Random Memories

[Deborah]

I remember being sent to Charm School at The Cinderella Shop when I was 11....my moms idea I'm still kinda charming when I wanna be

[LeftWriteFemme]

I remember thinking that I had the most beautiful mother in the world, I just got back from visiting her and I have to say, she is still the most beautiful mother in the world!

[Blade]

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

I remember thinking that I had the most beautiful mother in the world, I just got back from visiting her and I have to say, she is still the most beautiful mother in the world!

I remember thinking this too...and now I look back at those old pictures with those old glasses and those old hair styles and I go ewww what was she thinking LOL.....I saw one the other day where Mama's hair was "frosted" now it is naturally frosted LOL but she is still a beautiful woman.

[Guy]

I remember going out fishing with my father when the fish were literally trying to jump IN the boat.

We caught 112 flounder that day

Cijs fish are not very bright

[Lazy Daze]

I remember the way my Dad always smelled of cigarettes and cologne. His smile and the way this gorgeous blue eyes danced when he did. The way his arms felt when he used to hug me tight. His deep raspy quiet voice. How we always had Sunday night game night, because my mom worked third shift, so she would be napping, and him and I could have wrestling matches, wiffle ball games, bike races, etc. I remember the way he laughed, I remember dancing with my feet on top of his, I remember him teaching me how to play softball and that he was at Every game I ever played....I remember the day I came out to him (I was 16, and he was the only one I told until I was almost 30). And lastly, I remember and I can still hear him say "I love you Judge" (my nickname he gave me as a kid)....I miss him so much

[Blade]

I remember arguing with my Mom and my Nannie on Sunday mornings....yup you guessed it....about having to wear a dress to church....yes I won out eventually but not for MANY years. At first I could wear pants at night but they had to be dress pants of course. Then finally when I was about 17 or 18 I could wear dress pants Sunday morning.

[Blade]

I also remember on Sunday's we always went to my Gigi's for Sunday dinner after church. Of course we took "play clothes" to change into. As we would leave the church parking lot I'd already have slipped into my jeans or shorts and taken off that dress and those God forsaken patent leather shoes, and into my PF Fliers or my boots, and be looking for my hat. All the while Mom saying, can you not wait til we get to Gigi's?

[nycfem]

I remember when I was little, before I could spell, being in the backseat of the car with other little children, my mom driving, and her friend getting in the passenger seat. My mom asked her why she was covered in bruises and she spelled out, "D-O-U-G" (her husband). My mom nodded. I was so curious what word that spelled but knew that I'd get in trouble if I asked so I just kept spelling it in my mind over and over for hours in order to remember so I could ask someone later what this secret and powerful word was. Later at home, when my mom wasn't around, I asked my dad casually, "What word does D-O-U-G spell?" He seemed to think for a moment, caught off guard, and then said, "It isn't a word." He was probably being genuine in his answer (or not). I remember feeling so disappointed. Had I not remembered the letters in the right order? How could that be? The letters by that point were stuck on repeat in my brain. It wasn't until I could spell that I finally put it together. Doug was the reason why my mom's friend always had bruises. By then it wasn't satisfying to know, just sad.

[Kenna]

The annual Love Feast at my Gramma's Dunkard Brethren church... the smell of homemade food and the Love Feast bread (a very special recipe handed down generations), the quiet ceremony and traditions, the respect of all the elders, family and fellowship, watching each member kneel down to wash the feet of the brother or sister church member, how that act was done so gently and tenderly, how they drank grape juice (no alcohol permitted) and broke the special bread after blessings, and how the air and comfort of the space seemed to fill with unspoken powerful feeling of belonging and calmness. ... how I miss those times with my Gramma.

[Beloved]

I was reminded of this memory because the person I shared it with posted on Facebook that she was going to a lake...

It was a beautiful summer day. I was about 22/23 and I was with my first girlfriend who was femme (didn't know anything about butches yet), and we were in Nova Scotia. We hiked through the woods to a pretty lake. We got in a paddle boat and paddled out to the middle of the lake and got super high. And laughed and talked and then paddled back...which was hard because of our state and there was some wind and a bit of a current going in the wrong direction. It's a happy memory.

