Random Memories

[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.

[JAGG]

I remember the smell of noxema on hot summer nights. My grandmother used it on us when we got sunburned. Do they even make that stuff anymore.

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by JAGG

I remember the smell of noxema on hot summer nights. My grandmother used it on us when we got sunburned. Do they even make that stuff anymore.

Yes!

And it's still good on sunburns. One of the worst I ever had kept me covered in the stuff for days.

I have a jar in my bathroom. But I don't get sunburned very often anymore, so I just use it to wash my face when the urge strikes me.

I the scent.

[Ginger]

I remember the intoxicating smell of plastic on Christmas morning, from all those toys, and the year I got my first guitar. I was 12. I stayed in my room playing and singing for hours at a time. Before that, I had ukuleles. I had one shaped like an electric guitar! I loved all of them.

[Ginger]

I remember riding my bike to the beach, the summer before sixth grade, and parking it by a tree. Then I would climb the tree, sit up there and eat an apple I had brought with me. I loved apples, and looking out over the beach.

I remember getting a stomach ache before dinner, all the time. Oddly, this isn't a bad memory. I would curl up on the upstairs couch, while my mom made dinner. I could hear her in there, and smell the food. By the time she called us to the table, my stomach ache was usually gone. She was a great cook, especially before she lost her Texan ways and stopped frying so much.

I have a stomach ache right now, I think my stomach is feeling nostalgic.

[Bèsame*]

random thoughts....

When I was 15, I was in drivers Ed. This certain afternoon, was the day I was suppose to start driving...in the neighbor hood around the high school. Well, I was behind the wheel and made a right turn, didn't release the turn and went up the curb, barely missing the fire hydrant. And um, yeah,it happened kitty corner from my house, while my two little brothers and their friends watched. Of course the car says drivers Ed on it. Later that afternoon, when my dad came to pick me up, the dorky little brothers came too. " where you driving a blue car ?"

" oh no, it was black" I lied. Why? "Cause that girl who went up the curb was sure red and she looked like you." My dad knew it was me..lol

Why why why are there little bothers?