I know, this has nothing to do with today's journal entry, but I figured we needed something to lighten up all that work angst and lawyer talk.

It can be anything, good or bad, long or short -- pick the first one that comes to mind.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Answers

It was a warm summer day at the first house we lived in (in a suburb outside Montreal). My brother and I found a toad in the stone wall lining the driveway.

We wanted to catch it, but it kept hopping in between the stones. So we got the hose and tried to flood it out. It would come out to escape the water and then dodge us again.

Then our mother came out, and we got in trouble for wasting water and using the hose without permission.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

There were these tall (when we were nine) pine trees that grew at the far end of the library, outside the big bay window of the children's room. Only people walking up the sidewalk could see what was going on in those trees: patrons, not librarians. We were all over them. We climbed to the top, or maybe just Elizabeth because she was the skinniest. We walked the branches down to the ground and had to hop off fast and away so the end of the branch wouldn't snap you in the butt. After Girl Scouts and choir practice, both held in the Parish Hall of the Congregational Church a quarter mile away, and after we pillaged the shelves, this is where we--Heather, Becca, Elizabeth, and I--would wait for whichever mother was going to pick us up that day. I remember two things vividly: the time Elizabeth lost her balance at the top and fell a bit before a branch broke her fall (we didn't tell anyone about *that*) and the time I walked a branch and didn't hop off quickly enough and caught a bunch of pine needles in my saddle. Yowch. We loved that library, inside and out.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I'll do one: I was twelve years old, and my friend C. was spending the weekend with us. C. had a totally different life than mine -- her mom was in prison, I didn't know anything about her dad -- and we always came up with the wackiest things to do whenever my dad brought her out for the weekend. One time we painted the entire hay loft of our little barn in the dark, and then got up in the morning to see what we had done. We deemed ourselves V.M.'s (that's like a D.V.M., Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, but we didn't have the "D" part because we were only twelve, see?) and "rescued" baby birds that had been blown out of nests by the wind, as well as feral kittens we found in wood piles. We gave my pony new and exotic names that I can't even remember right now, whatever seemed to go with that week's adventure.

One week we got the bright idea of making breakfast for my parents, but we didn't plan anything easy like pancakes or scrambled eggs and toast. No, we decided we should make blackberry crepes, despite the fact that neither of us had ever seen a crepe before. The project involved riding a mile down to the creek and picking a bucket full of blackberries, and then taking over the kitchen before my folks got up. I remember a big mess and some things burning, before my mom finally got up and took over. I don't think she was particularly thrilled to be making crepes on a Sunday morning, but I seem to recall that they turned out pretty well.

C. and I weren't really allowed to use the kitchen after that, though.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

My happiest childhood memories are pony-related - all day spent riding around with a friend, going everywhere on our ponies. And fantastic little gymkhanas.

Is it just me, or is the weather really good in everybody's childhood memories?

A really vivid memory is staying at my grandparents' beach-house and there always being sand everywhere - in the bath, in the beds, gritty under our feet. And we'd never fail to collect shells at the beginning of the holiday, only realising towards the end (as the whiffy smell grew) that there were now little dead shellfish within ...

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Twice a year, we'd go visit my grandparents in Montana. Grandma grew hollyhocks in the backyard, the old-fashioned kind with a big bell- shaped flower. When a bumblebee flew into a flower, you could quickly but gently close the end of the flower and listen to it wildly buzz inside, then let go and run like mad.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Driving my Dad's car when I was three. He used to let me sit on his knee on the way down to my Grandparents house. I'd steer the car and call pedal when I needed him to use the clutch so I could change gears.

Funnily enough none of my other sisters were ever allowed do it - I think he realised it was a really bad idea.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Summer camp. The neighboring boys camp came over for the "Olympics." Muddy field. Games involving shaving cream and giant buckets of cold oatmeal. Boys + girls + mud + shaving cream + oatmeal = pandemonium. A huge war broke out. We threw handfuls of oatmeal. We smeared shaving cream in each other's hair. We slid in the mud and dumped it down each other's shirts. Finally the counselors released us to jump in the lake, which we did, throwing each other in like maniacs. I saved a t-shirt with a muddy handprint on it where my friend Reid decorated it with mud.

Thinking back, I sort of wish I were at camp right now.

words diminish

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

When I was little my dad or my babysitter used to walk me to and from school every day. One day, Mom and Dad decided I was grown-up enough to walk to school alone (I was six, I think). So I got my stuff, and I set out merrily for school all by myself. I was very proud of my accomplishment. Years later, I found out that my mother cried, and my dad trailed me with my little brother to make sure I was safe.

