The Ghosts of Years Past 3 - 10

Last night at our 'nightcap' dessert celebration, Ali came up with a game to commemorate my birthday. For every year of my life, that I could remember, I was to share my favorite memory, or one that stood out in my mind. And since we both love talking about ourselves (we are damn good at it) I jumped on it, plus it was a great way to cap a not so great day. Some of these are the ones I shared with Ali last night, and others have popped into my head since that rummaging session last night.

Ages 3 - 10

3 years old - one of my first memories of all time. We learned french in preschool, in the basement of st joe's gradeschool. You know when you close your eyes and the outline and 'negative' of what you were just looking at is 'visible' on the inside of your eyelid for a few seconds, well I remember closing my eyes as he spoke french to us, and having the outline of his head appear in orange, red, black, blue etc. I was fascinated. And I even remember the desk I was sitting at, in front of him to my right, a primary color 'little person' desk.

4 years old - We got our cat, from the drummer of my dad's first band. We named her muffin. She was a long haired calico.

5 years old - I was in Ms. DeForest's class, a friend of my parents from college who was dating another one of their SU friends, and I really really needed to know when they were getting married. So I asked, during story time. Even at a young age, I was a huge flaming gossip.

6 years old - I couldn't find underwear, so I wore swimsuit bottoms to school. That was also the year that I figured out what a crush was, and had one on the same guy till I was 12. Yeah.

7 years old - We had a summer school in our tree fort in our back yard. Caitlin, being the oldest, was of course the teacher, and Alex, Rosemary, James, and I were the students. We even had homework and little tiny desks. It was awesome.

8 years old - Our parents pulled over to a rest stop on the way to visit my great grandmother and the family farm in Oregon, they told us we were soon going to have an addition to our family. Caitlin immediately thought we were getting a horse. My mother, in her grey tshirt dress, told us she was pregnant and that we would have a little sibbling! Caitlin and I then spent the next 9 months thinking of baby names and pulling them out of hats in our shared bedroom every night before going to sleep.

9 years old - Maria was born. I used to go into her room and pick her up while she was sleeping. One time she woke up and screemed. Mostly she didn't.

10 years old - my neighborhood girlfriends and I had sleepovers as often as possible. We grew tired of our the anxiety of asking our parents for permission, and their sometimes "nos" so we made up a "may we please have a sleepover" song. We even had harmony, we were so freaking awesome, and they could barely ever say no.



.