I Remember: Under 20 (a collective list)

Welcome to the latest CommunityWrite Project, with more than 70 people — children, teens, men and women — contributing their early memories to this word collage. You will probably find statements here that you identify with, as well as some that are very different from your own life experiences. Perhaps you'll be inspired to write your own list of memories from the years before you were 20.

I remember walking down the stairs next to our Christmas tree, reaching out for the little glass violin ornament and taking a big bite out of it.

I remember kindergarten clothes: my brown plaid dress with its white pique collar and my mustard yellow wool winter coat with the matching leggings.

I remember buying my first pale green Esterbrook fountain pen at Rice's Stationery Store for fourth grade spelling tests.

I remember those thrilling Woolworth's hobby kits — paint-by- number horses, wood burning sets, and genuine do-it-yourself Indian bead rings.

I remember racing around the roller skating rink really fast when I was 10, moving to live organ music played just for us.

I remember pedaling my toy car around the block and then driving into the garage of our home to refill the gas tank. 

I remember racing to the top of the rope in the school gym, touching the ceiling before anyone else.

I remember winning a tiny, fuzzy yellow chick when the ping-pong ball I tossed landed right in the bottle at the school carnival.

I remember racing home after school, pulling off my dress along the way, so I could get into my beloved jeans.

I remember taking Myrtle, my little turtle, to school for show and tell.
I remember someone asked me "what do you want to be when you grow up," and I replied, with all sincerity, "a dog."
I remember sitting in my closet talking to all my stuffed animals, telling them how I loved them more than humans.

I remember learning to roller skate down the concrete aisle of our dairy barn, with cows on either side of me, their tails swishing. 

I remember walking through the graveyard where many of my mother's family were buried, and listening as she told stories that made them each come alive again.

I remember dancing in a barn, with wide doors open front and back so that the fragrance of the surrounding fields blew through and created a wonderfully romantic setting.

I remember getting my purse stuck between the subway doors on my way to a job interview. 

I remember catching my cat, Pancha, sneaking into the open refrigerator to steal a piece of fish.

I remember the incessant sounds of the iron lungs breathing for the patients next to me in the polio ward.

I remember trying to convince a friend that my doll was growing real hair after I took some of my own hair and pasted it on the doll's head.

I remember learning how to write cursive letters, using a ruler to make them neat.

I remember sitting in a neighbor's storm cellar, among spider webs and old canned goods, listening to weather reports on a transistor radio.

I remember running away from home for a couple hours with a change of clothes in a brown paper sack, only to be joined by my neighbor who told me she wanted to run away, too.

I remember watching the clouds and identifying what animal they resembled.

I remember riding on the bus, wishing I was big enough for my feet to touch the floor.

I remember when I wore a size 13 shoe and realized I was getting to be a big girl.

I remember when my cat gave birth to a litter of five, and later having to say goodbye to four of the kittens.

I remember making an "ultimate hopscotch" course with my friends, using brand new symbols and motions that would take over five minutes to complete.

I remember finger painting castles and flowers and portraits of my family until the newspaper covering the table was rainbow-colored with paint.

I remember sitting in a circle in kindergarten, singing with all my might about the cow that jumped over the moon.

I remember air raid drills and blackout shades and my father patrolling the neighborhood to make sure all the lights were out.

I remember a hurricane blowing down a tree whose trunk became my bridge to a leafy canopy.

I remember saddle shoes and poodle skirts, and laughing with friends because we were all dressed alike.

I remember ice cream sundaes made out of sand.

I remember the smell of paints and glue, and the stiff colored paper on which we all drew.

I remember trees with leaves bigger than my head.

I remember collecting every sea shell I found, no matter how broken or shattered.

I remember worrying about cracks in the paint on the wall and mold on the ceiling.

I remember swallowing a wasp.

I remember finding a skunk in the driveway and seeing a rat in the toilet.

I remember long summer days, standing for hours in an open field

tossing a baseball in the air, dreaming I was the greatest outfielder in the world.

I remember playing hooky from preschool and sitting behind the wheel of a car while my desperate parents hunted for me.

I remember the Sunday when my grandma couldn't find her pew after communion and I went up and took her hand.

I remember imagining that the stars were hanging from the trees, outside our front porch, on a hot summer evening.

I remember attending the funeral for my sister's praying mantis, Pal, who was laid out in an auspicious shoebox.

I remember pretending to fall asleep on the couch just to feel my father's strong arms carry me up the creaky stairs to bed.

I remember being offered a Boy Scout magazine after a bad haircut.

I remember kissing my imaginary boyfriend once by a wall of mirrors, and again behind a ponderosa pine.

I remember thinking that when wolves howled, they howled for me.

I remember admiring my reflection in a framed photograph of the Horsehead Nebula.

