Let’s continue our journey, shall we? Unlike my weight loss diet, which has gone on for nearly two years, we are nearly at the end of my memory walk. Yeah, I know–2 posts and nearly finished. Crazy, huh? There are two little ones today. Then there are a couple from Europe and then a couple about my two dads that I don’t know if I will ever be able to tell, but we shall see. Later.

And before I forget again, here’s today’s self portrait, taken with the webcam, because it is easy and I lazy.

Both of these that I am going to talk about today happened when I was 6 or younger, and I know that because of where we lived at the time. We moved from there before I started school, and I was heartily upset when we moved because it meant I couldn’t ride the bus with my best friend who lived next door, which thing we had planned on with great excitement. Yes, I remember her name, it is/was Gina (last name left out for a modicum of privacy).

So, there in the cul-de-sac where we lived, there was a sewer grate. Only not really a sewer grate like you would think of, because we didn’t actually have sewers here then. I guess you would more properly call it a run-off grate. It was square, with rectangular openings for the water to go through to drain the street. You could sit on the curb and still put your feet on it, even if you were a little snip of a girl who was only about 3 feet tall and weighed maybe 40 pounds soaking wet. With 4 layers of clothes on. Which I wasn’t wearing, because it never actually got cold enough for four layers of clothes here back then, and anyway, we were riding bikes that day, Gina and I, so it musta been warm enough for that. And it was certainly warm enough to want to sit down and rest for a bit and giggle, which we must have done, because we did. And somehow, I got my foot into one of the slots in that darn grate, and I could. not. get. it. out. For a very long time, or at least for a very long time to a very small child who was very scared and near to panic. I can just remember sitting there crying, and my ankle hurting from me trying to pull my foot back out of there. And obviously I got it out, because I still have two feet, and I don’t know how I did it, but I did it myself because my parents were…..I don’t know, in the house I guess. And I think I remember telling Gina not to go get them because I was afraid I’d get in big trouble for putting my foot in there in the first place.

Second thing, still in that same house, we had a dog named Laddie. Now, I don’t remember playing with the dog, that would be nice. But I know that the dog died, and my dad buried her in the backyard (I know that, but don’t remember–you see the difference?? There are plenty of things I KNOW without actually remembering) and I cried, not because the dog was dead, but because I had pulled her ears and made her whimper not too long before she died.

I still remember how that house looked when I lived there. And I had a big plastic gun that shot balls, and that gun was not in my room, but across the hall in the room beside the kitchen. And in the room next to mine, on the left as you walk down the hall, there was a dresser and on that dresser sat Daddy’s marbles. I don’t remember anything else about that room, I guess I never really went in there, but you could see the marbles from the door. They were in a glass vase back then. I have those marbles now, at least some of them. I left part of them at Aunt Lady’s for all the great-grands to play with.

You will perhaps note that those marbles are no longer in a glass vase. Yes, it’s a rum bottle. And it sits on the hutch in my room, as part of my wall of happy. Which has become a room of happy now, just so you know. I thought very briefly about putting them in a more appropriate container, but I decided against it. My dad was who he was, and I choose to remember the truth, ugly, pretty, somewhere in between. I don’t have enough of them to start altering them to suit political correctness or any other such silly thing. And btw, the half I left there for the kids are similarly packaged.