I was really stoked awhile back to find my journal from when I was eight years old, because the ones from about age eleven on are painful and don’t do much more than reinforce my low self esteem. (Yet I can’t seem to toss them on the fire?) I sat down and opened up this little blue diary, the kind that you can lock on the front, the little paperback book sized kind, and had to laugh when I saw what about 75% of the entries said:
Reg day at school.
Of course, now, thirty one or more years later, I can’t recall what a “reg day at school” was. I remember a little bit, but I wanted to smack myself upside the head, then grab my own shoulders and yell DETAILS, WRITE THEM. THANK YOU.
Oh well. I remember a few things from around that time. Like when Mr. Ward made me go sit in the hall because when we were talking about the sun and light years I said that, you know, it was totally possible that the sun had already burned itself out, and as soon as the last of its heat goes flying past us, we’re pretty much all done here.
I remember swinging really high on the swingset at my elementary school with my best friend, Becky, and singing On Top of the World, worrying that I’d flip around the bar over my head. I remember that someone kicked the ball when we were playing kickball at recess and it landed on top of the chain link fence and popped (was it me? I don’t think so? Maybe?). I remember a girl called another girl a bitch, and she got the paddle broken in half on her butt. I remember hiding beneath the lockers in the hallway when a funnel cloud was sitting over our school.
But the regular, day to day stuff? I think that is all gone. I do remember the mornings at home, getting ready for school with my brother and watching the Three Stooges while sitting at the coffee table with our oatmeal or cinnamon toast or cereal. But maybe that was just Sunday mornings? I think my memory may be not as great as most people’s. SG has a freakishly accurate memory, and the contrast of his to mine may make me seem like more of a forgetter than I really am. Do most people remember that stuff? Their routines and comforts from when they were eight? Do you?
I always think I remember things until I have conversations with my parents and their memory of my childhood and mine are completely different.
Yes! My parents and I have that, too. And, uh, already with my kids. They remember everything. Yikes.
I remember my mom waking me up every morning and leading me to the couch. Once there, I’d find hot chocolate and a cinnamon pop tart waiting for me on the coffee table and cartoons on the TV. As I was waking up and eating, she would get ready and leave for work. Dad was already gone. I’d get myself together and lock up. Every morning, starting at age 8.
So now I cry every time I eat a cinnamon pop tart. Because I am sappy like that.
I’m really sappy, too. It’s a superpower you know.