1. The first week of 6th grade, the first Friday, I think. In the crowded, echoing hallway before the last class of the day, a friend - Rosalia, I think her name was - told me that when her dad was a kid, he'd hidden out in one of the bathrooms and been locked inside the school all night. This struck us as a grand adventure (though as an adult, it frankly seems a bit less than grand).
2. Summer, sitting up late with son #3, watching cartoons.
This song:
This song:
3. Dancing in a club with friends. The club was in a dark basement and had a huge picture of Kate Moss on the wall, probably lifted from the perfume counter at Dillard's. Someone had drawn vampire teeth on Kate, and her befanged face flickered in the strobe lights.
4. 4th grade, at the Catholic school. After our school play in the evening, we took advantage of the chaos backstage to escape down the secret passage to the school cafeteria. We ran amok in our peasant costumes, thinking that we'd seen a ghost, but it was probably just the pilot light on the boiler.
5.Walking into the mall with son #1. We were laughing that the giant decorative urns out front looked like the battle urns in Okage: Shadow King. We started to chant the silly, yet ominous dungeon music from the game.
6. A pair of blue Chinese slippers that my friend Clara gave me. They had red roses embroidered on the tops. I wore them all that summer.
7. One bright afternoon, down at the shopping center on Navarro street (where the HEB was until they built the new one where the K-mart used to be) I bought some Flintstone's vitamins and Ryvita crackers, then hung around Sally Beauty Supply, looking at nail polish.
8. The beach in Indianola. Son #2 runs along in his red galoshes and yellow slicker. We are searching for shells that do not contain hermit crabs. We think we succeed, but it turns out the shells we bring home have crabs in them anyway. (Son #2, who loves marine animals, is thrilled).
9. That patch of sun-stricken lawn over there, in the neighbor's yard. My neighbor Kevin and I are sunbathing. This is in the 80's, when sunbathing was cool. He's reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I ask him if it's any good. He says no, really it's profoundly boring.
10. Going to the cash machine with a girlfriend one night and discovering that her PIN code was a truly offensive word. She said "well, no one is going to guess I'd pick that one, would they?"
11. My cousin and I, at K-mart, the one on Navarro street that later became the HEB. We are doing some late night shopping (that is, if you call buying toilet paper with which you're going to wrap your friend's truck "shopping".) On a whim I pick up some candy made from raspberry tea. It's one of these I'm chewing on the night I meet my future husband. Years later, he says that ever after, the smell of raspberries reminds him of this.
12. The cool, blue surrealness of the water park. Some things never change, for which I am grateful.
13. Down the street from my grandmother's house in the next town was a robo-wash, with a green seahorse painted on the side. If we could find a willing relative to take us, we'd pile into the back of the station wagon and shriek whenever the robotic arms passed by to squirt soap on the windows. This was the best thing ever and what passed for entertainment in the 70's.
14. We take son #4, the dinosaur fanatic of all dinosaur fanatics, to see some real dinosaur fossils. The look of amazement on his face is priceless.
15. Stepson and son #1 are playing an elaborate game of hide and seek. I am tracking them around the apartment complex, and they are tracking me. We look for clues and signs of each other in the landscape. They are wily and quick, always out of sight. Near the pool, I see their damp footprints, just beginning to fade in the heat.
16. Driving by Citizen's hospital late at night (usually on my way to the Maverick Market for a surreptitious pack of powdered donuts) I could see the lighted windows up and down the staircase at the side of the building. I would have a terrible urge to stop and run all the way up the stairs and back, but I never did.
17. Our wacky cats, and the way they'd surveil us from their hidey holes while we did the cooking...
or anything else, for that matter.
18. The day son #1 graduated from military boot camp. This one is tough, because I wanted to keep this list strictly positive to neutral memories, and I did feel some distress at seeing him become a soldier. However, I was also very proud that he had become an adult and had achieved what he set out to do, so I suppose it balances out.
19. The radio station in Victoria, and how spooky it was at night. The silent and heavily carpeted corridors, soundproof, no one about but these life-size cardboard cutouts of music artists lurking in the corners. They nearly made me jump out of my skin when I'd come upon one unexpectedly. Faith Hill has never been so terrifying.
20. Working in the bath department at the linens store, folding luxurious, fluffy towels while the Moody Blues played quietly on the sound system. In each box of towels was a slip of paper, saying "inspected by (name)". I got to know the names of each of the inspectors at each of the factories. My favorite was Nora Duck, from the factory in North Carolina. I always felt a little better when the towels were inspected by Nora Duck.
21. My first car, a battered 1984 Chevy Cavalier. It cost $600 and I was proud of the fact that I could leave it with the doors unlocked, keys in the ignition, a full tank of gas and a sign in the window that said "please steal me" and nobody would.
22. There are a surprising number of happy memories connected with this soda machine*, everything from the older kids using it as a base in tag to the younger kids trying to buy sodas with chocolate gelt. It's even very nearly the site of the footprints in item 15. But if I have to limit myself to one, I suppose it will be this - one night, I was buying a Coke, but the machine did not return the change it owed me. I said, "hey, where's my nickel?" Just then, I heard a gentle clinking sound about 5 feet behind me. I knew, even before I looked, that it was my nickel, falling from the heavens where it must have taken a detour.
*I took this picture from a youtube video, since I never bothered to take a photo of the machine myself, because - well, who does? It's only when such ordinary things are long gone do they become Significant.
23. With a heap of cousins, listening to ABBA records and reading The Thing at the Foot of the Bed, wearing a pair of Luv-it's jeans with satin hearts on the pockets. To this day, this still seems like an awesome combination.
24. Roller skating, The skating rink with its pastel lights and smell like watermelon Jolly Ranchers. Where my best friend, the DJ, (may he rest in peace) kept playing Rush, which in retrospect seems a little odd. Still, I maintain there is no happier occupation than roller skating. Even when you are Old.
25. Finally, this one: The Boomerang Boomeraction Jonny Quest bumper music. Because when you have a family full of boys, you will have heard this. A lot.
So, 25 memories. No trauma, no sorrow.
It reminds you that things sometimes can be okay.
