Continuing on this journey of my childhood writting, today we look deeper into a story called the Lizard and the Secret Pond. I always loved naming my pieces because I feel a name is so important to a story and I always found it easy to name a story .
This is the second feature in my Weekly feature posts, this piece was undated so it’s hard to say what age I was, it appears to probably be between the ages of eight to ten years old as the writing had many grammatical and some spelling errors. I can only imagine why I wrote this story in the first place, I was always attempting to think of the impossible happening. Being that I loved movies, I could have watched some movie triggering me to write this.
I love that I hand wrote all of my stories, oblivously we didnt have a computer back then just good old pen and paper which even today does the job. I actually put great thought into my penmanship and how I wrote. I think for my age I was pretty good.
I am unsure what caused me to think of writing this, usually it was something I was watching at the time or it could hav ebeen just my imagination taking place. As you can see this is a short story which I wrote many of them since they were quick and like any writer the story probably burned in my head until I put it on paper. Take a look into my imagination !
Previous Weekly Feature Work:
Weekly Feature # 1: Stories from a Child’s Past: IT
The Story and The Moral of the Story
This happens to be the type of stories I written as child, I have many that involve animals, for my love of animals to this day. This would be considered a short story and was is interesting as after the end part I put the moral of the story, which goes to show you I was thinking about morality and a reference to being pushed around, possibly because as a child I was bullied at school and by my grandfather who which I lived with.
The Story Written and Explained
I have recreated the story the best way I could looking at my own writing some of which was hard to read and some parts are missing because and I tried to leave it in the original form. I wanted to show my love for writing as a young child, but in all honesty I had no to correct my grammatical errors, this was probably me sitting in a corning alone writing at home or at school.
The Story as written:
Once upon a time there lived this tiny tiny lizard and one day he was minding his own business and a long came the big snake and knocked Mr. Lizard over. He said “Sorry”, but Mr. Lizard fell over into a big pond and the name of the pond was the Bigger Nest. If you fall into it you get bigger and bigger” said Mr. Lizard. To himself what a dum place to put this pond and so he swam out and got Bigger and Bigger the biggest of everything but the snake wasn’t looking and crushed him to smashed snake and the lizard cried and cried and made giant river and all the animals got swept way and he said going to take a swim. _____________Unreadable____________________ he wanted to go to the city burned some trees on fire and someone called the fire patrol and they had to water the trees down so Mr. Lizard ran to the big cave to hide but he tried to get up and dumbed his head and made the hole thing crack apart and he saw him but they were using the water from the pond and then everything starting growing real big and so did Mr. Lizard and trees it looked like a wonder land to Mr. Lizard got bigger and bigger and bigger. He was bigger than the earth and could see outer space and he could walk on the earth than he fell into this other pond that made him get smaller so he go smaller and smaller and got his normal size.
The End.
“Moral never let anyone push you around or this might happen to you”
Joseph Meyer
The Time Capsule of My Youth
To me these writings are like a time capsule to my youth, Most of us may not remember everything about our youth, some member good memories growing up in a certain city, having a mother and father who loved them, vacations, but for me I am sorry it’s a real blurb in my memory maybe I blocked it out for some reason, but I do remember writing. Getting lost in my words, getting lost in other worlds. At a young age and until now, I was brought up to be very sensitive which many around my mocked me for that, I would be called names like sissy, because of the way I spoke at times, being I had a higher pitched voiced, I kept my head down most of the time, very shy and I was usually alone most of time.
Due to these combinations growing up I had bullies, mockers, pranksters, but I am thankful I don’t remember whose who did it, but I do remember running from bullies, being spit on once or twice, but the name calling is what I remember the most.
The Moral of The Story
Looking at the moral of the story and the story of the Lizard going into the secret Pond, it all started with the pushy snake. Many of you may like snakes,but I find snakes sinister, heartless, cold and unfeeling, maybe my subconsciousness was trying to tell me something that I never quite learned the lesson because in my life I always allowed those t push me around up until a young adult and then I just go fed up and changed finally. To this day I am wiser, but my character is stronger, a little too strong at times, which I am told by my spouse at times, but I equate my new character to my eyes opening and never allowing someone to push me around.
The other interest part of story is the secret pond and growing bigger than the earth, walking on the earth and than finally growing back to normal size. I would say this probably relates to me feeling powerless and than growing up and having power where no one could stop me, but in reality when back to my normal size, probably because I was just a child and could not really grow up yet.
But I obliviously grew up to the man I am today, trying to reflect on stories from my youth, something I encourage all of us to do. You may be surprised what the younger self was trying to tell you. It might even be a lesson to you now if you still struggle with those things from your past.
Hope you enjoy this weekly feature, and encourage you to go digging for an old childhood picture, a piece of writing and see what you discover.
My Imagination Lives On!
As the 2nd piece in my writing you can see that I am attempting to be different in my writing approach as I think any writer should be not to get stuck on one genre or way of writing but to mix it up. Even today I am always thinking of ways to write differently, come up with new ideas and stories. I feel my imagination is pretty active but I am sure others have more imaginative minds. Thank you for taking this journey with me as we dive into my mind as when I revisit this series I make new observations then before.
I often think about when I started this series a few years ago I was a different man then I am today as we all grow and change in time our minds changes and our perspectives changes, this is no different.
Joseph’s Adventures in Writing 
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