**I don't partake in that mind altering activity anymore.

[Mrs Arcstriker]

I remember growing up in Poughkeepsie, NY...I was younger than the 5th grade but older than the 3rd grade spent in a horrible place called Austinburgh, Ohio...We had just gotten back from 9 months of exile in Ohio with my father moving us to OH when the Fargo Corporation in NY laid him off...

Our first summer back at our childhood home that we seized from the squatters that lived there...

My mom had planted a garden including the usual vegetables along with some not so usual veggies...

In her eggplant patch she got up early one morning and tucked some white chicken eggs under the fruits of her labor...and told me that was where eggs came from. (I believed this until we moved back to Connecticut where I was born!)

In the backyard under the apple trees (Mac's) there was a ring of mushrooms that formed a circle the size of half a kick-ball field...and she said that was a Fairy Ring...She went on to tell me that the fairies would come out to meet at night and sit atop the mushroom caps as they called their meeting to order.

To this day I thank my mother for her ripe imagination, and I laugh with her as she laughs at my gullible soul. I don't even want to begin to tell you about the day we moved back to rural CT when I was only 12, or as I call that moment, "The day I learned where milk came from..."

[Miss Scarlett]

i remember...

my first bicycle

my first pair of pantyhose

my Little Hostess Buffet

Jingle jumps

when the Duncan yo-yo people came to our school every spring

stealing Dad's handkerchiefs to make "parachutes" for Barbie

Dad getting out the ladder to get Barbie off the roof

Weekly Readers

Scholastic Book Club orders

Watching color tv for the first time...

[cinnamongrrl]

I'm loving this thread and would love for it to wake back up.... I'm too tired to think coherently and contribute properly lol

[little_ms_sunshyne]

I remember being 5 and only wanting to wear things with ruffles. Ruffled skirt, underwear, and socks. When we would go out to dinner, I would stand up in the middle of the restaurant and start singing whatever song my dad had just taught me. It would vary from the Beatles "Hey Jude", a Simon and Garfunkel song, Juan Luis Guerra, 50's doo wop..the list was endless. Imagine everyone's surprise when I belted out "Welcome to the Jungle" lol Yep, my mom did not know I was listening the one day she played it.

I still have such a love and appreciation for all music

[jac]

Pretty certain I will be sharing lots of memories in here over time.

I remember....
Going to the bathroom at my sitter's house and falling in the toilet. I sang Yummy Yummy I Got Love in My Tummy till I was rescued. I was 4.

At another sitter's I remember always eating spagettios and peanut butter sandwhiches for lunch. I'm sure there was other food but I distictly remember this being all I ever ate there. I was 4.

I remember walking home from the public pool in Tempe AZ when I was 5 and losing my shoes somehow. My older siblings took turns throwing down their towels so I could keep from walking on the pavement till I would make it to patches of grass.

[Nat]

I spent 7 weeks of the summer of 2004 in England. Most of that time was in Oxford, but we visited many places. The graves of dead writers. Shakespeare plays. Museums. Stonehenge. Famous and infamous gardens. Tasting the mineral water in Bath. Lots of pubs. My first Lesbian bar! A gorgeous and delightfully lonely trip by bus and train to Port Isaac on the coast of cornwall, where I stayed in a surf shack and read by candlelight and swam in the cold ocean between cliffs. I never got to Tintagel, but I saw it from a distance which might have been better.

Although I enjoyed it very much, nothing really touched me. Nothing really hit me until we visited the Haworth parsonage. At first being there was like every other place I'd been to - something worth appreciating, something to try to hold onto for later savoring. But then I walked into Charlotte's room. The moment I walked into her room, tears just jumped into my eyes. I didn't cry like a baby or anything, but it was a surprise. Of all the many places I'd been to and through, walking into Charlotte Bronte's little bedroom is the thing that moved me most of all.

[jac]

I remember...

Being in the Brownies and bridging over to Girl Scouts. I still have my sash and pins.
I remember our girl scout sleepover in the backyard of one of the girls. It was the best sleepover/camp-out I had ever experienced as a kid. Notice I said, as a kid... lol.
I remember playing four-square and kickball at school. They were the only schoolyard games I enjoyed with the whole class.
I remember being a hall monitor in the fourth grade. It looked like this except it was purple and white and didn't have a helicopter spinny thing on it... Nor the mouse lol. I still have it...

