Usually on Thanksgiving, my thoughts go to the grandiose, like being grateful for perfect parents, or the incredible luck to be born in the “Land of the brave and home of the free,” or having had a wonderful husband, or working with great editors over the years.

Not this year. Today, all of my thanks are wrapped around the bright and shining little things that went into the delicious and sometimes idiotically human experience of growing up. Trivial things that made me laugh, or smile, or just stop in my tracks, take notice, and make a memory.

Since they are good things, I am putting them on a wish list to share with your children or grandchildren, or great grandchildren, or just stop a child on the street who is minding his own business, and say, “Hey. Kid. Did you ever …?”

So here is my Wish List of things that I hope some day every child will get the chance to do:

Go to the beach with your family and try to dig a hole in the sand to the other side of the world. In order to do this properly, you have to envision that after you break through to the other side, people will be walking around upside down, and the first thing you will see is a Chinaman’s feet.