Storytime: The Time(s) I Tried to Turn into a Mermaid Growing Up

/ Kal @ Reader Voracious

It’s time for another Storytime with Kal, where I share true stories about my life that usually involves being chased by birds. This time we are straying away from tales of my bird fear to talk about the multiple times that I tried to turn into a mermaid as a child.

If there is one thing that you should know about me, it is that I have always been obsessed with mermaids, mermaid lore, and the sea. Perhaps it was growing up near the beach in San Diego or the fact that I saw The Little Mermaid in theatres when I was five and then proceeded to destroy not one but two VHS copies over the subsequent years of my childhood. Who knows where it began, but I know for a fact that my passion went to the next level after seeing the movie Splash when I was like eight.

It is no coincidence that both the year of my birth and the premiere of this movie is 1984 (or that one of my favorite books happens to be of that year). I think we are kindred in this way. Because most of you have probably never heard of this romantic comedy starring Daryl Hanna and Tom Hanks, here is the trailer for your viewing pleasure. Be sure to pay attention, there will be a quiz at the end of the post!

 

 

I C O N I C

What this movie told my eight year old brain was that all I needed to do to live my best mermaid life was to take a bath with salt and my tail would appear.

Cue me sneaking into the pantry to take the Morton’s Salt into the bathroom, filling the bathtub, and taking four-plus hour long baths while adding more and more salt to the tub until there wasn’t any left. And being really upset when I didn’t change, so I tried a couple of times before my parents caught onto where the heck all the salt was going.

It would be really cool if by sheer willpower I could become a mermaid, like how Jenna Marbles wants to become tall. I believe in me beech, I can do it.

I still wish that Splash held some secret truth to unlocking my mermaid tail, but until then I will have to settle for going to Dive Bar and watching the mermaid swims while drinking Jameson and Cokes.

 

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Mermaid swim last night at Dive Bar in Sacramento

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What mythological creature do you wish you could transform into? Am I the only one that tried desperately as a child to become a mermaid?

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51 thoughts on “Storytime: The Time(s) I Tried to Turn into a Mermaid Growing Up”

  1. Oh Kal, I love this post! I think my first encountered with mermaids’ tales was around 2007/2008. It’s a series called Ingo (if I’m not mistaken, and now that I’m thinking of it, maybe I should give it a re-read!) and I borrowed the books from my classmate. Since then, mermaid pretty much had a special place in my heart! 🌊🐚

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Oh my god I did that too !! Though I never thought of stealing the salt ahahah I went with just pretending. Being from a coastal town, I love the sea aswell 🧜🏼‍♀️ Though I really should read more about mermaids ! What am I doing, not having that done yet ??! ahah

    Mermaid swimming sounds such like an amazing thing to watch !! I absolutely love your story times xx

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  3. YOU WERE SUCH AN ADORABLE NUGGET!!! OMG!!!

    I’m cackling and when I was little I used to hide eggs in my shoes in my closet, I thought they would hatch, my mom realized a bit late when I was doing, those eggs were not hatching or even edible lolol

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  4. Oh my God!!! This post and the story is so adorable Kal!!!! I honestly thought I couldn’t be a mermaid or a princess since they all spoke English and looked white ( I recently had this realisation while reading why rep matters) . Anyway , I would love to turn into a dragon or a centaur if I could!

    Liked by 1 person

    • Oh my gosh Dany, I really wish you had mermaid or princess rep as a kid! Rep matters SO MUCH and while I know we have a ways to go, I am glad that non-white readers are finally able to see themselves. OMG a dragon would be so cool! (Burninating the countryside.)

      Like

  5. I am 10000% also obsessed with mermaids! Honest to god I love them and I love reading anything with them in whether it’s light fluffy stuff or angst or horror. The Little Mermaid is by absolute favourite Disney movie of all time and I adore the original fairy tale too!

    I cannot believe that there would be people in this world who haven’t seen Splash! Is that even possible? I absolutely adore that movie so much and while I didn’t sit in the bathtub hoping my legs would turn into a tail I used to try swimming in the swimming pool with my legs held together so I could pretend it was a tail and that I was a mermaid!

    I’m glad the internet bring odd people together 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    • HIGH FIVE TO MERMAID LOVE! The Little Mermaid is also my fave Disney film, as well as any film or book with mermaids. I can’t get enough. I just want to swim around and live my best mermaid life! Splash is such a great movie… and it is being remade. I have complex thoughts on that.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Is it?! No, I don’t want it remade *clenches fists and stamps foot* I want Hollywood to leave the things I love alone! If I come across any good mermaid stories or movies I will have to let you know! I think May is technically ‘Mermay’ so I may have to get some ideas together for next year 😛

        Liked by 1 person

      • Oh yay, another person that doesn’t like remakes! I hate them as a general rule, especially since a few years ago it felt like there wasn’t anything new coming out as it was a bunch of remakes. Please definitely send mermaid recs my way, and we should totally do something for Mermay next year!

        Liked by 1 person

  6. A mermaid would be amazing! I used to want to change into a dragon so I could soar and see the world. I would be able to defend myself against the evil I experienced. But, I also wanted to be a mermaid

    Liked by 1 person

  8. As a child, I *desperately* wanted to be magic. Honestly just any mythical creature as long as it was extraordinary. But I would say that I most wanted to be a wizard and cast some spells with my wand! I think the movie that started a brief mermaid obsession for me as a child was Aquamarine? I’m not sure but I think it’s the movie that stars Emma Roberts and it’s about them finding a mermaid and hiding it in a water tower? I could be completelyyy off though. And LOL at that salt anecdote!

