written word would be the dream of a lifetime.

I also wouldn’t mind someone turning it into soft porn.