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bren triggered a memory this afternoon of my first day of grade 2. we'd arrived that morning and found our names on the list posted on the glass doors that told us which class we were in. i quickly discovered that i was not in the same class as my best friend heather. she was a quiet, tiny little girl and immediately looked to me for assurance and some kind of guidance. i remember being quite distraught with separation anxiety myself but i didn't show it. i felt a need to pull myself together so i could support and comfort her. my response was exactly the same way i often react to things as an adult. i'm completely the same person. when i was reading the fifth business recently i read a portion that talks about this, the notion that we are exactly the same our entire lives. check this out... "i have never thought that traits that are strong in childhood disappear; they may go underground or they may be transmuted into something else, but they do not vanish; very often they make a vigorous appearance after the meridian of life has been passed. it is this, not senility, that is the real second childhood. i could see this pattern in myself; my boyhood trick of getting of 'good ones' that went far beyond any necessary self-defence and were likely to wound, had come back to me in my fifties. i was going to be a sharp-tongued old man as i had been a sharp-tongued boy". very interesting. and beautifully written i might add. it's amazing to think about. it really is true... where ever i go, i'm still there.

i need a cola now.