Memories

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Something I've really come to realize is how random my childhood memories are. I can't remember everything from my childhood and I don't know anyone who can but the things I do remember are often very random and I don't know what makes me remember some things over others. It's interesting how my mind categorizes different things in order to give myself a timeline. Sometimes I'm not even sure I realize how old I was but I just know. I remember in second grade we went I think it was to the zoo where there were goats and a goat ate the name tag of one of the boys in my group. My dad had to try and get it away from the goat. I am unsure how I know it was second grade but I just do. I remember various field trips I took in elementary school. I remember some that we took in preschool. I remember in preschool I had this friend and her family had a farm and we once took a field trip to their farm. I can't remember a lot about this particular friend but I remember her name was Hailey. I can't remember a last name. I am unsure my dad even remembers that much and he volunteered there. I remember the name of this one boy in preschool that my dad doesn't remember. I remember the names of several of the kids I went to preschool with while my dad can't. I also remember the way when we used to go over the bridge for the Maumee River on our way to preschool all of us kids would start chanting "Mommy River, Mommy River". I can't tell you why we did this, only that we did. My dad would then go "Daddy river, daddy river". We did this every single day that we went to school. My dad rode the bus with us. I also remember the only time I got in trouble in preschool. I can't even remember exactly what I did but my dad sat me in timeout, and I think another kid was involved and he also had to sit in timeout. The other kid was a repeat offender, and I think he may have hit me, and I hit him back. I was a pretty mellow kid even back then so I'm guessing this kid pushed me to my breaking point and being only four years old I hadn't quite figured out how to completely control the impulse to hit someone back. This is merely a guess with the broken pieces of my memory so it's quite possible there's more to the story than I remember. It's interesting how some of it started coming back as I was writing this. I have this one random memory of fixing a toy cash register completely by accident but the preschool staff were all impressed and I was like "What did I do?" I just hit some buttons and I think I may have moved a couple of things on it and it started working. Another memory I have is catching a fish while fishing with my dad and we brought it to preschool and I am unsure if they kept it as a class pet kind of thing or if we took it home or if we threw it back afterward. I remember having sit-down meals in preschool and I remember I hated the peas. I also remember playing with these giant waffle blocks that you could make houses out of. I remember another time my dog had puppies and only one survived and we named him lucky. My dad brought him to school to show the kids. It's so interesting thinking about how different the 90s were compared to now and what all you could do then that you can't now. I have a lot of random memories from preschool and I'm unsure why. I have a few memories from when I was two and then a bunch from preschool and a lot from when I was older. There are memories I know I remember because they were more traumatic like the time my brother whipped a towel at me that had a bunch of toothpicks on it (don't ask me why they were on the towel because I couldn't tell you) and I put my hand up to block my face (thank god I did) and toothpicks went into my fingers and my brother had to help pull them out of my fingers as he begged me not to cry and not tell our parents. He was being a jerk, but he didn't realize that the towel had toothpicks on it. Another time when I was about 12 we were arguing and he grabbed my mouth to keep me from shouting and his fingernail went through one of my bottom gums and once again he begged me not to tell. That one hurt worse than the toothpicks. I don't think I did tell I just held it over his head. I remember one winter we were outside building an igloo with an old tote I had found and we were working hard on it and my brother and his friend came along with a wheelbarrow and took the blocks to build theirs so they didn't have to do as much work. We were so mad. Later my aunt came out after we started back to building our igloo back and we had gotten it about halfway back to where it was and gave us a plate of cookies we were supposed to share with the boys and we thanked her and went and hid in our half built igloo and didn't tell the boys about the cookies. We figured if they could steal our hard work we weren't giving them any cookies. I grew up in a small town and we lived next door to my grandma and after my grandma died my aunt moved into my grandma's house to take care of my uncle who my grandma took care of up until she died. We used to run wild and free between our yards. My brother's best friend lived next to my grandma so we had three yards to run between. My memories frequently go back to the freedom of growing up the way we did which brings me to my next and final memory I'll share now. When I was a kid, I remember this time during a school week we had a snowstorm predicted so my brother and I begged our mom to let a couple of our friends stay the night. My parents relented figuring school would be cancelled and said as long as their parents didn't care even if they didn't cancel we wouldn't have to go to school the next day and we were super excited. I called my friend who lived in the next town over and we were going to meet her halfway. My brother and I started walking to meet her by the cemetery out in the middle of nowhere which was the halfway point between towns. I look back on this now and think how easily we could have been snatched but this was the 90s and this was just something that was not uncommon as I said we had a lot of freedom during my childhood. My brother and I were always around somewhere either on our bikes or on foot. We lived in an area with a bunch of small country towns where there were about two or three miles between towns and we'd go between them. There wasn't a ton of traffic on those country roads either but the cars on them knew to watch for kids. Today you'd be shocked if you saw kids walking or riding bikes on those roads but I digress. My brother and I met my friend and then went back home where my brother's friend met us (because he lived in the house next to my grandma's so two houses down from ours) and we started this game in the snow where the entire purpose of the game was to knock each other over. It was girls vs. boys. My brother's friend was unable to knock me over so my brother helped him and my brother's friend got down on all fours and my brother backed me up so I tripped over him. We played this game until we could no longer feel our legs due to the snow and cold. It was snowing pretty hard by the time we finally went inside. We had to have been out there for hours. When we went inside I remember being greeted with hot chocolate and cookies. I don't remember a lot from that night but I remember being outside having fun with my brother and our friends. My childhood memories are my favorite. I have so many. I think it's because it was a time when I was mostly carefree and possibly a little feral. Some of the memories seem to have no real purpose and I can't quite figure out why out of everything I remember I remember those things but I do and I'm grateful for any memories I have. Our memories are just another piece of the puzzle that is us. I am especially grateful for the memories I have of my grandma but those are memories to be shared another day.