A friend and I were just chatting about how we can talk and talk and talk forever and I was reminded how once I talked my sister right to sleep and then I remembered this that I hadn't thought about in years...

I was staying at a friends house one night w/ two other friends, kind of like, oh we're too drunk to drive home can we sleep here thing, and the two other girls were 'lovahs' lolol so they went off to one bedroom to sleep. I stayed on the sofa because K, the home owner had a thing for me, or so I thought and I so didn't have a thing for her back. I decided to leap over the sofa to land on it to sleep and well, that didn't work out lol I ended up tipping the sofa over and on top of me! I laid there laughing my drunk ass off as the three came to my un-needed rescue. K made me get in bed with her and to keep her from 'hitting on me' or so I thought that would happen in my drunken stupid mind lol I started talking. And talking and talking about god only knows what but I didn't shut up forever until finally K says to me, "Nita! Sssshhhh do you hear that?!?" knowing full well if I stopped talking for one moment, I would pass out. I did.

hold on girls !
 

I remember being 10-ish, my little sister was 6...we were inseperable. I was always leading her around by the hand. When I wasnt tugging her ponytail or shutting her in the closet for not doing my chores (I'm still so sorry for that one...), I was taking care of her...latch key kids.

I remember we were in the backseat of the Dodge Polaris, the same car the California Highway Patrol drove at the time. My sister and I were propped on the bench seat, no seat belts. Mom was driving down a rollercoaster country road when she yelled enthusiastically over her shoulder

"HOLD ON GIRLS .. WE'RE CLEARING OUT THE CARBORATOR !!!"

No sooner had she said that, the deafening sound of that HUGE engine kicked into overdrive, the G-forces pushed our little beanheads back into the seat, our pie-plate eyes watering from the open windows and the whirrrr of fields, cows and phone poles , fields ,cows and phone poles, phonepoles, phonepoles, phonepoles blurrrrr...

I remember I could barely reach out against the strain of the acceleration...and then only to get tossed by that floaty suspension...to finally find my little sisters hand. We bounced around the back seat like two little BB's in a metal box flying down those rollercoaster roads...

I remember shooting guns at camp as a kid and how exciting it was. The guns were so heavy and so loud and intense when they went off. We'd lay on our stomachs on a dirty platform and aim our rifles at paper targets. And there was a man named Oz who ran the whole gun activity area and he limped because he'd been shot by a kid accidentally at some point in time, or maybe more than once.

Oh god that last part made me laugh!

I remember getting to Lake Texarkana after all the other families had arrived, and my sister and I had to change into our swimsuits in a tent with two boys sleeping on cots. I remember feeling grownup in my irritation. Kind of a proud moment.

I remember the rope slowly looping around my legs while I was waiting for the boat to take off. It went taut, but my skis didn't come out of the water. I remember my dad's and my uncle's faces looking puzzled, as they watched from the back of the boat, and my uncle diving into the water just as the rope tightened around my legs and I was dragged under the water. I remember seeing the surface of the water above me, but not being afraid. I thought it was beautiful. I was seven.

I remember the night my parents woke me up by turning on the overhead light in my bedroom, and my mom's twisted face, as she cradled one arm with the other. My dad said they were going to the hospital, and we never talked about it again.

I remember cranking up the stereo really, really loud as soon as my parents' blue Buick station wagon pulled out of the driveway, and my sister and I dancing to Aretha's Gold. One time in our dancing, we turned to see them standing in the doorway, having just driven around the block and returned, to trick us. I remember my elation that we didn't get in big trouble. I think they were completely disarmed by the licentious way their little girls danced with each other. I remember panting and looking at them triumphantly.

Butchering
 

Living less than 100ft away from a set of train tracks and learning there were realy live hobos on board at night.

It was in AZ and we lived at the riverbottom in Tempe. There was a small house between our tralier and the tracks but behind the house was a row of old shacks that were about 20ft from the tracks. Hobos would hop off the trains at night and crash in these shacks. When my three older siblings and I learned of this magical adventure (I was 5yo) we began cleaning out the shacks and making beds up for them on the little cots that were in there. We would leave food on the crates that were their makeshift end tables and every now and then we would leave clothing.

In the mornings we would return to find everything used, eaten and taken that was left for them. It was so fun!! We never saw the hobos but every time we heard the train blow it's whistle in the darkness of the night we knew our guests were getting off the ride soon and would be sleeping in their little shacks shortly there after.

Wow!! Fun times... :)

I remember being little, maybe 5, and standing on my Pop's feet and dancing to the Andrew's Sisters singing "Begin the Beguine" and other big band songs and artists. My Pop always smelled like wool, dogs and old spice, wonderful smell. When I got older we went to the K of C Hall (Knights of Columbus) and danced to big band there.

Scent is the strongest memory...
 

I was at work on Friday and something smelled like damp wood mixed with resin or plastic. Strangest smell but it instantly brought me back to a memory of my childhood.

