A few childhood memories remain incredibly vivid. Some have been worn into grooves in my brain, they have been retold so often. With those, I am unsure where my recollections end and those of others begin. Others, I am quite certain, are mine alone.
Here are twenty memories, off the top of my head. Some I have likely shared here before but of some others, I have never spoken, let alone written:
1. Sliding down the driveway at my friend's house, until my pants were worn out. I was wearing a jump suit with giraffes on it and I was in big trouble.
2. Being in love with an airline pilot. He was my aunt's boyfriend and he brought me presents from all over the world. He also called me Miss Muffet.
3. My father telling me that my baby sister had been born.
Those first three memories were from when we lived in Montreal. We moved away just after I turned four. All the rest are from Hawkesbury, Ontario and take place before my 11th birthday.
4. Going to the Dairy Queen with my aunt to get a Buster Bar and dropping it on the way home.
5. Getting caught peeing in my neighbour's rose bushes.
6. Ringing doorbells with my friends and running away.
7. Knocking on my neighbours' doors and asking them for their autographs.
8. Having the belt on my blue coat ripped off by a boy.
9. Being pushed into a bush by some bullies on my way home from school.
10. Trying to ignore a class-mate who was standing at my desk chanting "Tête carrée!" (It means square head and was the standard put down that francophones used against anglos. I had an English last name, and spoke English at home, so I was fair game).
11. The boy I liked in Grade Five telling me that all the boys, including him, had crushes on my best friend.
12. Making up sins in confession because I was too embarassed to tell anything real to the priest. "I talked back to my mother" was a frequent sin.
13. Winning a medal for "best behaved girl" on the same day as my crush won "best behaved boy."
14. My friend Philippe telling me how babies were made - through kissing. I was fascinated and horrified.
15. Being on the winning team during Carnaval at Ecole Marguerite Bourgeois.
16. The way the principal of that school smelled like pipe tobacco and how much I loved him.
17. Being flashed, as I cut through the church yard on my way to school.
18. Seeing a dog that had been hit by a car on the street in front of my house and how it felt like hours until the city came to take it away.
19. Getting a red bike with a yellow banana seat for my 7th birthday.
20. Bringing my new cat across the street to meet my neighbour and telling her "If you don't like my cat, then I can't come to visit you anymore."
Your turn. Can you share some random childhood memories?
4 comments:
in my room, testing the glass on my window by putting my foot on it until it broke. Closing the drapes, taking off to my best friend Noreen's, then coming home hours later and having to spill the beans to my mom. Not a happy day.
Stole $ from my step-sister, bought a big bag of candy, then ditched the candy out of guilt... And my older brother took the heat initially about the missing money because he was the career criminal, not little goody two shoes me. Them I fessed cause of that aforementioned guilt. I still feel badly about the theft!!
Realizing with shock when I was 4 or 5 that the girl with the long hair with whom I was playing was actually a boy... Grandmother telling me when I was 6 that I couldn't wear my favorite blue shorts with my favorite green tank top with a hippopotamus on it (apparently blue and green clash?)... Laying down in the tall grass in a large field while on a family hike, wondering when someone would notice my disappearance... Bringing home stray kittens found in alley at Bathurst and Bloor (mum not impressed). Discovering Margaret Laurence and my love of literature in grade 6... And falling in live with my French teacher (a woman) and Art/English teacher (a man) in grade 8.
Thanks you two. xo
Post a Comment