I remember going to the Father/Daughter Girl Scout Dance with Daddy and Papa and wearing a beautiful pink paisley floral dress that was woven from paper.

I remember when my kindergarten teacher discovered that I already knew how to write the number seven.

I remember my older brother convincing me that I had a twin sister living with a great-aunt in Canada, by showing me a photograph of myself taken when I was too young to remember.

I remember the benevolent gaze of my camp counselor treading water, encouraging me to jump into the deep end for the first time.

I remember getting to school early, waiting by the back entrance with the janitor, who quizzed us on the names of the state capitols.

I remember when we held a mock Presidential election and I was one of 6 children in the entire school to vote for Adlai Stevenson.

I remember being sent home from sixth grade for refusing to remove my Brooklyn Dodgers hat when they were playing in the World Series.

I remember that my elementary school principal had wavy white hair and a stiff tall bearing, so to me she looked exactly like the portrait of George Washington that loomed over her desk.

I remember finally being able to ride a bike without training wheels. 

I remember being very excited when I wrote my name for the first time.

I remember playing store with my best friend for weeks after Halloween, laying out all the candy on my bed and deciding that bright pennies were worth more than dull ones.

I remember the way I always wanted to stay up longer, just a little later, just five more minutes, just one more.

I remember my mom driving us home from the pool and sitting with no seatbelt in the back of the station wagon, and how she'd take the back way past the cornfield to hit one perfect bump at full speed so that it felt like a roller coaster.

I remember my junior high locker and exactly where it was, but not the combination.

I remember hating hide and seek because I was scared that people would truly disappear and never be found, or that I would.

I remember feeling panicked about the future a lot of the time, and not wanting it to come.

I remember I learned to read with Dick and Jane but never held it against them, just moved on and on and on to the world of reading.

I remember frustration with a recipe that said "cream the ingredients" when I didn't know "cream" as a verb and couldn't find cream in the ingredients list.

I remember watching Fourth of July fireworks from the desert because we were stuck to the axles in sand and couldn't get to town that night.

I remember Dad driving us to the library every Friday night for movies (travel and wildlife documentaries) and returning home with 10 books — almost enough to see me through until the next Friday night.

I remember building towns and excavating roads and tunnels in the dirt beneath the apricot trees.

I remember the pond near my house being two and a half feet shallower than usual, and smelling like rotting fish guts.

I remember going to my first gay bar in Manhattan and seeing policemen sitting by the door taking down names as men entered the room.

I remember going on the Parachute Jump at Coney Island with a friend and thinking "we're both going to die."

I remember that I knew all the shortcuts to school, some taking me right through private back yards.

I remember that I was always a star gazer; not the heavenly kind, but the Hollywood kind.

I remember walking up the hill from school with the cows, probably peaceful, chomping grass on one side and my mother, probably angry or sad, waiting for me in the house across the road.

I remember trying my ballet steps in the school courtyard at recess, and this was called showing off.

I remember wondering if my mom was the only person ever to eat green apples with salt.

I remember dancing like the kids on American Bandstand, in my grandmother's living room.

I remember the solid brick two-room schoolhouse, where I spent first through fourth grades —  the cloakroom and the coal stove and the cupboard where we kept our lunch boxes.

I remember decorating duck eggs and making them into hinged, 

velvet-lined boxes.

I remember the quiet in the halls of junior high when classes were passing from room to room — no talking allowed.

I remember sleeping under the dining room table which had a steel top, with a parent on either side, in London during the blitz.

I remember getting to school each day, looking to see which children had not taken the chairs off their desks, and wondering if they had been bombed that night.

I remember the day I went to elementary school on the public bus, and the conductor refused to take my pennies, saying, "The war is over!"

I remember worrying that if my mother had married someone other than my father, and if my father had married someone other than my mother, then the two halves of me would be lost to each other, but I decided this thought was too difficult to dwell on.

I remember sitting at my mother's dressing table and trying to hold a green-enameled hand mirror facing exactly parallel into the big mirror so I could see into infinity, but my hand was not steady enough, so infinity remained, quite literally, out of my grasp.

I remember my embarrassment after I told a friend that I had my hair cut at a beauty saloon and she laughed at me.

I remember overhearing my great-uncle telling my grandmother, in Yiddish, that I wasn't pretty.

I remember the sad mystery of our rabbits disappearing from the hutch in the backyard.

I remember thinking I was turning 6 when I was actually turning 4.

I remember how I would name everything: socks, beanie babies, and dresser knobs.

I remember thinking that clouds could move by themselves.

I remember feeling like the supreme ruler of the universe when I finally learned how to draw five pointed stars.

I remember being lost on the seaside pier at Weston-Super-Mare, Gloucestershire.

I remember a wave knocking me over and filling my mouth with sand, at Torquay in Devon.

