A friend and I were discussing mushrooms, today: finding mushrooms growing in the wild and being able to identify them correctly and knowing which ones are edible, etc.
Occasionally, I see mushrooms growing in my garden; usually after lots of rain. I have no idea what kind they are and would never try to pick them to eat them.
However, whenever I do see mushrooms growing, I remember finding them as a child
(they'd grow in the garden at my childhood home, too) and being
fascinated by them because my father had told me that pixies lived under
them!
I used to
pick every mushroom I found and look under them to see if I could find
the pixies! I knew exactly how they'd look because my father had taken some modeling clay and made me mushrooms with pixies in pointy hats seated under them. :)
My older half-siblings would tease me ("Find any pixies? There's another mushroom, look under that!"), but I didn't care. Father was, in my opinion, an authority on many things. If he said there were
pixies and mushrooms were their homes, then, there were pixies and
they lived under the mushrooms! If I didn't find any pixies under mushrooms, it was only because I wasn't quick enough or they weren't under those particular mushrooms. The innocence of childhood.
My father died when I was 7 years old. I don't know what happened to the clay mushrooms and pixies he made for me (they were probably thrown away). But a memory remains. And, to this day, whenever I do find a mushroom growing in the garden, I find myself tempted to pick it!
Did you believe in pixies when you were a child? Did you look for them under mushrooms?
What a lovely story!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teen my father convinced two small visiting children that we had a candy tree in the garden. He had told them about it a few times and on a sunny day, he tied wrapped candy into its branches. I'm not sure how long the little ones believed that candy grew on tress.
That day my father explained he had tried such things with me as well, but given up when a very little me told him indignantly : "I don't believe anything you say anymore!"
Glad you enjoyed reading it. It's funny what stories adults will tell children, isn't it?
DeleteHi... As a child, Enid Blyton had me believing in pixies (and goblins)!
ReplyDeleteOh, I used to read Enid Blyton's books, especially the Noddy books! In fact, when my daughter was little, I asked a cousin who was living in the UK to send me Noddy books to read to her. Still have 4 of the books! Noddy and his best friend Big Ears. Come to think of it, Big Ears lived in a mushroom or toadstool, didn't he?
DeleteYes he did! And I used to read her St. Clare and Malory Towers books and wanted to go to boarding school so bad! LOL
DeleteAnd I wanted to go to Toyland to ride in Noddy's taxi! I remember saying to my mother and she trying to tell me it wasn't real! LOL.
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