Totally unrelated: Katharine, what suburb of Montreal are you from? I'm from Dollard des Ormeaux.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

There are a couple: My fav is long-term. When I was growing up, my sisters and I used to get into bed with each other each morning while we woke up. Mom was already at work, so it was just us. During

During the summers we'd watch soaps on TV. My friend A. would call. Instead of hanging up while the show was one, we'd set down the phone and come back during commercials. We'd also send each other lunch through the phone. Boy did we have imaginations. I'd say, "I'm eating a peanut butter & jelly sandwhich." A. would say, "I want some." And I would make weird sounds and ask "did it taste good, and she'd *laugh* and make comments." (We all did this, not just me.)

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

When I was ages 3 to 6, my family lived in Naples, Italy. During the summer, we would go to the beach on Sundays. We'd start out very early to miss the traffic, so we wouldn't have breakfast before leaving. We'd stop at a bakery near the beach, and get fresh rolls. Usually, we got there just as they were coming out of the oven.

Thirty-five years later, I can still remember the smell and taste of those rolls.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

When my brother was 6 and I was 5 we decided that we'd like to try our hand at making wine. We'd seen our mother drinking it on occasion, and knew it was made from grapes, so we figured how hard could it be? We snuck grapes into our room (we still shared then), crushed them up into a Dixie cup, put plastic wrap over it, and stuck in my brothers top drawer under his socks. About a week later my mom smelled something funny (um, rotten) in the room, and we were busted. She just about split a gut over that one.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Going to the museum of science in Boston with my family when I was seven. I badgered my mom into buying me some little plastic dinosaurs (like littl eplastic army men). When we were getting on the subway to go home, my sister warned me to be real careful and not drop my dinosaurs down that crack between the train and the platform, because I couldn't get them back. I dunno why it is so vivid, but I remember seeming to take forever to walk across that line, scared to death that I would lose my new treasure.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

One of the earliest I remember was being dropped off at my grandmother's (again) for an undetermined amount of time. I remember standing at the upstairs bedroom window, banging on the glass, screaming and crying for my mother to look back at me as she walked away. She never did. I was two, they tell me, and my grandmother thought it was funny.

Recently, I had this memory in a dream. Except in the dream, I was outside the house. I could see myself at the window upstairs, crying, and I could see my mother's face. She was resolutely walking away, tears streaming down her face.

I woke with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face. Whups, i just saw you wanted something light.... uhhhh.. Same grandmother: she would say things like "If you go down to those track and get hit by a train, don't come crying home to me!"

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

The first time my parents took us to the coast (Galveston, Texas,) I was afraid. We parked on the seawall and walked down the long flight of stairs to the beach. I hung onto my dad's legs, imagining myself falling off the stairs and landing on all the huge rocks below.

It took all day for my parents to coax me into the water. Finally I lied on my stomach in the inch-high waves and splashed and splashed. It got dark and I didn't want leave. They had to drag me and my brother to the car while we cried and begged.

I'd been wearing shorts and my C-3PO t-shirt from K-Mart. The screenprinting on the shirt was destroyed after being ground into the sand for so long, but I kept wearing it anyway because it was my favorite.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Oops. I was so worried about betraying my heritage by using the wrong tense of "to lie," that I did it anyway!

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

When I was three, before my brother was born and before my parents were divorced, we moved into a new house. We had a garden there and I was a great helper, deadheading the marigolds with my dad and picking tomatoes. One day, I was helping him to plant a tree. We had a huge hole in the ground, filled with water and all ready for the tree...

or me. Whatever. I fell in. I think my dad thought it was funny. He deposited me, muddy and crying, on the doorstep, rang the doorbell, and ran back to the backyard.

My mom didn't think it was so funny. That was one unpleasant bath!

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I grew up on a farm and I loved haylofts that had straw in them, not hay. (Less scratchy) I spent a lot of time in haylofts climbing the ladders to high platforms which became lookout posts for the enemy, looking for baby kittens, sliding across the smooth floors when the hay was gone. My favorite hayloft belonged to my girlfriend. It had this really big rope hanging down which had a great big knot at the end of it. You could grab this rope, climb up the bales of hay on one side, sit on the knot, and, swoop clear across the barn from one side to the other. It was great. Unfortunately, the path it took was right over the opening to below (stairs in this case) and one of the older girls fell off and landed on the stairs and hurt herself, but not badly. However, we were not allowed ever again to swing on that rope. I really was mad at her for letting go. About 2 years ago, I saw her at a high school reunion and was reminiscing about this incident and she didn't remember it!! Well, it was 50 years ago, but I guess it must have been pretty important to me as I remember it very clearly!

