Childhood Memories

 Who knew a bell cricket could have that much of an impact. While reading Kawabata's short story "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" childhood memories came to mind.

    This story is about kids making lanterns and trying to catch grasshoppers to insert them in those lanterns. It started with one kid and one became 4, then 4 became 8 and before you know it there are tens of children gathered together trying to find the rare grasshopper in what sounds like a field of weed or long grass. At a point during the research, a boy finds a grasshopper and yells out loud "who wants this grasshopper". A few kids come to him asking for it. He asked again, and more kids came and asked again, a few more kids asked him for it. In that last group of kids was a girl, she asked him for the grasshopper. Obviously, the boy decided to give her the grasshopper which they later realized was a bell cricket. The short story doesn't end there. She puts the insect in her lantern and with the light, the narrator can see the name of that boy through her lantern. The narrator can also see the name of the girl in the boy's lantern. We can understand that they both liked each other and that it was meant to be. Some also like to say that the boy planned this thing and would've yelled until that one girl came up to him. Since he found the insect, he knew he was going to give it to that one girl.

    What's fun about this story is the lessons you can get from it. Talking to people, different ways of seeing and understanding it are presented and a lot of them are interesting.

    In my mind, it brought memories back. I saw myself and/or my friends in that little boy doing everything and anything to catch the girl that we like's attention. We would be in elementary school, in the yard during recess, my school had this garden for fruits and vegetables. They also had flowers in there. Once in a while when my friends and I had a crush on a girl we would go in there pick up a flower and then go hangout near her group of friends and would do the same thing as that little boy. Ask multiple times until that one girl that we are interested in would come to us and ask for it. It wouldn't lead to much afterward but that's beside point. Those were good times and that short story of about 4-5 pages was able to bring me back to it.

    I enjoyed reading that story and this class makes me realize how powerful words are.