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And, in an entirely different vein from the news of the past days, some stories of when I was little. A bit of background to this: less than a week ago, I started (I don't recall how just now!) telling a friend (aka captive audience) a few stories about me as a child. I was a really...fascinating...child, I think. And I don't necessarily mean that in a positive light! I think raising one of me would give me grey hair. All at once. All down the length of it.
But it amuses me. I like these stories; they're part of my life. I like sharing them. So I decided that I would write them up and post them here. And then I realized: tons of these are when I was little. Some of them I know from my memory, some from memory of my parents' stories, some from both. I might actually (gasp!) be wrong.
So I emailed them off to my parents, for corrections and additions. I actually had the responses back a couple days ago, but I didn't get around to it, and then I was following the news.
What I'm going to do here is tell the stories, weave them together as best I can. Sometimes I'll just edit my parents' comments in - but in a couple cases, the comments are worth quoting in their own rights, and those will be in italics.
--
I think I was about eight or so, when we had to take Amtrak. Mom had injured her back, and wasn't supposed to fly. Had a back brace and everything. (Why they thought the train was better, I don't know. The track got awful rough at some points - as I understand it, we were on the same rails as freight sometimes.) We were going to Ohio, to visit relatives. (Nor I nor my parents can remember the exact cause for that trip, at this moment.)
Dad notes: We took the train across the Northern route through Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and down to Chicago, where they met us. Amtrak doesn't have its own tracks so, yes, we were on freight train rails most of the time. And they were rough.
I remember bits of the trip. I remember the scenery going by, and taking photos out the window. I remember we passed through Glacier National Park and that I wanted to get off there and explore it (but didn't try, thank goodness ;). I remember 'helping' the maids but not clearly how I helped, except putting folded linens away (it was hard to reach, and I, smaller, had an easier time of it).
Dad and Mom note: And it was the sleeping car steward that you helped, following him on his rounds, making up beds, changing towels, etc. And, according to you at the time, you could fit into small spaces, making it easier for you to make up beds on the "dare-you-to-fit" side. So he was probably sorry to see you go!
(*blushes* *laughs* Commentary from Mom: My entire thought, at the time, was, "OH, GOD, she's at it again!" Can't remember anywhere you went that you didn't do "non-kid" things... and enjoy them, at all levels. Adult reactions were generally positive, if occasionally somewhat unbelieving... except they had to, by the time you got done with them.)
I think Mom and Dad spent most of their time in the sleeper, or at least not moving around over-much, because Mom wasn't feeling well. Laura? Laura Got Bored And Explored. I was old enough and mature enough my parents trusted me to do so without getting in trouble, so I took my camera and went all over the train, occasionally taking pictures out the window, but mostly talking to people.
The first night, my parents went up to the dining car for dinner, and the head waiter there said, "Oh, so you're Laura's parents!" as he seated us. *giggles* See, I'd gotten money for a snack, gone up there, and proceeded to chatter with the staff....
(Mom comments: Oh, God, I'd forgotten the syndrome. If you want to travel incognito, DO NOT TAKE LAURA!)
And the second or third day out we made a stop at a station, and instead of the conductor, my parents hear this familiar, piping little voice come over the intercom. "Hello, and welcome aboard Amtrak." I'd memorized the entire spiel by then, apparently (though I wonder - I don't remember - if someone was prompting me).
(Dad: No, you memorized it. I watched you at some station in the Dakotas sweetly greeting a number of different boarding passengers and giving the same spiel word-for-word to each one. They all looked just a tad amazed. *grin*)
---
I was at the dentist for one of my first visits - how old was I? - young, anyway. He went to great lengths to tell me about the nasty creatures that live in your mouth and hurt your teeth if you don't floss, and at the end I eyed him, and said (rather scornfully, I think), "OH. You mean GERMS." (Mom says she recalls me phrasing it more as a question. Either way, it was probably a fair surprise.)
That's right. Don't talk down to the blond terror. (Hey, I was blond at the time, so I can claim the title - in this context.)
---
Or my poor pediatrician. I didn't want to be there, I would climb into the cabinets (he had them set up so you could, as a sort of play area, complete with a little ladder) and hide. And eventually be brought out. I hated having the ear cones stuck in my ears, and oh, the TONGUE DEPRESSOR. I kept trying to use it on him (and I think he let me a time or six). Finally convinced him I could hold my mouth open without it, and he stopped using it. Oh I hated those things! Always made me gag. Very nasty. But the poor pediatrician.... *laughs*
---
And then there was the time that Nana (my father's mother) broke her hip (I believe it was her hip?). She was fairly old, and as I recall in a nursing home, and she fell and broke it. And we went to visit. I remember bits and fragments of it, but not really a coherent whole, and I'm not sure how much of that 'remembering' is constructed from later visits to nursing homes.