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I was about five years old, up at the cottage in Northern Ontario, tucked into little twin bed that sat under the sloping roof. My sister was tucked in with me, and we were covered with quilts that smelled very faintly of Attar of Roses potpourri, and mothballs, and mildew. Cottage smells. The lanterns in our room cast queer shadows around the tiny room, making our bed an island of light and safety. I remember how the pine boards of the walls used to glow like gold where the lantern light hit them, and how scarey the pine trees outside the windows used to look at night.

My grandmother would sit on the edge of the bed, and read to us, a chapter a night, from Anne Of Green Gables. I can still hear her voice in my head. She had the clipped, precise reading voice of a teacher, mixed with the slight lilt of the Scottish Canadian, and it was mesmerizing. I never wanted her to stop reading. We always only read Anne Of Green Gables. She would get to the end, and the next night would restart chapter one. It was a great summer.

I have the copy of Anne Of Green Gables that she used to read from, and I reread it every so often, because when I do, I hear her voice in my head, every line, reading it to me.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

This is an oft-told tale by my mother, but I actually do remember it clearly.

I was probably about five or six. I was outside playing with my brother. When I was little, I had a habit of chewing on things. (Must be because I wasn't a breastfed baby). My mother had threatened to make me eat for dinner whatever I picked up next. Well, I had a twig (Mom calls it a stick, but I remember it being a twig), and I was chewing on it. Out the front door she comes, grabs me and the twig, and whisks us into the house. She takes the twig away and retreats to the kitchen, after informing me that I will eat that stick for dinner.

Just before dinner, I was helping my sister set the table. There was a blue bowl on the counter, and the blue bowl always meant that we would be having spare ribs. I loved them. I figure that Mom's forgotten all about the twig thing, and she's made my favorite dinner, and all is forgiven.

Oh, so wrong. She did make my favorite dinner, but she had my father serve me the twig. That was all that was on my plate. The twig. I looked at it, looked at Mom and Dad, looked at the twig some more.

Then, I asked my mother, "Could you please pass the salt?"

Completely disarmed my mother, and I did get to have spare ribs without having to take even one bite of that twig.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

in the winters in upstate new york, my brothers and i would get all zipped up in snowsuits (much like the christmas story kid) and build huge snow caves and tunnels. i remember how surprisingly warm they were, and how weird the light looked filtered through the layer of snow overhead. for christmas we'd head out into the woods and pick out a tree to bring home - we had 90 acres of forest, and a pond for ice skating. my dad would often play with us, and when we'd come in he liked to stand around and steam up his glasses by blowing into his cocoa cup. it drove my mother crazy.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

When I was little, we lived in this gorgeous Tudor style Edwardian country house in the suburbs of Brussels (Belgium).

My room faced onto the front of the house and had a small balcony with a triple window and french doors. My mother called the room the "Juliet Room," engendering many a childhood romantic fantasy in my active imagination.

I used to stand out there on summer nights and lean my arms on the balcony rail, staring up at the periwinkle sky and wish for a prince charming to show up down below.

One night, one of my friends' younger brothers suddenly turned up in our yard on his bike.

He wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind, being a few years younger than myself, but there I was standing around in a long nighty and a shawl with a boy down below, so I struck up a conversation with him.

I never did get any prince charmings to climb up and rescue me from the safety of my bedroom, especially since we moved back to the United States when I was eleven ... long before the age when boys might actually have been tempted to climb in and out of my window for a midnight tryst.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Linda Shaw, can you please explain which is hay and which is straw? There's an opening scene in a really cheesy but aesthetically--ahem-- stimulating movie called "Measuring Heaven" about Abelard and Heloise in which we are shown how rigorously Heloise examines her theology. Something about Jesus's manger and straw vs. hay. I had never thought they might be two different things. One must be the wheat and the other oat? Or is hay a crop on its own?

Hmm, and this is connected to childhood memories because... because... because Almanzo and Royal couldn't have a lantern with them in the hayloft because of fire and because when Ma and Pa took Mary off to Vernon Iowa, Laura did the fall cleaning and she and Carrie had a terrible time with the heavy strawtick mattresses. There. (Now I have to ask Jackie what a "gymkhana" is.)

