That Silly Little Book

RemembeRED prompt this week:

This week, as the school year is wrapping up and we're on the cusp of summer, we've decided to go easy on you.

We want to know what, from your childhood, do you still know by heart?

Is it a story? A jump-roping song? The number of rungs on the ladder to your treehouse? How much money you had to save to buy something you really wanted?

Dig deep and come back on Tuesday, June 7th, and link up.

 

A tiny little school nestled in the hills of New Jersey...yes, there is beauty in New Jersey. It housed students in kindergarten through eighth grade. I was in first grade in Mrs. McMurtries class. She was a tiny little lady, and very old. Of course, now I look back and wonder just how old was she really. Would I think she is old now, because you see the older I get, the older you need to be to be considered old.
Whenever one of my students pull this book off the shelf now I am immediately back in that first grade classroom. I can still see the pictures inside the book before my student can open it. When I held that book there in that classroom with the wooden floors, and tall windows, it was accompanied by a little record (an old fashioned cd kids). I played it over and over. So much so, those words are burned into my memory.
"Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sau Rembo, Chally Bally Roochie, Pip Perry Pembo....has fallen into the well", obviously I have not memorized the spelling of this characters name, but I can hear that line over and over again. I chuckle at myself every time that memory comes rushing in when I see that book. I find I  have to tell the story of reading that book when I was in first grade to my students, always a surprise to them.
So, the character, the book and my memories have all stood the test of time. Etched memories of sweet days gone by. That constant reminder of my aging, and how much more distant those memories become. A realization  that many of those images no longer are found in our present world, but the books and their words hang on. The power of the written word.