Jade Road tagged me with the 10 Childhood Memories meme going around. So I have reached far back into the depths of the memory banks and these are the 10 I have come up with...
1. Every weekday in the summer my mom (who doesn't drive far) driving us to Grandma's house for lunch, Grandma being the amazing woman that she was would make all three of us grandchildren a different lunch if we so wanted (it was like Grandma's cafe...) all the while making Mom and Grandpa lunch too.
2. And speaking of Grandma, we would go swimming almost everyday, and Grandma would put on her swimming cap (it used to crack us up) and she would get into the pool and "doggy paddle" down to the deep end to the diving board, hold on to it and do her kicks, and then "doggy paddle" back to the shallow end of the pool and then patiently play "volleyball" with us or float around the pool in her floating lounge chair.
3. Then before we all left Grandma's we would sing this song (which my very creative mom made up, she is quite good at the original songs...) that went like this: Goodbye Grandma Goodbye, Goodbye Grandma Goodbye, We'll see you again, Tomorrow is when, Goodbye Grandma Goodbye!!
Now mind you, we can't sing all that great, but we were loud and proud, and Grandma would get angry and tell us to stop, that the neighbors could hear, but each day, we would sing to her!!
4. Growing up, you would usually find me hanging out with the neighborhood boys (there weren't any girls in our neighborhood), and we had this tree on the side of the house with this amazingly thick branch that stuck out and had this huge hole in the center of the branch...well the boys dared me to do a flip out of the branch, which I did successfully, unfortunately my younger brother tried to imitate me, without as much success as I had. Not long thereafter, Dad cut down the branch...
5. And speaking of my younger brother, I remember teaching him to ride his bike without his training wheels (well not really teaching him, my parents did that), I would run along side him holding onto the back of the bike and then let go and he did great riding and riding...I went inside to get my parents to show them my brother riding all by himself, and we watched him run his bicycle right into the side of a parked school bus...no worries though he was okay and got right back on that bicycle and rode again!!
6. Growing up I used to play softball (since I was 5) and went to lots of softball games during the summer...those sodas after the game were always a big hit, waiting in line to get a "suicide" (you know the sodas with all sodas mixed together).
7. One summer my mom took us to the YMCA (this is where we took swim lessons), and this particular time I had to dive off the high dive. I remember looking down and thinking "I can't do this" and "this is too high" but I just dove off and loved it, wanting to do it again and again...
8. Each summer for a few summers when I was in my pre- and early teens, our family would go to Fontana Dam, North Carolina and rent a cabin. We would go to the pool most every day, and man oh man what foxy lifeguards. I remember "falling" for one of the lifeguards, who really was interested in my older sister (rightfully so...), and getting my feelings hurt that he didn't even know that I existed (really tickles me now to think how I tried everything to get him to notice me)...
9. In Fla. we have lots of lizards. Well my brother and I would catch the lizards, and sometimes we would put them in a cardboard box under my brother's bed (we even went so far as to punch "air holes" in the lid. Everyday we would feed them (or so we thought) BB-Q potato chips (hey they would open their mouths and lock down on the chip, what's a kid to think???). Sometimes they would "escape" the box (if they were lucky enough), and Mom would wonder why we had "so many lizards" running loose in the house....(guess the secrets out now, Mom reads my blog)...hehe
and finally....
10. I know this one will shock you guys....in the backyard of our house where the condensation pipe leads out of the house toads would gather. My brother and I would go out to that particular spot and pick them up and hold them, play with them, whatever. But this particular one day, my sister came out to play with the toad, held it over my head, and it peed on my head....my sister still gets a kick out of this one, as does her son my nephew. I wonder if that is where my obsession came from???
These are just a few of the memories I can think of. So now I am passing the game onto:
Dawn, Nikki, Stacy, and Gina
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