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Ooooh, I love reading these stories. While I was reading them I realized that almost all the things I remember from being a kid involve either my sister or I getting hurt, or my aunt (who lived with us) doing something wretched to us.

First I'll tell you the stupid thing my sister did (which involves her getting hurt in the end, natch). She was outside playing with a girl from up the street and they decided that they'd go looking for frogs. Our houses had these gutter drain things that were made out of cement that sat on the ground at the base of a gutter coming off the house. They were picking them up and looking for frogs underneath them. I guess they didn't plan what they were going to do when they found the frogs because all I heard was an "EEEEEkkkkkk", a slam, and my sister crying. They'd dropped the concrete thingy on my sisters foot and it hurt her pretty bad. My dad rushed her to the hospital, and I didn't get to go, but they told me they had to remove her toenail from her big toe and it hurt pretty bad.

Now, since I've embarrassed my sister in a place she'll never find, I'd better tell something stupid I did. When we lived at that same house I learned to ride a bike. I was not allowed to ride said bike in the street, or stray very far from the front of our house. I was probably only 6 at the time, so it makes sense. I would ride the bike from our driveway to the neighbor's driveway, turn around, and come back. I *know* boring, but it was something to do. One day I was doing this and I spotted a baseball in the neighbors driveway. In my demented kid mind I thought I could just *ride over* the baseball, like it was a bump or something. You know how it ends, right? I crashed the bike, smashed up my chin (still have the scar) and bled all over my dad's white t-shirt. I thought he'd be mad at me for bleeding on his shirt, but he was just worried that I'd really hurt myself.

I've got good memories too, but I'll save them for another time. And I'm saving the list of wretched things my aunt did to us for another day too.

Colleen

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

This is for Lisa. Good thing I work in a library. Hay is wild or cultivated plants, chiefly grasses & legumes, mown & dried. Most commonly used are alfalfa (that's what we grew in Illinois), timothy, & red clover. Straw is dried stalks of threshed grains, especially wheat, barley, oats & rye. The alfalfa hay was VERY scratchy. Straw is soft. Straw is what the pioneers stuffed mattresses with.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

I agree with Jackie Collins -- the weather in my childhood memories is much better. Deeper snow, richer sunsets. I think the thing I remember most clearly and miss most dearly (with apologies to the writes of Godspell) is time. Summer vacations from school, the days just seemed to last forever. If I have an illusion left, it is that one day I will live a perfect summer day again, without looking at the clock or feeling a rush of adrenalin when I think about a deadline.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Food. I read recently that children like certain foods for their deconstruction factor. Like artichokes. Or Ho-Hos. I think this is true. I remember when Ho-Hos came in a foil square that could be unwrapped and smoothed and made into little foil airplanes. And then the thin hard chocolate outside could be peeled off and eaten, and then the Ho-Ho itself could be unrolled, and the cream filling scraped off with a finger and eaten, and finally you were left with the chocolate cake of the HoHo itself. mmm. Ho-Hos.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

Just about my earliest memory had to be sometime before age 2, because I remember I was sitting in a high chair that was pushed up to the window so I could look outside. We lived in Fairbanks Alaska, and my parents were playing in the yard, throwing snowballs at each other and play wrestling... but why I remember it is that my dad grabbed my mom and smooshed a bunch of snow into her face, and she turned and faced the window, and I totally freaked out. He'd gotten snow down behind her glasses (she looked like Annie!), and I thought he'd taken away her eyes!

(As a sidenote, Annie still creeps me out)

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2000

This isn't a memory as such, rather something my Mum told me, but I thought something scatological might help lighten the atmosphere

Going through a lot of old photos one day, I found one of me when I was a baby, and in it I was being held by my brother. Good photo in its own right, but I love it even more now that I know the associated story this was taken on my first New Year's Eve, December 31 1974, I was all of six weeks old, and there we all were at someone's party and as Mum tells it, Grant and I got lined up for this photo, the photo was taken, and the very second that it was, I lost all control of my bowels (as small children do) and just shat everywhere. And so I love that photo to bits knowing the circumstances of it (it may also partly explain my aversion to having my photo taken ever since then, too)

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Hay and Straw - this is obviously another completely different thing depending on where you're from, because in NZ hay and straw are both harvested grass - but hay is the juicer bit that you feed to animals, and straw is the stalkier bit that you use in the stables as bedding.

