Rough days.
The last few days haven't been super kind to me (and people close to me) so I've decided just to do a blog post of random memories. Kinda funny to stand at the mouth of memory lane and see what comes up.
England, 2003
When I was 15, my dad took me on a trip to England to visit a friend of mine. It was the craziest thing!! We just picked up and went, with no idea where exactly we were going or how exactly we'd get there. Driving was the hardest thing ever. I didn't drive, thankfully, but my dad did and we were super confused by the backwardness of it all. The road, the car, but especially the traffic circles. I believe they went around to the left! Which would have been weird enough, but you had to yield the opposite way! Needless to say we got honked at a lot. We also couldn't find our hotel. We were about to stop and ask at another hotel when I glanced out the window and saw it.... across the street! Can you imagine? "Yes, where is the Thistle hotel?" "...It's right across the street...."
Saving the Day at Synagogue
When I was about 7, my family went to Friday night services at Synagogue once. At that time, Havurah Shalom was having their services in the Jewish Community Center. Anyway, a bunch of people arrived only to find the door was locked. As it happened, though, one of the classrooms on the ground floor had left their window open a few inches, and it had no screen. My dad pushed the window open, lifted me up and I crawled through the window onto the counter. I jumped off the counter, ran out the door and down the hall and opened the big front doors from the inside. Hooray!!
The Guy That Fell From the Ceiling
My junior year of high school, a leak developed in our roof. A guy named Dan came to fix it. He climbed around on the roof for a while but eventually had to fix the leak from the inside. He went into the attic and walked on plywood laying across the beams to get to the part of the roof that was leaking. However, he stepped on the edge of the plywood and it flipped up behind him as though he had stepped on the edge of a rake. He fell, feet first, into the cellulose insulation and sheet rock above the main hallway. I was downstairs and heard a weird noise and I walked toward the hallway to investigate. I stood there, dumbfounded, as the ceiling cracked open like a trapdoor and tons of grayish-black insulation and Dan's butt came down. Dan managed to grab hold of one of the beams and hung there from the ceiling, covered in dust and cellulose, his feet at my eye level. Through the gaping hole from which he dangled I heard my mom's voice, "oh... are you all right?" Probably the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
5th Grade Lunch Helper
It was a big deal, in the 5th grade, to be chosen to be the Lunch Helper. Every so often the cafeteria ladies would come to the classroom and ask for volunteers to help at lunchtime. Usually, everyone's hand would shoot up because it meant you got to miss 15 minutes of math. The downside was you had to dish up and hand out food to everyone (and not get to eat any of it yourself until after everyone else had eaten) and you had to wash tables with water that stunk like bleach. However, after you finished, you got to take your time eating your lunch, whereas everyone else had 25 minutes tops. 5th grade was a tough year for me, socially. I remember one day being in a fight with my 4 best friends and it was torture because I sat right next to them all. They wouldn't speak to me, wouldn't look at me. I knew I'd be eating lunch alone. I was always sensitive, so that hurt. When that lunch lady came in my hand shot up so fast she raised her eyebrows. I'll also never forget that when she chose me, two of my "best friends" looked at one another and mouthed "yessss!"
Big Sister
Summer after 3rd grade was a great summer. My best friend down the street had just had a swimming pool put in her back yard. I was over there every day, swimming and playing with her. It was an awesome summer! One day in early August, I came home from swimming and my mom said she wanted to talk to me. I had just turned 9 years old the week before. She was upstairs making the bed. I came in and sat on the bed for a second before I remembered she hated when I sat on the bed in my wet swimsuit. She said nothing about that which I thought was odd. She asked me, point blank, how I'd feel if our family adopted a baby. I said something like, "um, okay. When?" Fussing with a pillowcase she said, "Two weeks." That was all the notice I had that I'd be a big sister. Right on cue, 14 days later, my sister was born. Oh how I loved her! (Still do.) I also remember when we went to the airport to pick my mom up, we stopped for gas at a Chevron on Burnside next to a Volvo dealership (both of which are still there today) and as I walked to the car carrying my sister (until she got too heavy), these teenage girls stared and said "aww look at the baby!" I can still hear their voices in my head, 17 and a half years later.
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