I must have been all of about four or so, still with curly blond hair, all angelic cuteness.
Mom and I walked in the flower gardens on a walkway outside while Dad visited her.
By the way, here I must say I was a farm brat, at that age. In later years I would be less so, but until I was almost five, we lived on a farm, raised sheep for meat, and our neighbors raised cows for meat and we'd trade. So that's what I was used to.
And as we were walking, I looked up at Mom, very serious, and asked, "Mom? If Nana dies, are we going to have to eat her? She's really old, so she'd be awf'ly tough."
Mom says she looked around to see if anyone heard me, before she answered. As I recall, the answer was a very simple explanation that we don't eat people. I then apparently (this I don't recall, but it also sounds unfortunately me-like) asked, "Why not?"
Mom writes: I thought a second or two, and then said, brightly, "If they did, and you were asked for dinner, how would you decide whether to go?" Got back: "Ohhh!"
Though, considering I often thought of various of my pets as people when I was older, I'm not quite sure how I internalized the whole lesson. ;)
---
People who know me tend to notice that I'm a perfectionist.
Trust me, this habit goes back a long way. Take when I was learning to talk. I spoke a word or two, spattered here and there, small vocabulary. (We won't mention that where most kids start with "NO", or "Mom" or "Dad" or some variation thereof, or an object - I started with "MORE", applied liberally, right?)
And then I didn't add new words, new structure. I didn't improve, and I probably worried my parents a fair bit.
And then one day, out of the blue, I started up with simple, grammatical sentences, with my words all right... (Mom adds: Prepositions, even.)
My dad figured out later what must have happened, because I did the same thing with walking. I got to the very basics, then didn't progress much (mom said I took two steps, fell down, and didn't try again). He saw me, when I was supposed to be napping, standing up in my crib and walking around and around with my hand on the rail where no one (I thought) could see me stumble and fall. And imagine that, a while later I started walking where they could see me.
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
---
Of course, some things I learned too well. My dad, when I was two or three, was repairing (or trying to repair) the pickup truck. I don't remember this, but I've heard it enough times to remember it anyway. After a long, frustrating time, he gave up temporarily and went in to take a break. Whereupon my mom wanted to know where I was, because she'd thought I was with him; he'd thought I was with her.
I was easy to find. I was outside, toddling around the truck, kicking the tires and reciting, "Damn. Damn. Damn."
---
I wasn't always so easy to find. For example, I went missing one day, and worried my mother for a while before I came back. (I only wish that were an isolated thing, but we'll stick to this once.)
We had neighbors who lived across the street, the Orrs, who were kind of like grandparents to me, since my mother's parents lived in Ohio and my father's parents lived in Mexico until Nana had to come back to the nursing home. I could go over and visit, but only when my parents said I could. (Normally they were fairly free about this - mom tells me Erma had told her that she was canning peaches and very busy this particular day.)
Which was a huge disappointment. Erma Orr baked cookies. And she had an organ, which she would let me 'plink' (and 'kerunch' - ever heard a pair of child-size hands brought down sharply on the keys? yep) as I wished. She had a box of toys; she had kitty-cats (not that we didn't have a cat about, but she had other cats). There was a rain barrel that sat out the side of their house under the drain from the roof, which I loved to watch the water drip down into.
All in all, she made a very good surrogate grandmother. Which is, of course, why I snuck across the road to her house when I was three or so, and bored, even though I was supposed to stay home.
When I got back home, I was met by my mother, who demanded to know what I thought I was doing, going to the Orrs' house when I'd been told not to go bother them like that.
I stared up at her, and demanded, "How'd you know?"
She told me that wasn't the issue, that I had disobeyed and that was the issue.
I demanded, "How'd you know?"
I don't think the exchange went on much longer if at all longer before I stared at her and said, "I know! You looked out the window and saw me coming back!"
Mom corrects: It did go on, several iterations. It got funnier and funnier. I kept trying for "I told you not to, so why did you?" - and even, shamefully, told you that "Moms know these things" - and you kept trying to figure out how you got caught. Finally, you quit responding to me and went to work. You wound up with the correct solution: I saw you coming home from there.
(Mom also notes I was 2-1/2 or so - I was not sure of the age on this one, though I know we moved from that house before I was five.)
I don't remember if I actually got in trouble, or what was said after that. Poor mother. I didn't even care that I'd disobeyed, or she was angry. I just wanted to know how come I'd been caught.
--
Dad adds: You forgot the story about the garage. The house in Carlton had a narrow, single-car garage, which was immediately filled with my power tools and workbench. One afternoon you were playing with some wooden blocks in a milk crate and you told Julie that you were pretending it was the garage. Julie asked how you could put a car in there with all those blocks and you looked at her in amazement and pronounced "Cars don't go in garages, mommy." Well, actually, in your experience, they didn't.