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I absolutely love mermaids and always since watching Ariel about 100x with my older sisters when I was 5. We all loved swimming pools and baths because that was when we got to play that we would transform into mermaids. Loved this story and how you used all of the salt xD How did your parents take it when they found out?

    Olivia-S @ Olivia’s Catastrophe

    Liked by 1 person

    • My parents were not as amused as I was about the salt use, let me tell you! If I remember correctly I had to buy a new Morton’s jug thing with my allowance after the second one. Which honestly was worth it! Swimming pools and pretending to swim like a mermaid was one of my favorite pasttimes tbh.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. Tbh, I think the only reason I didn’t try something similar to this as a kid is because I was a goody two shoes afraid of being caught. Making sandbox potions and stealing olives from the fridge for eye of newt to be a witch was a little less daunting in my book. 😂

    But honestly, excellent choice, angling for mermaids first! And good effort lol!

    Liked by 1 person

  11. High five to this! I love watching mermaid movies growing up. I can still remember our lined up VHS, borrowing them from movie rental house. Splash was one of them. Tbh, this is nostalgic, seeing the trailer! I’ve read somewhere before that there’s going to be a remake? I’m not sure.

    Liked by 1 person

    • They are remaking Splash, I saw that when I was looking up the trailer! I… have mixed feelings about it but that’s mainly because as a rule I hate remakes, but I think it would be so cool to have people now know the glory that is this film!

      Liked by 1 person

      • I could say the same. Nothing can beat original, old films. There are times, the essence of the story was changed or not even there during remakes. I hope this won’t happen for Splash.

        Liked by 1 person

  12. I had no idea what Splash was before reading this post, but it looks a lot like H2O (which is an Australian show that was on tv here sometimes). I do have a question, how did your parents not catch up to you taking four hour baths :’) Mine need to know where I am every 20 minutes or so :/. It was annoying, and honestly I would have loved such long bath times.

    That mermaid at the Dive Bar LOOKS AMAZING HOLY COW. We don’t have anything like that here, and I’ve always been really jealous when seeing mermaids in parks on tv. I had no idea there were actually bars that did this too?! Someday I will visit you and you should take me to this bar so I can look at the mermaid all night

    Liked by 1 person

    • Splash was honestly such an iconic 80s movie (iconic Tom Hanks) and I am glad to have brought its glory to your world! My parents didn’t mind the long baths? IDK as long as I wasn’t wasting water.

      Dive Bar is one of the coolest places in the world! I love it SO MUCH and if you come out to California we are so going!!!

      Like

  13. OMG your poor parents! XD XD XD You really stole all the salt and filled the bath tub with it?! This is such a great story. XD I liked mermaids too, but I don’t think I was ever THAT obsessed. I definitely remember being one of those “balance on the ledge of every pool like Ariel” kids though. XD

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  14. Hahaha, I tried to be a witch!! I used to steal my mum’s makeup and add crazy Maleficent eyeshadow, and then I’d gather as many candles in the house that I could find and take them to the ‘grotto’ in the backyard and cast spells. I was obsessed with crystals and runes and basically anything else I could lay my hands on that was “witchy”. I would also go for days without brushing my hair and would colour in my nails with black permanent marker because I wasn’t allowed to buy black nail polish. (I think this is why I have like 16 bottles of this now.)

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  15. I love this. I just recently told my husband that I’m going to dump a massive amount of salt into our tub if I don’t get in the ocean soon. I loved Splash growing up. I named my daughter Madison. And The Little Mermaid. I can never get enough. I joke around that I must have been a mermaid that lived in San Diego in my past life because of the pull there. Something internal says that I lived there in a past life. Weird, I know. I am obviously obsessed with mermaids, too.

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      • That’s really cool! We already have a trip booked to San Diego for Halloween this year and I can’t wait. I know I was in the Caribbean in April, but I just can’t get enough and SD is the only place I’ve had that pull. But I’ve known since my early teens that I wanted to live out west.

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  16. Oh my goodness, I love this story! 😂 I also love mermaids. My cousin, sister, and I used to pretend we were the mermaids from a Nickelodeon show called H2O. I’m still not ready to accept the fact that I’ll never have a mermaid tale.

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  17. awwwwww smol!Kal logic is the purest, most adorable thing – I especially love that you tried *multiple times* when the first salt bath didn’t work! 😂 seriously, if your life was a movie I think the determination alone would’ve (should’ve) been enough to turn you into a mermaid.

    I don’t think I ever thought I could turn into a mythical creature (smol!Isabelle was disappointingly practical in that regard, thanks Mom and Dad and teachers) but I did spend a lot of time in the pool pretending to be a mermaid or sometimes a dolphin or jellyfish, building pirate ships and rockets out of cardboard, hanging upside down from monkey bars like a bat or sloth … the list probably goes on 😅

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  18. that trailer cracked me up, phahaha

    “when I find her…she’s a fish.”
    “no one said love was perfect”

    *snorts* I never wanted to be a mermaid, still don’t but I will live vicariously through you Kal hehe, maybe you need a special type of salt? Maybe that’s the key hmmmm

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  19. SPLASH!! I love that movie. I was more obsessed with unicorns growing up (I even had a club for them hahahaha). But! Whenever I went swimming I sure enough pretended I was a mermaid. Lol 😀

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