You must be thinking by now that NZ is a completely different planet and we all walk on our hands or something. I'd never realised how many little differences there actually are.

Gymkhana - is basically a little horse show, but specifically one featuring games on horseback - which are the most fun thing in the world to do, particularly if you've got a super-competitive pony that gets into the swing of things and starts racing the opponents, and isn't scared of the miscellaneous stuff the games involve - balloons, buckets of water, barrells, that kind of thing.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Drawing cities on the sidewalk with chalk.

My sisters and I would make paths, rooms, stores, and drive our bikes around on the "roads" that we had drawn.

That's a fuzzy memory.

Actually, the very first thing that came to mind was a horrible summer camp experience. My sister and I were the only white kids there. I still have no idea why our mother sent us.

I remember, at said camp, coming out of the locker room and jumping into the pool. After swimming for a few shakes, I began wondering why everyone else was sitting on the side of the pool.

Then I got my ass kicked for being in the pool during that 15-minute break time. Well, figuratively.

Anyway. That camp really sucked.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

No, Jackie and Linda, you're saying the same thing -- I'm not sure straw always has to be "threshed," exactly, even in the U.S. -- hay and straw are both harvested grass, as Jackie said, but the hay has all the grain and good stuff still intact so you feed it to animals, whereas straw is the hollow, stalky, yellow stuff that has no food value to speak of, so you use it for bedding, etc.

And gymkhana is definitely the same thing here as Jackie described, and as she said, it's really fun.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Every year my sister and I would argue loudly outside my parents' door on Christmas morning about which one of us was being loudest, and therefore who'd wake them up. We thought we were whispering. We honestly were trying to let our parents sleep in. Mom has since revealed that they were awake, and just didn't want to get out of bed...

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

Playing in the under ground garage of our town house complex. That was a really big no-no. My brother and I loved to do it, though, so we'd sneak some flashlights (even though the place was well lit) and wander through the garage (we'd sneak out our basement, which had a door to the garage). It was really fun when there was a power failure. We'd try to find secret passages and stuff, and expolre the locker areas, and have all sorts of adventures. I remember that my friend Julie's basement opened up into a really weird part of the garage. It was like a little room, and there was no way a car could get in there, so we used to wonder why it was there. There was also a fire door that opened up to a set of stairs that went outside, as well as a set of storage lockers (Julie's was big-- Most of us had small ones, but hers was large enough for a freezer, and it was next to her basement door. I think ours was way on the other side of the garage). Someone had written a poem in French ont he door to one of the lockers. I can remember most of it, but it's kind of fuzzy. In the winter, my brother and I had a route we would take to get through the various garages to get home without going outside. I still dream about the garage all the time, and I can still remember the way it smelled.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

I was thinking about the first time I ever flew in a commercial jet. My parents had separated when I was six and a half. My dad left New Jersey for the golden California shores where he'd never have to shovel snow again. When I was nearly eight, they decided to have another go at their marriage, and we flew from the East Coast to San Jose to start a new life.

What I remember is trying to dope the cat in her cat carrier. Despite a lot of kitty Valium, she proceeded to meow the entire six hour flight...only, since we were in the last row of the plane, we could only see her opening and closing her mouth and not hear any mewing. (This was back in the good ol' days when you could actually carry your animals in the passenger area and not relegate them to cargo).

I remember seeing my dad for the first time in eighteen months...that Daddy smell of Borkhum Riff pipe tobacco and old motorcycle leathers. I remember the golden color of the streetlights we passed. I had laid down on the back seat and was watching the cat meander around the old station wagon Dad picked up up in, and watching the new world go by.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2000

I remember just hating how my little brother always tagged along. One day, my cousin Beth and I were making some heavenly chokecherry- goldenrod-clover-rose petal-squawberry-wintergreen leaf-grass stew (remember those?) when he happened along saying that our mother said we had to let him play. Naturally, we forced him to sample our delicious stew. He choked it down, and then ran off. About 30 minutes later, my mother checked in on us. She cautioned us not to try to drink our wonderful stew, as goldenrod is very poisonous. And left. We began to frantically look for my brother, imagining him dying under a rotted log somewhere. Spent the whole afternoon looking, and wondering if "they" put little girls in prison. (= We found out later in the evening that my mother was sick of the way we treated my brother. She sent him into town with my father for ice- cream and shopping, and set us up for an afternoon of sheer panic! LOL!

-- Anonymous, May 23, 2000