My mother says that when I was between one and two years old, she put me in the stroller to walk to the store. Apparently this was not unusual. It was a fairly long walk. We hadn't gone far and I told her that we should probably turn around because it was going to rain. She looked up at the sky and I was right; it did look like rain. She was stunned. I knew it was going to rain before she did. She turned around. No, this doesn't mean I was destined to be weatherperson and missed my calling. Actually, I am not sure what it means. I guess I was just observant as a child.
At about the same age, we were riding in the car after a bad thunderstorm, and there were a lot of downed tree limbs everywhere. She says I got very upset when she was about run over one of them in the road. I started crying and carrying on and made her stop the car. What was the matter? "Don't run over it. You'll hurt it." Yep, that's me. Apparently, there was a conversation that day about how the tree was already dead blah blah blah. If you've been reading my blogs and thinking, "This girl feels like she needs to band-aid the whole world, and she is setting herself up for crushing disappointment." Well, the whole thing started with this tree in the road when I was one and half.
When I was three, or so, my parents bought me this cute, plastic, yellow car that I could sit in and pedal around. We had moved to Florida and had this little patio outside our backdoor. I say patio. It was more like a concrete slab. Whatever. It was large enough that I should have been able to ride my little car in a circle around the slab. I say should. I would ride from one end of the slab to the other. My mother is saying,"Turn the wheel and pedal." Nope. That was just not happening. I dead-ended at the end of the slab. I stood up, picked up the car, because it wasn't heavy, did a 180 with it, put it back down, and pedaled to the other end of the slab, where I repeated the performance. Unfortunately, there is photo documentation of that somewhere. I am not sure what this says about me. Driving wasn't going to be easy, particularly a stick shift, is one possibility. Another was that life was going to offer up a lot of dead ends that needed creative solutions. It is a good thing that I am in the creative solution business.
So what childhood stories do you want to share? And what do you think that they say about you?
Childhood stories bring us back. It is amazing how a simple smell, picture, even a touch can remind us of care free days. We can conjure up a million memories in one second and are back to a more peaceful (usually) time. I have so many memories, but most of them on my mind lately are of my brother with the anniversary of his death coming up. I wish so badly that he was still here, but I am very grateful that no one can take away my memories.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin and I wanted to bring worms into the house but there was no way my aunt was going to let us. So we hid them in our undies and strolled right in.
ReplyDeleteOnce in his room we put them on the floor and then got called to lunch. After lunch the worms had scattered everywhere. in his bed, in his books...everywhere! It took my aunt ages to find them!!! She was furious!
FB is also great for remembering things. When I was in 4th grade the school was still coed. A little boy called Rodney said to me, "Would you like to see my penis under the desk." I looked under and Rosemaree put her hand up and said, "Miss, Miss, Rodney is showing his penis under the desk"
Rodney got sent out. I got bombarded with questions. "I'm not sure it was his penis, Miss," I said. "It may have been his finger." And I still don't remember if it really was to this very day.
We were remembering this incident on FB a few months ago and were laughing ourselves silly! We even tried to find Rodney on FB but to no avail...We did find Brian though...but that's another childhood story.
Don't get me started!
My parents never bring up any stories, and I don't really remember very much-- I think it is really better that way :).
ReplyDeleteThere's stories that I remember that my parents don't - usually the bad ones - and stories that my parents remember that I don't. A sort of truce is called between the two every holiday as we recount the non-violent ones, even the violent ones are funny to us because we lived through them. But we have learned that they alarm visitors. :)
ReplyDeleteI do remember collecting every single pen, pencil, eraser, and piece of paper in the house then opening up a "stationary store" in my bedroom and trying to charge people to get it back.
As an adult, I have a really unhealthy obsession with office supply stores. I'm sure the two are related. ;)