memories...

Encouraged by the lovely Diana, I will post a few childhood memories.

1. Don't turn your back on the ocean- This is one of my most early memories. I was almost four years old, and walking along the beach with my mom, who at the time was 8 months pregnant and she was walking our dog, Pepper, a standard poodle. We're walking along the water just over our feet- and then BAM! I was pulled under. What was odd is that when I felt my hand slip away from my mom, I remember being scared, but lying flat and and the pull of the ocean felt really cool...Meanwhile, my poor mother, VERY pregnant and trying to drag her toddler and her dog out of the ocean! I remember her dragging me out looking quite terrified, and choked and coughed. The other thing I remember was for many days afterward I used to like to get Q-Tips and scrape sand out of my ears- which I kind of liked- as you can see, I was weirdo from my earliest years.

2. The best smoking prevention EVER! Another early memory- about age 5. My mom was (and still is) a smoker. I thought it was cool, and my mom had the coolest looking ashtrays. One I particularily loved was blown glass large ashtray with amber and orange swirls in it. I also liked to run my fingers through those old ashtrays that had the white sand in them in public places, which used to drive my mother crazy. Anyway, when I was five, I saw the major benefit of being an adult was smoking, drinking coffee, wearing lipsticks that would leave stains on my cigarette butts and coffee cups and using really awesome ashtrays. I longed to smoke, so one day I begged, begged my mom to let me try, and in a moment of weakness in or in order to shut me up, she gave me a lit cigarette and said "Suck on it like a straw"

Which I did- and promptly sucked a lit cigarette down my throat! The cigarette burned the roof of my mouth and then the cigarette became lodged in my throat, and I choked, and my mom pounded me on the back until I coughed up the cigarette. This memory is so visceral in my mind THAT I HAVE NEVER SMOKED A CIGARETTE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. So, perhaps it is an extreme measure, but if you want to almost guarantee your kid won't smoke- stuff a lit cigarette down their throat and pound on their back until they cough it up.

3. Big Sister/Big tormentor? Let me preface this by saying today, as an adult, I love, love my sisters- they have been a great support to me in some pretty hard times. Having said that, as a kid, well, I wanted to be an only child. Of course, when my sisters were born and babies I kind of liked them, but when they got bigger and got into my stuff, and my sister Julie turned into a biting machine...well, they weren't so cool anymore. Seeing that my parents had no intention of getting rid of them, I decided they might be useful in a few experiments. Like, the game "missionary"- of course THEY were the desperately poor natives- so of course they needed to EAT BUGS. Real bugs, until, I, the enlightened missionary, made them eat something else...or, our house had a laundry chute. It would be fun to drop down it, but would it work? Well, of course my sister Tina proved to be the perfect "test pilot" I dropped her down it, and seeing that she survived intact, I moved up to the Julie, if she made it then I knew I was safe...Being the big sister I also got the plumb roles in any game we played. I was always the mom when we played house, I was always Laura Ingalls when we played "Little House on the Prarie" and I basically didn't get blamed for much....MUHAHAHA.... my poor sisters.

4. Naughty kid- I have a reputation of having been a very good kid. Basically, I was- EXCEPT- when I was about 5 I had some very bad neighbor boys that encouraged me to do bad stuff- like throw rocks off the overpass onto the freeway, I thought it was big fun not realizing the bad consequences until my Dad saw me and literally lifted me by the scruff of my neck and "made it clear" that it was not a good game. These same neighbor boys Biff and Scotty, put me in a grocery cart and shoved it down a hill and the cart flipped over in a tall stand of grass. I was trapped under it and saw a possum and screamed bloody murder, until Biff- who I believe had a crush on me- rescued me. I was playing a game with my sisters and assorted neighbor kids when the fence between our house and the Dolan's caught fire, some call it "arson" I call it a simple case of a game gone too far. It was a very, very small fire, but the fire trucks were cool. I did have a few TeePeeing adventures as a junior high age kid with my co-conspirator Sandy, but it went too far with a terribly nosy and mean spirited neighbor. Although to be fair we did add eggs and few four letter words to the teepee action. In her typical fashion she called the cops and made our lives hell. Aside from that "bust" when I was 12 and the two speeding tickets in 1985, and numerous parking tickets, those have been my only tangles with "Johnny Law" my whole life- and I'm getting pretty old. Overall, a fairly clean record.

5. Lastly, but of course not least, the famous "lunchpail incident"- I started a new school in first grade. I was horribly, horribly shy and insecure (a measure of my insecurity, whenI started kindergarten on the first day I screamed and cried and the teacher LITERALLY had to pry me off my mother's leg. The second day of kindergarten was no less disasterous. Being extremely shy, I was too afraid to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom. It was agonizing. Unfortunately, I could hold it no longer and wet my pants. Of course, all my classmates, whispered, stared, laughed and I was sent home in tears. My mother had to do some pretty heavy persuading to get me to go back, but I did love my teacher Mrs. Bowens, whom I called "Mrs. Bones" she had frizzy red hair and wore smocks and clogs) Anyway, given that level of terror at social interaction and starting a new school, I was petrified. As it turned out my terror was justified, because one of my classmates was "Heidi the beast"- Heidi, like a dog, could smell fear. She was a big, pushy blonde bully. With me, I think she saw her ideal victim. She unraveld the wire spiral in a spiral notebook put it in the heater and burned me with it. She pelted me with pinecones at recess, she basically made me the pariah of the class. No girls invited me to jump rope, or play four square. I sat under a tree and read and prayed Heidi wouldn't find me. I cried everyday before school. One day we lined up for lunch and marched across the field to the lunchroom. My lunch pail was a metal Holly Hobby lunch pail. Much to my horror, Heidi was behind me in line. She started pulling my hair. I felt white hot rage raising in me, and I tightened my grip on the Holly Hobby lunchpail and spun around and smashed Heidi in the face. I was unprepared for the damage. A metal lunch pail with a thermos really packs a punch. I think Heidi was scarred for life. It was sheer pandemonium. The next thing I remember, which was pretty cool, is that my mom defended me. I heard her yell in the Principal's office "Well if that child weren't such a Nazi, none of this would have happened!"

Anyway, after that she didn't pick on me, although it was kind of painful to look at her bandaged face. And, I had new celebrity status- I was "that girl"- and the rest of my academic career went by rather uneventfully. I saw Heidi years later in High School, she didn't notice me thank God.

Anyway, those are some of my childhood stories...I wasn't really such a bad, kid, really!