Tag, you’re it
So this here situation has been created by one Merry Widow. Well Ms. Widow, I’ll see you and raise you one.
The rules:
Remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the #5 spot; link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross pollination effect:
1. Searchin’ For a Rainbow
2. Agent 99
3. Hornblower
4. The Merry Widow
5. Somegirl
PS. I totally copied and pasted from MW, I have a meeting in four minutes ago and I want to get this done before I a) forget and b) have actual work put upon me.
Okay Step two! Add some people to the list o’ people on the list! Only participate if you want to, no pressure and all.
1. Greg
2. Ranting Redhead
3. Random and Odd
4. Sarcastic Journalist
5. A Somewhat Normal Life
Whew, done, okay meeting was meant to start 11 minutes ago, but no one has called looking for me, I’m sure they just think I am caught in some other work related activity.
So here’s the question: What 5 things do you miss about your childhood?
1.) Not being afraid.
I wish I still climbed trees. We were wild children there was five of us, including the two boys from next door, who knew no fear and no limits. Growing up in West Warwick, Rhode Island had few benefits, but we could play in the sand dunes along the river, build illegal tree houses, play baseball on the little league field after dusk and as long as we were in shouting distance from our house, we had a free reign to do what we wanted. And we wanted to climb trees. We also had no balance. Oh and we liked to dare each other to jump from the highest branch possible. I’m not sure how, but we never broke a bone. We didn’t know enough to be afraid.
2.) Lelaphant.
I had a stuffed elephant. I took it everywhere. I loved it. I can still remember the way the tip of the nose tasted (salty, is that gross or what) and the way it smelled (soil, like I had been in the garden with my mom). I remember the feeling of waking up on it, where the decrepit noise box left it’s imprint on my chest, I never remember the noise box working, I do remember making the noise I thought it would make when I was playing with it. I also remember that my mother was always going on about how gross and dirty Lelaphant was.
One night, while I was sleeping, my mother took Lelaphant and put it in the wash; that night a crime was committed. We’re going to call it Stuffed Animal Slaughter in the Second Degree. I mean I am sure she did not set out with the intent of disintegrating Lelaphant in the wash, but her actions did cause the death of a much beloved toy. Seriously, I am getting teary-eyed just thinking about it right now.
3.) Rice and Beans.
As young children, my sister, brother and I were shuttled between Mom’s and Dad’s. Many weekends my Dad would be scheduled to take us, but then some sort of business would interrupt our time and rather than incur the wrath of my Moms, he would bring us over to the family house. His mother and her husband lived on the first floor. His sister lived on the second floor. His niece lived on the third floor. A big ole house o’ Puerto Ricans.
There was always a huge pot of rice and beans. Not that crap stuff you find in bad fast food places, but the kind that takes all your troubles away. On the next burner would be the MEAT. You never knew what kind of meat, but whatever it was would be so good; it would just melt in your mouth. I think that after finding out where the rabbits in the backyard went, we stopped asking what the meat was, but we never stopped eating it.
Eventually my Grams moved to Florida, my Aunt bought her own house and the cousin moved to New Jersey. Whenever I smell pinesol or see plastic covered furniture I am taken back to the place of my childhood where I felt most loved.
4.) Kites.
One of my Mom’s nicest boyfriends, Ken, would take us kite flying. I couldn’t tell you where it was, some hill in Rhode Island, probably in Narragansett or Newport (I have a vague recollection of going to the Newport Mansions once after kite flying). I don’t know that I had flown a kite before Ken came into our lives, I’m pretty sure I haven’t flown one since, what I do know was that of all the men my Mom dated he was one of the two that I wished she would marry. For a while she was engaged to One of The World’s Most Odious Men, I capitalize to stress the depth of his odiousness. She never married the jerk, but he was just an example of the men she liked. For some reason, Ken never fit this type. Even after they stopped seeing each other, he would come by in the winter and snowplow the drive. Eventually he married someone else and he stopped coming by and plowing the drive. I think somewhere, deep down inside, he still wanted to be with her, she just couldn’t get her act together and figure out how to appreciate a nice guy.
5.) Masie E. Quinn Elementary.
I went to High school with the same people I went to first grade. Sure some people moved away and some people came halfway thought junior high, but for the most part, all those kids in my first grade class graduated high school with me. Except my best friends. I use to make friends with all the broken kids, I still do, but back in the day it was Amanda, Bobby, Ronnie. The four of us were together all the time.
They were the bad kids (after two abortions, Amanda had her first child at 16, Bobby was expelled for trying to buy a gun to shoot our geometry teacher, Ronnie just disappeared) and I was a good kid. We always sat together because our last names. I think that a few teachers hoped that I would be a good influence. What really happened was that they showed me a thing or two about life. Amanda would have boot shaped bruises on her legs from her stepfather. Bobby would come to school with black eyes. Ronnie would always be able to supply whatever was needed to forget.
Now I know the truth, or rather I can comprehend the depth of what I was seeing back then, but I think that those friends were some of the best I could ever have. We knew everything about each other, we provided safe haven when we could, we helped each other forget what was really happening, and it was always totally selfless. And as bad as things were when we were ten, I know that they were so much worse when we were sixteen.