dead kings, many things i can't define

Sometimes people ask that question, 'If you could be in any decade, which one would you choose?' and usually I reply with some snarky like, 'I'd hope to live more than a decade.' But actually, I would probably say the Victorian era. Because, it's sort of beautiful and romantic, I think. If you've ever read Ragtime, you know what I mean. The clothes, of course. There's just something intangible about it that just seems sort of lovely to me. Undoubtedly, if I were to actually say this, someone would say something like, 'Also, cholera, consumption, and typhus.' To that person (who is sort of me): Fuck you.
Just kidding. I still adore you.
Sometimes I feel like my county has more abandoned shacks than actual houses. They're sort of incredible, peppering fields and hiding in woods. I always wonder if someone once lived there. I like to imagine something like a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel- which I adored, as a child. I read all of them- there's something incredible about that concept of such a simple lifestyle.
Lately I've been feeling these pangs of nostalgia for my childhood. It's sort of heartbreaking how much I've forgotten- the names of my stuffed animals, neopets passwords, the plots of my favorite books. Even more awful, when I try to go back and find these stuffed animals, books, or tiny slips of paper, I realize that I discarded them when I went through that phase- fifth or sixth grade, a time where you are trying so, so hard to grow up. So it's sort of depressing when I realize, after manically digging through my closet, that I have actually gotten rid of all my favorite kids books- Little House on the Praire series, Nancy Drew, Narnia, Phillip Pullman. I also feel sort of guilty in an abstract sense.
Speaking of eclectic tastes:
I am in love with Augusten Burroughs. Burroughs, for the uninitiated, is a memoirist. His work, Magical Thinking, represents my first foray into adult fiction. I was eight. It felt as though I had stepped into another world. Suddenly, I saw the world from the perspective of a middle-aged gay man who lives in Manhattan. I devoured it in an hour and it catalysed my transition into adolescence. I now had my first inkling of cocaine, oral sex, and advertising executives. I guess I have a particular interest in the lives of elderly, sophisticated gay men.
Speaking of MY CHILDHOOD, a subject I can endlessly pontificate on, goldfish. Fish, generally, sort of terrify me, which I think we can probably trace back to the time when I actually owned two goldfish- their names were Buddy and Goldy. Buddy was a boy, and Goldy was a girl. Naturally, I loved Goldy more because she was prettier. Anyway, they died, as fish often do, and I. was. traumatized. It was my one of my first brushes with the death of a loved one, and I was horrified! Absolutely horrified. Now I cannot look at a goldfish- or think of my beloved first pets- without thinking of them decaying. In the garden. Behind my house. Anyway, this has become a running theme in my life- first with caterpillars (When I was six, I kept several of them in a terrarium until they died a few days later) which I cannot think of without gagging. Then with frogs- my grandparents, who live at the beach, like to go for walks. To condense a rather long story, there were what seemed like hundreds of dead, squished frogs in the road. And now I'm terrified of frogs. In fact, I literally cannot go for a walk barefoot outside without being concerned I will step on and kill one. Next, lizards. When I was eight I had a pet green anole for about a year. His name was Scampers. He died of heart failure RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I am now afraid of lizards. Clearly, this is an ongoing trend. Hopefully, my darling pet cat will never die, because I fear that I will develop a phobia of cats, after such an event. Which would be very sad, because I adore cats. I also adore MY cat, and will probably cry for months after her inevitable departure to cat heaven. Which I sort of childishly believe in. (shh.)