Reach Out Magazine

When I was eight or nine years old, a couple of friends and I started a magazine. It was called "Reach Out" and somebody's mother copied it on the school ditto machine. There might have been three issues. I can't remember distributing it beyond our own number.

Amazingly, I still have a copy of one issue. I just dug it up. It contains features such as "Did You Know?", "Puzzle-le-do," "Craft of the Month," drawings, and fake advertisements.

Did You Know?

That Americans eat so much ice cream and sherbert [sic] each year that it would fill the Grand Canyon.

That one dog gave birth to 23 puppies at once.

That there are 500 hairs in one eyebrow.

That a male silkworm can smell a female silkworm 5 miles away.

It also contains the following poem, by one of our six-year-old sisters:

I wish I had a dog
I wish I had a mouse
I wish I had a cup
I wish I had a thing I like
I wish I had a cat
I wish I had a cow
I wish I had you

Hello out there to my old co-editors. One I corresponded with briefly later: she'd become an attorney. The others, I don't know.

In many ways, having a blog is just like everybody's childhood dream. A publication of your very own, with total creative control, and no need to keep it afloat financially. Only this time I have to do my own typing.

Look for homemade crosswords in next month's issue.