Memories of Childhood

Mon 08 March 2004 by Kevin van Haaren

I used to have what I though were dreams about being this giant kid rampaging through a tiny town. Kind of like one of Calvin’s imaginary rampages through the Calvin & Hobbes strips.

As kids my father always shot slide film instead of print film in his camera. This is a good thing as it’s very difficult to whip out the old slide projector and a screen to show any friends/dates/random relatives any of the embarrassing pictures of his kids.

So one day, we were having a slide show and dad was running through all the slides he had from the trip we took to the Netherlands when I was a wee little kid. A trip I was sure I had only one memory of (my only memory of my paternal grandmother, she was lying in a hammock (she was sick) but my memory is all shadow, I can’t remember her face at all).

All of sudden these slides show up of me rampaging through a tiny town. I was flabbergasted! What was this? I thought for all these years these were just dreams I’d been having (world domination for Kevin!). Turns out that when were in the Netherlands we had visited a place called Madurodam, which is a 1:25 scale model of various places in the Netherlands.

I’ve not been back yet, but if a place can make such a memory it must rock! The place still exists, here’s a link to the place: Madurodam

I’ll try and get some of the scans of the slides my dad has made and post them in the gallery.