At my Great Aunts cabin at the lake there was a change house,essentially a shed closer to the lake then the cabin. We kids had to change out of bathing suits into summer clothes in the shed so we wouldn't track sand and salt water all inside the cabin. There was an old refrigerator from the 50s, random tools and a work bench, life jackets and oars on the walls. The floor was a cracked piece of Lino and the door didn't lock so I was always in a hurry to change.

They had a paddle boat at the cabin that I used to long to take out. It was the kind you see on small ponds in parks. My dad would occasionally take me out with it, I remember the exact sound the paddles used to make and how the plastic felt. I remember the dock and how the weathered wood would feel under my feet when I looked down off the edge into the green water. I remember the big collie dog, gypsy, she was so beautiful just like lassie from tv. I remember the drive seeming so long when I was a kid, in reality it was about 40 minutes.

What I wouldn't give to have a few days by myself back on that beach. Laying on the rocks and smelling the lake. To have back the people I used to laugh with. To be barefoot and carefree again, avoiding the sand ant hills on the grass while I ran towards the water.

not so cool...
 

Pappa Andy was cool, he was a war vet, his hands were burned. He was the pilot and the last guy out of his shot down B52 or something like that. It crashed, he got captured. Those were some tough days kiddo. He had ribbons and medals and stuff that were hanging on the wall.
He was grampa by marriage. He didnt like kids. He drank coffee and smelled like smoke and cologne. He laughed his raspy smokers laugh. And he'd roll his eyes, shake his head and say to me, "kid, you are something else..." lets watch some Lawrence Welk.

So one day I thought I'd be cool and take a pack of his camel unfiltered cigarettes. They were just sitting there, calling my name. Rolled em up in my t-shirt sleeve. NO, not cool, skinny arms. In my jeans back pocket? No, not cool, I'll bend em. Ah, inside my t-shirt pocket...very cool.
I rummaged around for matches, and found two books ! Two whole books !!! I practiced lighting matches behind the shed. It took me a book but finally...finally, I could light a match with my thumb without pulling it out of the book..cool...ouch, I burned my thumb...but really pushing the cool envelope now.

I celebrated my newfound talent by climbing the oak tree. A majestic oak tree. With my Camel cigarettes and my book of matches and my burnt thumb. I climbed high, to the big V notch and planted my butt. I sat there, swaying and slamming the pack against my palm ...I dont know why, but that must have been like a cigarette right of passage. If you
didnt slam the whole pack into your palm then maybe you didnt deserve them? I tore open the cellophane and foil and I tried to flip one out, knocking the pack against my finger...bombs awayyyy...gravity took it and I watched it twirl all the way to the ground , straight down. And another, and another...there was a little pile of cigarettes at the base of the tree. And I was determined to get it. I tried again...skootch, skootch, tap, There it was, hanging precariously halfway out of the pack! Haha. I just blew cool right off the charts.

I put that baby in my mouth...Ewww. I had to spit grains of tobacco out. Little bits of sharp, stringy, lumpy tobacco...my tongue was numb. And it tasted GROSS ! I lit my match..burned my thumb...held it to the cigarette, and while the tree waved and shook and swayed got it lit. Draw, cough, hack, wheeze, draw. Hack, cough. Glowing red hot cherry, hot smoke and watery eyes, hack, cough..how come I didnt feel so cool? I was living the high life, literally. I was high. I was very high... I was dizzy. I felt sick. I was nauseas, my blistered thumb hurt. I started sweating. Swaying. Sweating. Swaying....and like the cigarettes before me, gravity snatched my butt right outta that tree. I crashed through leaves and limbs and finally landed with a breath stealing THUD !!! ... barf...wheeze, dizzy...barf...woozy...wheeze...barf ...
ugh, not so cool....

remembering when I was like 4 yrs old we had a babysitter and she had the longest dark brown hair,when she would take us to the park I remember her swinging and her hair sweeping the ground back and forth.. I stared at her a lot, my first crush :tease:

Phoenix AZ - I was about 10yo or so...

It was summertime and I would sit on my front porch in the evenings practicing to whistle. Not just the typical whistle but the loud whistle you hear at sporting events and such. One of my brothers could whistle like this without using his fingers... I was unable to do it. Anyway, I practiced all the time. Finally one night I was out there and... I whistled!! I mean it came out so freakin' loud and clear it was amazing!! I just thought my shit didn't stink lol. The next night I started working on pitches and lengths of time I was holding each blow. All of a sudden I heard a whistle from the distance. Innocent as I was, I thought it might be another kid so I whistled again. Back and forth we went for a few minutes and then.... in the opposite distance... more whistling was sounding. Okay, I thought, this is so fun... woohoo!!

My sister came running out when she finally put two and two together. She was 8 years older than I and a member of a street gang. Well, I didn't know it was a gang till many years later... I thought they were just neighborhood friends. *shrugs* She smacked my hands away from my mouth and commenced to scold me. I apparently was jumping into some gang whistling conversation and was oblivious to the whole thing.