I remember curtseying to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mum) at the Sherborne Boys' School 400th anniversary, in Sherborne, Dorset.

I remember standing in the yellow dust of the ancient Olympian stadium, in Greece, and I remember Venice at sunset — green flash over the Adriatic.

I remember completely and utterly believing that I could fly.

I remember when I was sixteen, praying monthly for a sign of menstrual blood, desperately bargaining with God that if I could please have my period I would never ever do it again.

I remember watching "one giant step for mankind" on a color TV.

I remember saving my allowance until I had enough money to go to the store so I could buy a jar of green olives.

I remember how the wind on the prairie was my lullaby.

I remember always being on the outside, waiting to be noticed.

I remember my first love and my heart breaking.

I remember dressing my cat in a crown and cape and dubbing him my king and sovereign.

I remember picking the most homely moth that had come to the purple light on the screened porch at my uncle's house and throwing it up to the bats — they never missed.

I remember the one moment in my young life when I felt beautiful.

I remember being taller than most of the boys and being a very good dancer without a partner.

I remember turning around in my black wicker stroller and watching the lines in the sidewalk go by.

I remember running, just for the sake of running.

I remember a purple, red, hunter green and white plaid cotton dress with a starched white collar that I wore on the first day of school.

I remember starting third grade and feeling so grown up because our desks had inkwells, and we got to use them.

I remember listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio, curled up next to the fabric of the large radio's speaker.

I remember how the procession of sugar maples lining the school's lane glowed like a string of lanterns in the fall sun.

I remember feeling totally indignant about mandated naps in kindergarten; that was baby stuff.

I remember the grabby sticky feeling of grasshopper feet on my skin.

I remember my mom in her fringed leather jacket, and riding with my dad on his motorcycle.

I remember cutting my hair with manicure scissors, a huge triumph because my mother was distraught, but feeling deflated when my sister laughed hysterically.

I remember learning to tie my shoes.

I remember a windstorm so strong that it pushed me off the sidewalk.

I remember learning, forgetting, and re-learning the correct way to pronounce the word "vehement."

I remember when it snowed so hard my legs hurt from walking through snow drifts.

I remember telling my friend that if she was thirsty she could drink her spit.

I remember getting my face painted as a horse and being upset when I saw myself in the mirror.

I remember the Goodyear Blimp silently floating over our pasture, so low that it nearly touched the treetops.

I remember when I was 10, and wore my favorite dark red corduroy pants and jacket, I felt that I was big enough to do anything.

I remember my mother changing from her slacks and blouse to a dress just before my father was due to come home from his job.

I remember learning how to jump in, while two girls turned the rope.

I remember loving school supplies.

I remember untying the tie on my Brownie uniform and needing help to tie it again.

I remember losing my flip flops in a stream somewhere.

I remember being so shy, I felt like I'd choke on my words in front of the class even though I knew I knew the answer.

I remember my first kiss, and numb lips, and wondering was that all there was?

I remember how all we could do was giggle and then be silent, just staring into each others eyes.

I remember when we were a family.   

I remember my special airplane blanky that would never ever leave my sight, even on school camping trips.   

I remember accidentally opening the door when I should have knocked.   

I remember my first job: swatting flies, 5 cents per fly, paid by mother whose country kitchen had a fair share.

I remember thinking I was making a cool ironic statement by wearing black on my 16th birthday.

I remember waking up on my fifth birthday and seeing, next to my bed, the shiny white doll carriage my uncle gave me.

I remember learning to swim, wearing a harness attached to a long pole near the dock, not knowing when the instructor would let go.

I remember feeding my kid sister in her high chair, and opening my own mouth each time I brought the spoon to her mouth.

I remember having chicken pox and not being able to go to the first day of first grade.

I remember my father losing his job teaching math because he was a communist and I wondered what was communist math.

I remember reading my first racy novel, which my mom gave me because it was about manatees.

I remember being afraid to ask for a library card, and worrying that if I got any quieter I'd lose my voice for good.

I remember my best friend saying her knobby toes were ugly, and being shocked because I thought all feet were beautiful.

I remember learning to quilt in the high school library, while the other kids stared at me like I was growing a second head.

I remember falling in love with Chuck Close's paintings at the Museum of Modern Art when I was seventeen, and my life was never the same again.

I remember feeling so lucky the time my father took me smelting with him and I got to wear his waders, which came up to my neck.  

I remember wishing I were "normal."

I remember that I hated being short.

I remember how much I hated it every time my mother asked "where's your modesty, young lady."

I remember changing my bedroom furniture around every Sunday as I listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40 countdown on the radio.

I remember getting up at 8 a.m. to watch cartoons for the entire morning, every single Saturday.

I remember kneeling in the dirt, digging up roots, and getting a weeding fork in the eye.