[maryam]

I remember laying in bed at night and hearing the trains singing down the tracks a mile or so from my home. When I was little, they meant home to me, and when I slept away from home where I couldn't hear them, I'd wake up in the night from not hearing them.

Then when I was getting older and knew I was "odd" the train whistle meant freedom. Odd was our particular small townism for gay. I couldn't just be "One of them" which meant "not Methodist or Episcopalian. I had to be "One of them" and "odd". Later I realized I was queer, which was different from "odd". I wasn't even good at not being right! Even my "wrong" was wrong! So I read a lot, losing myself in books because I so didn't fit as an odd, biracial, religious minority. Books about trains meant a lot to me, especially people who went on one-way trips. Some day I would get on a train and go somewhere else. Somewhere safer than home, which is crazy because your home is supposed to be safe. In the Last Battle, the reason the remaining Friends of Narnia get sent over is because they were on a train and it wrecked and they died, which is why they got to stay. When we realized they were dead, my sister cried sadly because they were all dead and I cried happily because they never had to go back and they got there on a train.

I didn't leave on a train, I left in a car and when I got to my new town, I looked for an apartment. I ended up in a dodgy trailer park even though I could have afforded a better spot because it was close to the train. It was literally on "the other side of the tracks". It was crazy for a single, 18 year old, small town girl to live alone in a place like that. I made one or two close friends during that time, including an older Butch with issues who was my first lover. I still love her. But she wasn't my GF, she was a friends with benefits kind of woman, because she couldn't trust enough to have a girlfriend at that time. But she was a friend, of sorts, and she rocked my world. I look back now and realize that in a more open world, an easier world, she would have been Leather to the core, doing the D/s thing. We had an unhealthy friendship, but it was good, for what it was. We managed not to hurt each other. Her loneliness overcame her and she drank too much in the end. She died in an old churchyard, a stone's throw from the tracks. Every time I hear Arlo Guthrie's Last Train to Glory I think of her and smile. And sometimes I cry.

Now we live in yet another city, smaller than the last one, but close enough to the big city to run in for the day when we need to. We take the commuter train. I love it. We can drive in, and sometimes we do, but usually, I take the train. I live about a quarter mile from the station so it's an easy walk. The last train runs by at 930, and then I can go to bed. Even if I'm super tired and go to bed early, I can't sleep 'til I hear that last train... As soon as it's gone, so am I.

Comfort and freedom, and death and safety.

That's what I remember about trains.

[nycfem]

This made me think of my own magical Brownie / Girl Scouts memory. I wanted to join a Brownie troop (if that's the right word) with girls from my school in my Ohio suburb, and it was run by one of the girl's fathers, which I guess is perhaps a little odd in itself (dunno). Anyway my parents were told that there really were enough Brownies and that if I wanted to be admitted I would have to be voted in. My parents both thought, "The nerve!" I was really bummed about it and explained to them that because there were quite a number of popular kids in that troop, and I was not popular, my chances were very low of being voted in. However, my dad was furious about the whole idea that I had to be voted in and began scheming right away. He asked me who the most popular girls in the troop were, and when I told him, he asked me to invite them to go to [insert a variety of pricey local places in Ohio that children love] which he would be picking up the tab for and chauffeuring us around to, while remaining in the background so that I could campaign like a cool kid. We lived in a lower middle class suburb, and I didn't get taken to special places like this (nor did the other girls), so it was doubly exciting to be spending time with girls who usually ignored me and also be doing activities my parents never agreed to pay for for me. Flash to: I was voted into the Brownie troop to the distaste of the elitist dad that had been so unwelcoming to me. Ha!

Originally Posted by jac

I remember...

Being in the Brownies and bridging over to Girl Scouts. I still have my sash and pins.
I remember our girl scout sleepover in the backyard of one of the girls. It was the best sleepover/camp-out I had ever experienced as a kid. Notice I said, as a kid... lol.

[Amber2010]

I remember waking to the sound of the waves.. They were so loud I just couldn't believe it. I remember opening the curtians and looking outside at the sunrise and the ocean. No one was walking on the beach and it was so peaceful and beautiful. I remember grabbing some shorts and a top and running down the four flights of stairs and running to the water. I remember how cold it was on my feet but it also made me feel alive again. Ready to take on whatever was to come my way. Although I had to leave this place and would not return for at least a year I remember feeling renewed. My strength had returned and the feeling that I can handle any situation that came my way.