There is nothing more disturbing that when the foundation of what you believe is shattered.
It's as if your world comes tumbling into peices and you have to sort of resettle your reality, which takes some time. This has happened to me four times in my life.
First Occasion: When I found out the tooth mouse was not real.
Second Occasion: When I found out Santa Clause was not real.
Third Occation: I found out the paper fairies we made when we were kids and left food for in return for chocolates that used to magically appear overnight were not real.
Ok Ok .... I understand the importance of imagination and creativity. These are really important elements that need to be created in childhood and different parents use different methods. I can vouch that reading a good children's book does that! You don't need to make up real things that you then find out are not real! While reading a book you get transported to a magical land in your mind and you know it's your imagination, so you are safe from the bottom falling out of the world when you return to reality. BUT when adults DELIBERATELY fool you into believing in something that you will eventually find out does not exist - well I think that's a lie and it's NOT FAIR!
Anyway - this is not an attack at my parents - they were wonderful in encouraging us to live in a world of fantasy and magic and that is what helped me be so creative and I am writing this blog to make fun of myself - not anyone else.
Apart from the toothmouse (my parents got this wrong, because I actually found out it's meant to be a tooth fairy, but we had tooth mice and paper fairies - so all good).
And now I come to the fourth point. When I was 6 or so we used to go to the beach every summer for a holiday. On one of these holidays my late dad helped me write a note which had my name, age and telephone number on it and it said that I lived in South Africa.
We placed this carefully written note inside a bottle (a good old school roberson spice bottle) and chucked it into the ocean. This episode was accompanied with some magical story from him about how people who loved each other would send each other love letters in bottles if they lived in different countries or how sailors trapped by pirates would call for help and the currents would transport the bottle via millions of miles across the ocean to the recipient. My little roberston spice bottled bobbed off in the horizen and I lay awake that night wondering who would find it in some far away country.
Back home after the summer holidays, my bottle became a distant memory until one day I received a telephone call. Now as a child you don't receive many calls when you have a mom who is at home fulltime and you are not yet at school. Your gran phones you for your birthday and that's about it- so it's a big deal when someone calls for you!
Me - 6 years old: Hello.
Man with French Accent: Elo, izz zis heater?
Yes?
Eh, je suis, my name iz Pierre
Pierre?
Wi, I telephone to tell you I found ze note.
What? Mamma - there is a funny man on the phone
No wait lizzen - Ze note in ze bottle - I live in France on the Suisse Canal and I found ze little oranje bottle with ze note and your name on it. It sayz you are living in South Africa - I zink it must have floated all ze way wizz ze current and I was walking on ze sand and saw it amongs ze shells near ze waves.
I could not believe it - my little orange bottle had travelled all the way to France through whales and sharks and hurricanes and waves. It had survived tornadoes and pirates and landed in France!
For the next 20 years I held onto my very special memory - which was the one thing that was not snatched away from me.
Ok - until I was 26 and even though I have told quite a few people this story - no one had ever said anything about it. So I proudly recited my message in a bottle story to the team of creatives I worked with at an Ad Agency and one of them said. Doh Heather - it was your dad who called you.
My world fell apart for a moment. I had never thought of that and it was worse than finding out the damn toothmouse was lie.
So that's the story about my message in a robertson spice bottle which I believed until I was 26. That's a whole 20 years. A damn long time!!
