Memory Lane #2...

Letting my mind drift into the past centers me in the present...

- I remember cutting into my kneecap with a chainsaw and seeing the white flesh and sinew exposed. I just about fainted.
-I remember painting the barn and splashing red paint on my face and running toward the house screaming like I had busted my face. It was just so fun to see Mom get worked up.
-I remember picking rock in the garden with my dad...it was a neverending chore.
-I remember freezing down in my room at night. It was furthest from the wood stove. I would wake up and see my breath.
-I remember having to use bathtub water to flush the toilet and wash our clothes because our well would always go dry and we had no money to get more.
-I remember driving a 1981 Dodge Ram around like I was the man. I left school early one day to give it a wax job.
-I remember mom breaking a plate over my head because I made fun of my sister eating too many mashed potatoes and being fat. I stood there stunned.
-I remember getting saved a 1000 times the day before someone predicted that Jesus was coming back. I sat in my cubicle at my school and prayed "the prayer" incessantly. He didn't come back...I was ticked.
-I remember poking a tack in Joel Palmers ankle from under the desk and hiding. He never knew it was me, he thought it was a pinched nerve or a deranged spider biting him or something. I laughed inside my head so hard my veins nearly erupted.
-I remember standing in front of the whole school and quoting large portions of Scripture. Thank God for short-term memory.
-I remember playing kickball at lunch break and sweating like a pig in heat...we played for blood.
-I remember my dad putting up a basketball hoop and me climbing the pole, hanging on the rim, and promptly ripping it off. He was not happy.
-I remember holding a girl's hand for the first time in the bus on the way home from school. I was about 11 or 12 and I thought I was committing the unpardonable sin. My adrenaline was pumping blood through my body so fast I just about hyperventilated myself into passing out.
-I remember the famous song "Ghostbusters" playing in the bus on the way to school.
-I remember listening to Fiber McGee and Molly each night before bed on the Public Radio Broadcast.
-I remember pouring gasoline into bee hives in the ground at night and then making a gas trail away from the hole so that when I lit it I didn't explode with the bees. What a blast!
-I remember pegging bull frongs with rocks and cutting off their legs for dinner at my grandpa's house. It tasted like chicken.
-I remember playing house with my cousin and her getting naked in front of me. (we were about 7) She said this is what mommy's and daddy's do around each other. I didn't know what she was talking about.
-I remember laying in the middle of road at night and watching for shooting stars.
-I remember going to the bathroom outside at night when someone else was in the bathroom. I always made sure the neighboors couldn't see me.
-I remember delivering papers and being so deathly scared of killer dogs that I could just about see my heart pounding out of my chest.
-I remember shoveling driveways in the winter and making money. My brother and I got in the paper for doing it. We were famous.
-I remember watching the fisherman down by the river hooking into the biggest King Salmon you could ever imagine. One let me reel for a while...I was tired in about 30 seconds...it just about pulled me in.
-I remember watching "Tales from the Crypt" at my friends house and having night terrors for months...there was especially one episode that scared me...drowned people who came after their murderer. The had seaweed dangling all over them. I can still see them waddling toward the lake house.
-I remember the first time I swore and my Mom heard it. I said, "Oh my God!" and she just walked out the door. We were playing street hockey. I couldn't get away with anything.
-I remember getting kicked out of school for two weeks for looking at pornography with the other boys in our Christian school. All the boys were kicked out for two weeks and a couple were expelled. It was an all-girls school for a short season...I wonder what they did together at school those two weeks. They must have thought we were all a bunch off crazed perverts.
-I remember a guy swallowing a fly while he was singing on a Sunday night. He choked and the whole congregation laughed hysterically.
-I remember wrestling in the foyer and hitting my lip on a coat hanger. I ran outside, grabbed some snow and held it on my lip...the whole snowball turned red with blood. I had to go to the hospital and get stitches.
-I remember laughing with my family at the dinner table often.
-I remember my Dad trying to do devotions while everyone was finding things to be distracted by. He would get so frustrated...his jaw would clench with anger.
-I remember having crushes on older girls. I was like 5 and 6 and yet I was almost sure I could hook up with the high schoolers in the Spanish class. No kidding.
-I remember going to my buddy Otto's house and riding his three wheeler through the back trails and then shooting squirrels.
-I remember him showing me his new 410 shotgun and me pointing it at a mirror in the living room. I was about to pull the trigger and thought I would check to see if the chamber was empty. It wasn't...I just about blew a hole in his living room wall that day.
-I remember getting my buddy Art's truck hung up on a hill in between the Movie Rental and the Car Wash...we thought we'd take the short cut.
-I remember using my dad's "Groom and Clean" to keep my hair in place. It turned it into a greasy rock.
-I remember pouring on "Old Spice" and "English Leather" at gym class to impress a girl by the name of Tove Roberts. She was my childhood sweetheart. I remember I had a dream about her one time where we were on a hillside having a romantic picnic together. I was 6.
-I remember changing in a part of the locker room where no one else changed. I didn't want anyone to see me naked.
-I remember the open showers where alot of the guys would run from one side to the other and dive like it was a slip-n-slide. We had so much fun.
-I remember getting into an accident with my buddy, Jason. My neck hurt the next day.
-I remember my boss letting me drive a tactor trailer down the road for two miles to the barn. I was 14 years old and could barely see over the dash board. My stomach was in knots.
-I remember always sticking my finger in my Mom's candles letting the wax harden and then pulling it off and putting the molded wax over the wick.
-I remember Dad getting us up after midnight to watch March Madness. He told us to keep it a secret from Mom. I thought that was cool.


I love remember my past...it's rich with stories that served to shape me into who I am today...good, bad and ugly. I love where I came from.

Comments

Popular Posts