But it amuses me. I like these stories; they're part of my life. I like sharing them. So I decided that I would write them up and post them here. And then I realized: tons of these are when I was little. Some of them I know from my memory, some from memory of my parents' stories, some from both. I might actually (gasp!) be wrong.
So I emailed them off to my parents, for corrections and additions. I actually had the responses back a couple days ago, but I didn't get around to it, and then I was following the news.
What I'm going to do here is tell the stories, weave them together as best I can. Sometimes I'll just edit my parents' comments in - but in a couple cases, the comments are worth quoting in their own rights, and those will be in italics.
--
I think I was about eight or so, when we had to take Amtrak. Mom had injured her back, and wasn't supposed to fly. Had a back brace and everything. (Why they thought the train was better, I don't know. The track got awful rough at some points - as I understand it, we were on the same rails as freight sometimes.) We were going to Ohio, to visit relatives. (Nor I nor my parents can remember the exact cause for that trip, at this moment.)
Dad notes: We took the train across the Northern route through Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and down to Chicago, where they met us. Amtrak doesn't have its own tracks so, yes, we were on freight train rails most of the time. And they were rough.
I remember bits of the trip. I remember the scenery going by, and taking photos out the window. I remember we passed through Glacier National Park and that I wanted to get off there and explore it (but didn't try, thank goodness ;). I remember 'helping' the maids but not clearly how I helped, except putting folded linens away (it was hard to reach, and I, smaller, had an easier time of it).
Dad and Mom note: And it was the sleeping car steward that you helped, following him on his rounds, making up beds, changing towels, etc. And, according to you at the time, you could fit into small spaces, making it easier for you to make up beds on the "dare-you-to-fit" side. So he was probably sorry to see you go!
(*blushes* *laughs* Commentary from Mom: My entire thought, at the time, was, "OH, GOD, she's at it again!" Can't remember anywhere you went that you didn't do "non-kid" things... and enjoy them, at all levels. Adult reactions were generally positive, if occasionally somewhat unbelieving... except they had to, by the time you got done with them.)
I think Mom and Dad spent most of their time in the sleeper, or at least not moving around over-much, because Mom wasn't feeling well. Laura? Laura Got Bored And Explored. I was old enough and mature enough my parents trusted me to do so without getting in trouble, so I took my camera and went all over the train, occasionally taking pictures out the window, but mostly talking to people.
The first night, my parents went up to the dining car for dinner, and the head waiter there said, "Oh, so you're Laura's parents!" as he seated us. *giggles* See, I'd gotten money for a snack, gone up there, and proceeded to chatter with the staff....
(Mom comments: Oh, God, I'd forgotten the syndrome. If you want to travel incognito, DO NOT TAKE LAURA!)
And the second or third day out we made a stop at a station, and instead of the conductor, my parents hear this familiar, piping little voice come over the intercom. "Hello, and welcome aboard Amtrak." I'd memorized the entire spiel by then, apparently (though I wonder - I don't remember - if someone was prompting me).
(Dad: No, you memorized it. I watched you at some station in the Dakotas sweetly greeting a number of different boarding passengers and giving the same spiel word-for-word to each one. They all looked just a tad amazed. *grin*)
---
I was at the dentist for one of my first visits - how old was I? - young, anyway. He went to great lengths to tell me about the nasty creatures that live in your mouth and hurt your teeth if you don't floss, and at the end I eyed him, and said (rather scornfully, I think), "OH. You mean GERMS." (Mom says she recalls me phrasing it more as a question. Either way, it was probably a fair surprise.)
That's right. Don't talk down to the blond terror. (Hey, I was blond at the time, so I can claim the title - in this context.)
---
Or my poor pediatrician. I didn't want to be there, I would climb into the cabinets (he had them set up so you could, as a sort of play area, complete with a little ladder) and hide. And eventually be brought out. I hated having the ear cones stuck in my ears, and oh, the TONGUE DEPRESSOR. I kept trying to use it on him (and I think he let me a time or six). Finally convinced him I could hold my mouth open without it, and he stopped using it. Oh I hated those things! Always made me gag. Very nasty. But the poor pediatrician.... *laughs*
---
And then there was the time that Nana (my father's mother) broke her hip (I believe it was her hip?). She was fairly old, and as I recall in a nursing home, and she fell and broke it. And we went to visit. I remember bits and fragments of it, but not really a coherent whole, and I'm not sure how much of that 'remembering' is constructed from later visits to nursing homes.
I must have been all of about four or so, still with curly blond hair, all angelic cuteness.
