Chapter 18 exercise - Trading Places

If I could trade places with anyone, who would it be and why? If not - then why not? I have always been intrigued by this question in life. I believe we contemplate this imaginative offer often, and in my younger years - I was desperate to trade places with mostly celebrities. This idea now repulses me and I find it humorous but also sad. I feel there is such an unhealthy focus on the culture of glamour and Hollywood and that it provokes the evolution of an unhealthy ego. As a child I struggled with the question of trading places a lot - because I tried to consider every angle of it's possibility. I was serious about this fantasy. I often wanted to trade places with the characters in my books such as Caddie Woodlawn, an 11 year old feisty, smart, fun, exciting young tom boy of a girl during the 1860's/Civil War Era who lived a wild frontier life. Not without it's pitfalls - but to me she led an authentic life engaging in her environment full throttle, good or bad. Which to me - is what livin' is! She nearly dies from falling through ice while skating on a frozen lake, she befriends the nearby Native American tribe and learns all kind of things about plants and nature. I also like how her friendship with the natives served as a confrontation between seemingly clashing cultures, and that this relationship and the tension within, was addressed by her friendship with a young native boy, whom she became very fond of. Caddie is also confronted by her cousin, Annabel, who visits from Boston and is the quintessential example of a young, upper class, high caliber woman with an air of 1860's prestige and distinction. Caddie's relationship with Annabel has a lot of push and pull between two worlds. Caddie faces much anxiety over her life on the frontier, wild hard and rugged with enormous freedoms and unpredictable dangers versus a comfortable, privileged life in the city of Boston at a boarding school, where her destiny would be more likely to lead to the common domestica of the times, a seamstress, a teacher herself, but most likely a comfortable wife and socialite.

As a child I LOVED THIS BOOK! And I was desperate to either be Caddie herself or somehow transport myself so that I could play with her. Many times I would have liked to trade places with her for want of her freedoms on the frontier, but as the book goes on the old adage of "the grass is never greener" - which I think I used in my last post - rings true yet again.

As an adult, though I fantasize about trading places with people all of the time - mostly with some goat farm herb toting medicine woman with a sweaty sexy bearded mountain man as her husband....and I am raging with jealousy and desperate to trade, though I remember - my life is pretty good as it is and we all have our private battles. I'm severely lucky enough - up to this point - that I wouldn't trade my experiences or friends or family for the world, or someone else's. I have no doubt there will be times I will take back that statement, and if I couldn't trade with a person, I'd just as easily trade with a spoiled house pet or perhaps a flower in my garden, taken care of my by me of course - no body talks to them like I do.  ;)