I think I’d like to start a meme. Just ’cause. SO NERRR.

I was thinking about weird things I did (and sometimes still do) as a child. These are kind of typical things, not necessarily “original” things that ONLY I did, but my weird brain did some of them in a different way, but enough with the explaining and on to the listing.

Childhood, Remembered:

1. Everyone knows the whole step on a crack and break your mother’s back, thing. I never really heard that saying as a child, but I think everyone sort of instinctually goes through a thing with this, I’ve seen it with Ethan, and it’s amazing to see him only walk on certain colored tiles when we’re in a mall, or some such place. Walking in a certain/on certain things, I guess is something everyone has done in their lives.Here’s the kooky way I did it when I was a kid. I was very much into the “cracks” and not stepping on them. Maybe my brain decided that it was too easy, because I then started inventing new invisible lines that I couldn’t step on. For example, if I was walking down a hall, and there was a corner, I would envision the line of the wall continuing on the floor, even though the wall stopped at the corner, and I would not step on that “invisible” line. This is what I saw in my head:
   If there were no corners, I would draw a 45 degree line coming from the corner of a tile and not step on that.
   I would sometimes get very elaborate, because if you look around, there are angles and corners that can create lines everywhere if you continue them past their natural stopping place, the lines multiply and multiply and you couldn’t walk anywhere. I didn’t get obsessive or anything about this (I didn’t go hopscotching everywhere because of all the imaginary lines I couldn’t step on, for example), it was just a fun game that I grew from the original “don’t step on a crack” habit. (I just said crack habit. hee hee!) I still do this today, sometimes, and even if I don’t always avoid stepping on the lines, my mind seems to automatically draw them on the floor as I walk, if I’m not busy looking elsewhere. The lines are always 2 dimensional though, on the floor, even though there’d be plenty of fodder for 3-d lines going every which way.
    
2. Everyone has scary dreams, and I remember talking about the dreams we had as children with someone recently. They stay vivid in my mind, even 25ish years later. I had the typical scary dream that something or someone was going to “get” me and I would round a corner and see it, and could not move my legs. Pretty typical. I also had a couple of dreams where I was the one that would have to “save the day” .. these dreams always featured me and my family in trouble by bad things or bad people, and somehow at the end, someone would declare dramatically that “Amy can save us!” and then, somehow I would, or would at least try. I can think of at least 2 or 3 dreams where in a rush to escape the evil gonna-getchas, everyone would pile into our van, and somehow in the rush, I would end up in the driver’s seat, and *I* would have to drive. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old, because of the location of these dreams, so it’s amusing to think back about these dreams when I had to do this complicated driving thing or me and my family would all be “gotcha-ed.” I remember being a pretty decent driver, with this very stern, “I can do it, I HAVE to do it!” mentality the entire time.
    
3. One thing that I did that I’m sure everyone has done, and I had no special Amy slant, was jump around the room on random things, following the self imposed rule that I couldn’t touch the floor. Ethan does this now, it’s pretty funny. I don’t know how it is that everyone makes up the same game when they’re little, but we all totally do. Ethan will lay down the couch pillows and jump from pillow, to rug, to his coat on the floor, back to pillow, and proclaim, “I didn’t touch the BUBBLES!”
    
4. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I had this huge thing against medicine of any sort. Someone sometime must have tried to explained how it helps your body feel better, but I just imagined little “things” (organisms? nano-bots? the “things” in my mind were totally scary and alien) entering my body and doing things that my body didn’t necessarily want done and it weirded me out to the point where I would hold a pill in my mouth until my mom left the room and then spit it out. I think it was also because I hated swallowing pills. (becoming a woman and the onset of cramps put a stop to this fear pretty quickly.)
    
5. I always felt like clothes fit me better the second day I wore them. If I had my way in the first grade, I would have worn the same clothes for the entire year. I definitely had favorites, and would try to wear them as often as I could. This stemmed an actual feeling of pity for my other, less favorite clothes that I didn’t want to wear, and sometimes I would wear them just so they wouldn’t feel bad, but then I’d go back to my favoritism elitist ways. I don’t remember all the clothes that were my favorite, except for one nightgown that I wore until it either was too small, or fell to pieces. It was a satiny material in soft pastel colors that was very smooth and soft, and it was very full, so that when I spun around it billowed out around me and made me feel like I was wearing a ball gown. Ahhh.. I still miss that twirly nightgown. A girl needs twirly clothes. Always remember that, people! Twirly clothes!

   Ethan definitely has favorite clothes, and the primary was a pair of red pants made in a sweatpants material, but weren’t quite like sweatpants (no elastic at the bottoms, for example). He had a red shirt with blue sleeves that he had to wear with it, and he called the ensemble his “red clothes” and delighted in saying, “Look mommy, I’M ALL RED!” I had to prepare him gradually when they were too small, that soon, we would have to put his red clothes away, and finally I said one morning when he was putting them on that that was the last time he’d be able to wear them. He took it surprisingly well, and the next time they came up and James tried to give them to him to wear, he informed daddy that they were too small, and he couldn’t wear them. He has other favorite clothes, and they seem to be his favorite because they are all one color, all gray, all blue, etc. I’m definitely saving those red clothes, though, it’s like an end of an era.
   Jocelyn doesn’t have any favorites really yet, except a purple poncho which, let’s face it, is just fun, no matter your age. She also is enamored with underwear and we got her some with Dora the Explorer. She gets mad when we put a diaper on her, and sometimes starts exclaiming, “umberwear, mommy! umberwear!”

So there are a couple of “typical” things that everyone has from their childhood (with some cute kid stories tossed in). I don’t think it will be a very hard meme, and it’s interesting to think about the things from childhood that define who you were/are and how you thought/think.

I am going to tag CHRIS, ANNA, & LINDA – these are all folks I know, so if you don’t participate I will beat you soundly 🙂 I will also tag two folks I don’t know in real life, but read them religiously, and so let’s see if they will also participate, though if not, who can blame them for ignoring some random chick and her silly meme: Rockstar Mommy and leahpeah, I TAG THEE!

And if you want to do it too, that’d rock! Let me know, and I will link to you!

– amy