stop this train. i want to get off and go home again.

there's a vending machine at the library that dispenses erasers for a quarter. the ones where you put in a quarter, crank the nob and open the metal lid and the encapsulated prize rolls out.

the other a day a kid asked his mom for some a quarter for an eraser. this made me think about when i was growing up. i would go to the market with my mom, the one on emerson and atlantic. i think it was a shun fat at the time. many great childhood memories there. like anticipating seeing the green water tower on top of the hill signifying we had arrived, and always wondering what's in it or how to get up there. i also remember refilling gallon water containers there at the water vending machines. i think it was 15 cents a gallon at the time. then there would be time when my mom would let me sit in the car and i grab a oyster sauce bottle and pretend i'm in a car and the bottle is a shifter.

well i'm kinda straying from my original point, so let me get to it. when ever we check out she would give me a quarter, sometimes i'll ask and sometimes she'll just give me one, and i'll walk over to a flintstone's capsule vending machine at the end of the market near an exit. it's supposed to be dino's eggs or something. i can still picture it my head. theres a fred flintstone figure in the middle of the machine on a verticle rod, and when you put a quarter the machine plays the theme song from the cartoon and the figure rotates. after the music stops the plastic egg dispenses. one time there were only a few eggs left and i put in a quarter and none came out after the song played and fred rotated on his rod. all i got was a song. i went back to my mom and she asked me what i got and i told her it was out.

there was one day when my mom asked me if i wanted a quarter, and i told her no. at the time i'm not sure what i was thinking. maybe i just wasn't interested anymore, or maybe i thought i was too grown up for it. at any rate i didn't take a quarter, and my mom placed it back into her coin purse.

so at the library all these memories flashed back to me, and now that i think about it, my mom must have been so crushed to see that i didn't take the quarter. as much as the treat was for me, it was a treat in it for her. she must felt like i was growing up, not her little boy anymore, and that she was losing me.

i'm sorry i didn't take that quarter mom. i'm sorry these years past by so quickly, i grew up too fast.