Permission to Tweak This Meme?

Janet at Dancing Through (formerly Princess Stinkfoot) has given me a chance to expound on five weird things, but having done this last month I am going to tweak the subject a bit. I like the way Janet approached it so here are Five Childhood Memories:

1. The vacant lot across the street that we kids called "The Woods." We built a fort there and I remember not understanding why Mom freaked out when I casually mentioned we'd included a bathroom and toilet in our deluxe townhome. Guess were weren't increasing the property values.

2. Being baptized when I was 8 years old. I remember little from the service but while riding home I started fighting with my sister in the back seat. Dad, still driving, half turned around and said, "Way to go, Michelle, you had a clean slate and you couldn't last five minutes without screwing it up."

3. Smashing pennies. There are railroad tracks near the house where I grew up and we figured out we could smash pennies on the tracks (dangerous I know, but it was the 70s). I grew more and more ambitious, smashing dimes, quarters, rail road spikes. I found an old spike near the tracks and taped it--with Scotch tape--to the track because wouldn't a flattened railroad spike be so cool? I could hear the train rumbling by from my bed, and as Grandma was tucking me in that night and I told her what I'd done she'd suggested that maybe a railroad spike wasn't the best idea, that it might de-rail the train. I realize now she was trying to scare me into growing a brain but it kept me up most of the night picturing the people I had killed with my stupidity.

Oh, and I should mention everyone lived, the Scotch tape didn't hold and the spike was knocked off the rail.

4. Vacations. My best memories are all around vacations: camping, beaches, fishing--one year we went to Disneyland. When I get excited or nervous I get sick to my stomach. I threw up in the rental car, at the restaurant table in my bowl of applesauce, waiting in line for tickets, on the jungle cruise and finally into my cup of pineapple juice at the Tikki Hut. Left my mark on the Happiest Place on Earth I did. You should have been there the day I got married.

5. My Mom losing it. Everyone thinks she's sweet and perfect and never loses her temper (my husband thinks she's an angel) but I remember when I was 13 and gave her trouble about eating a tomato at dinner. I took so long I was nearly late for my 7 pm activity. She stormed in, grabbed me, got in the car, turned it on, hit the accelerator . . . and forgot to put the car in reverse. Smashed an aluminum can full of fireplace ashes against the garage wall in a *poof* of blackness that didn't lighten her mood. Hard not to laugh at that one but laughter would have meant death.

And if you're listening: Total Mom Haircut, Sandy from Sandy and Kurt (formerly Super Mommy) and Worth Ten Thousand Words--y'all are welcome to play.

Technorati tags: meme, motherhood, memories, Alaska