Yeh, I never whistled outside like that again... I save my ear-piercing whistles for sporting events now... :D

I remember when John Lennon was shot. I was living in a studio apartment in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and because I was so young, and there were so many tropical plants growing wildly in my neighborhood—Birds of Paradise and hibiscus, elephant ear and banana trees—I didn't understand what a dangerous slum I lived in. My bed, a double box springs and mattress, fit nicely into the alcove in the kitchen, and everything was white; the area rugs, curtains, sheets. It was like being inside an egg.

One morning, the radio alarm went off, playing one Lennon song after another, and I knew what that meant. I called my girlfriend, who was just starting her career as a journalist, and was already writing for Rolling Stone. Music meant a lot to each of us. We cried together over Lennon's death.

I remember when Obama was elected the first time. I lived in a predominantly white building in an African American neighborhood, and the street filled with people dancing and playing music from their boom boxes. My neighbor and I took our beers down to the street, and people started chanting, "Jobs now! Jobs now!"

I remember watching Coal Miner's Daughter on TV with my grandmother, who had come to spend at overnight with me, one weekend during those two years I lived in Dallas. She loved the movie, and I made popcorn for us, and a fire in the fireplace. She was the only guest I had in that apartment, and she marveled at how nice it was.

I remember when my grandmother flew out to visit me in Los Angeles, many years before that. I had a cheap little car, a Pinto, and there was some kind of crappy blue tint painted onto the windows. She was afraid of L.A., and kept her window up. All the pictures have a blue line, from that tint.

I remember when my grandmother first got to my apartment in L.A. I had filled the refrigerator with what I thought was good food—fruit, vegetables, juice, trail mix. She took one look at it and said, "Let's go to the grocery store," and we came home with biscuits, coca cola, peanuts, neopolitan ice cream.

I remember living in Philadelphia
 

I remember when I was about five years old, we lived in a brownstone in Philadelphia with a bakery on one side of us and a fish store on the other. I don't remember the smells of either place though. I do remember walking our dog, Judy [a big german shepherd mix] with my two older sisters who were nine and ten years old, behind our house, across an alley and in a cemetery. I would sit on headstones of graves and daydream while my sisters walked Judy in the trees nearby.

I remember one day in that same house in Philadelphia... It had a long dark stairway that led upstairs to the bathroom & bedrooms, very dark for some reason, and my oldest sister and I were in the bathroom. I was sitting on the toilet and she was sitting on the edge of the bathtub and we were just talking and giggling like little girls do when we saw a white mist-like 'whatever thing' swoosh by the bathroom door in the hallway, and Barb fell in to the bathtub, I screamed and we both ran as fast as we possibly could down that dark stairway. We were so freaking scared.

I remember walking home from kindergarten when we lived in that same house, by myself for some reason that I can't remember now, and I got stung by a bee on my pinky finger. It was just after Easter and I had a classmade construction paper Easter basket with candies in it. I was crying so hard from the bee sting that I got completely disoriented and lost my way home. Fortunately a neighbor saw me and picked me up and gave me a ride home but when I got home my Mother made me share my candies with my sisters, nevermind the traumatic event I just went through.

“And it’s awfully hard to know what one remembers oneself and what one’s been told to remember. I’m told that at the age of four I was taken to Hampstead Heath Fair by my father,
and greatly indulged in all the coconut shies and things, and when told I must get back for luncheon I rolled on the ground and shouted “You brute, you beast, you hideous ass”;
I was never allowed to forget that as a child but I’ve got no personal memory of it.”

-Evelyn Waugh

My family likes to tell a story about how, at the age of five, I ran away at a funeral. I remember being at the funeral. It was winter and I remember my mother holding me
inside her ghastly ankle length fur coat, which smelled like moth balls and Chanel No. 5. I don't remember running away, but according to my family it happened.

A decade later a girlfriend and I were driving past that same cemetery when she pulled in and ripped up a bunch of daffodils that someone had planted on a grave,
presenting them to me as a romantic gesture. I know I was tipsy at the time, but that memory, I'm certain, is real.

I remember my 20's, that has to count for something *wink*

Don't ever kick a bee's nest...or...
 

When I was 8 I went on a trip to the zoo. During lunch we took a break under a nice shady tree. If you knew me, you'd know that even then I was not "a good girl' I liked trouble and I had a way of finding it.

After lunch I was exploring and found a bee's next right above where we were sitting, so being the good 8 yr old I was with the awesome aim I had, I started throwing rocks at the nest. I found a good sized one and I pelted that rock at the nest and it ruptured.

I swear there were a thrillion bees running after me. I was stung on the face and awful lot. It hurt. A LOT. But - no tears. I teased and I received. Therefore, tears were not an option.

To this day, when I see a bee. I know better. However, I can transport bees, bumblebees, and hornets outside without ever getting stung. I learned something that day - Don't ever, ever, piss hard workers off!