Mom and I walked in the flower gardens on a walkway outside while Dad visited her.
By the way, here I must say I was a farm brat, at that age. In later years I would be less so, but until I was almost five, we lived on a farm, raised sheep for meat, and our neighbors raised cows for meat and we'd trade. So that's what I was used to.
And as we were walking, I looked up at Mom, very serious, and asked, "Mom? If Nana dies, are we going to have to eat her? She's really old, so she'd be awf'ly tough."
Mom says she looked around to see if anyone heard me, before she answered. As I recall, the answer was a very simple explanation that we don't eat people. I then apparently (this I don't recall, but it also sounds unfortunately me-like) asked, "Why not?"
Mom writes: I thought a second or two, and then said, brightly, "If they did, and you were asked for dinner, how would you decide whether to go?" Got back: "Ohhh!"
Though, considering I often thought of various of my pets as people when I was older, I'm not quite sure how I internalized the whole lesson. ;)
---
People who know me tend to notice that I'm a perfectionist.
Trust me, this habit goes back a long way. Take when I was learning to talk. I spoke a word or two, spattered here and there, small vocabulary. (We won't mention that where most kids start with "NO", or "Mom" or "Dad" or some variation thereof, or an object - I started with "MORE", applied liberally, right?)
And then I didn't add new words, new structure. I didn't improve, and I probably worried my parents a fair bit.
And then one day, out of the blue, I started up with simple, grammatical sentences, with my words all right... (Mom adds: Prepositions, even.)
My dad figured out later what must have happened, because I did the same thing with walking. I got to the very basics, then didn't progress much (mom said I took two steps, fell down, and didn't try again). He saw me, when I was supposed to be napping, standing up in my crib and walking around and around with my hand on the rail where no one (I thought) could see me stumble and fall. And imagine that, a while later I started walking where they could see me.
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
---
Of course, some things I learned too well. My dad, when I was two or three, was repairing (or trying to repair) the pickup truck. I don't remember this, but I've heard it enough times to remember it anyway. After a long, frustrating time, he gave up temporarily and went in to take a break. Whereupon my mom wanted to know where I was, because she'd thought I was with him; he'd thought I was with her.
I was easy to find. I was outside, toddling around the truck, kicking the tires and reciting, "Damn. Damn. Damn."
---
I wasn't always so easy to find. For example, I went missing one day, and worried my mother for a while before I came back. (I only wish that were an isolated thing, but we'll stick to this once.)
We had neighbors who lived across the street, the Orrs, who were kind of like grandparents to me, since my mother's parents lived in Ohio and my father's parents lived in Mexico until Nana had to come back to the nursing home. I could go over and visit, but only when my parents said I could. (Normally they were fairly free about this - mom tells me Erma had told her that she was canning peaches and very busy this particular day.)
Which was a huge disappointment. Erma Orr baked cookies. And she had an organ, which she would let me 'plink' (and 'kerunch' - ever heard a pair of child-size hands brought down sharply on the keys? yep) as I wished. She had a box of toys; she had kitty-cats (not that we didn't have a cat about, but she had other cats). There was a rain barrel that sat out the side of their house under the drain from the roof, which I loved to watch the water drip down into.
All in all, she made a very good surrogate grandmother. Which is, of course, why I snuck across the road to her house when I was three or so, and bored, even though I was supposed to stay home.
When I got back home, I was met by my mother, who demanded to know what I thought I was doing, going to the Orrs' house when I'd been told not to go bother them like that.
I stared up at her, and demanded, "How'd you know?"
She told me that wasn't the issue, that I had disobeyed and that was the issue.
I demanded, "How'd you know?"
I don't think the exchange went on much longer if at all longer before I stared at her and said, "I know! You looked out the window and saw me coming back!"
Mom corrects: It did go on, several iterations. It got funnier and funnier. I kept trying for "I told you not to, so why did you?" - and even, shamefully, told you that "Moms know these things" - and you kept trying to figure out how you got caught. Finally, you quit responding to me and went to work. You wound up with the correct solution: I saw you coming home from there.
(Mom also notes I was 2-1/2 or so - I was not sure of the age on this one, though I know we moved from that house before I was five.)
I don't remember if I actually got in trouble, or what was said after that. Poor mother. I didn't even care that I'd disobeyed, or she was angry. I just wanted to know how come I'd been caught.
--
Dad adds: You forgot the story about the garage. The house in Carlton had a narrow, single-car garage, which was immediately filled with my power tools and workbench. One afternoon you were playing with some wooden blocks in a milk crate and you told Julie that you were pretending it was the garage. Julie asked how you could put a car in there with all those blocks and you looked at her in amazement and pronounced "Cars don't go in garages, mommy." Well, actually, in your experience, they didn't.