I remember that on the first day of kindergarten I sat down and started coloring, not knowing I had taken some other kid's seat.

I remember my father reading A Midsummer Night's Dream to me when I was three, and I wondered what part of the backyard the fairies were in.

I remember being grateful I had a brother in high school with me even if he wouldn't say hi in the halls.  

I remember leaving for college, feeling like I was heading off to a new planet and I'd never be able to find my way back home.  

I remember my brother making my little sisters and me toss pennies, and keep track of how many heads or tails came up, as part of his ESP experiments. 

I remember the rose bush and my mother cutting roses while I held my arms out to receive them, until I saw a spider and my arms flew up, scattering roses all over the ground.

I remember hitchhiking home in Central Park, catching a ride with a horse and carriage.

I remember wearing my grandfather's old ties as a fashion statement of sorts.

I remember my father getting his driver's license when I was twelve, and never feeling safe when he was behind the wheel.

I remember how embarrassing it was to discover that people in the neighborhood called my beloved aunt "the crazy cat lady."

I remember thinking "I can't wait until I grow up so I can be happy."

I remember my pixie haircut which I hated, and my doll, Marie, whose hair could be curled; my hair could not be curled.

I remember getting a cherry dip-top ice cream cone every time we stopped at the ice cream stand on the way to Grandma's house.

I remember every summer trying to be brave enough to climb to the top of our farm's silo.

I remember picking berries on my grandparents' farm, hoping to earn enough money to buy a new doll.

I remember being told by my 7th grade history teacher that there are only true facts, not false facts.

I remember galloping over hot sands, immersed in blues above, salt covered, swimming, splashing, dissolving in turquoise — a two legged on a four legged.

I remember hearing the sweet coos of the Mourning Doves as I walked home from school, grateful to be out of that hole and on my own at last.

I remember the algal bloom in Lake Ontario that transformed me into the Great Green Sea Monster.

I remember "sweet sixteen and never been kissed" as an impending deadline I desperately wanted to contradict.

I remember lying on my bed crying, without knowing why.

I remember the bag of apples my parents gave me when they left me at college for the first time.

I remember my father often saying "Let's look that up," and I would run to our encyclopedia set that was missing the C volume.

I remember dancing the watusi, the twist, the monkey and the swim.

I remember my Tiny Tears doll, walking my slinky down the hall stairs, shooting marbles, playing with mercury from a broken thermometer, jumping rope, playing with my cut-out-dolls, and winning a hula hoop contest.

I remember when my older sister told me how babies were made and I couldn't believe my parents did that.

I remember when I was three, and my older sister was in school and my younger sisters had not been born, my mother, perhaps out of desperation of what to do with me, took me to the public library.

I remember wearing my blue cotton gym suit with the buttons up the front and the bloomer pants and wondering why this torture was necessary just to play kickball.

I remember getting our first television when I was 10 and thrilling to Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Captain Video, in fuzzy black and white on the small screen.

I remember dropping a cantaloupe out of the window of my grandparents' 18th floor apartment.

I remember family feasts under the grape arbor in my grandparents' garden.

I remember when I was young and wanted a snack before dinner, my mom would say, "go climb a tree" — there were mangos, genips, tamarinds, coconuts, papayas in our yard for the picking.

I remember wearing the same Halloween costume for years, a black leotard and black tights; I was a raisin.

I remember when everyone had to choose which Beatle they liked best, and I felt sorry for Ringo because no one ever picked him, but I didn't either, I liked George.

I remember a sleep-over party at my house when all the girls pierced each other's ears, using a semi-sterilized needle and lots of ice cubes.

I remember trying out half a dozen nicknames the summer I was twelve, but none of them stuck.

I remember my grandmother reading tea leaves for the neighbors at the kitchen table.

I remember lying about my age to get into a bar, but then only drinking ginger ale.

I remember liking the sound of pennies getting sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

I remember washing my hair in the lake because a friend told me that would make it turn curly.

I remember thinking that three-leaf clovers were the lucky ones.

I remember the exact moment when I decided to be a promiscuous prude, on October 14, 1968.

I remember when a fly landed on my face and I thought it was going to eat me.

I remember when I was four years old and my father said it was time for me to start learning Chinese calligraphy.

I remember a field of flowers in China that looked like the sea.

I remember making little nests of straw and grass, filling them with rocks, setting them on the front steps of our house, and hoping that a bird would come and live there.  

With gratitude to all the contributors:

Peggy Adams

Mara Alper

Robyn Bem

Carol Bossard
Kay Marie Bowers

Lourdes Brache

Martha K. Brewster

Edna S. Brown

Sherron Brown

Seraphina Buckholtz

Karina Burbank

Janie Carasik

HL Carpenter

Barbara Cartwright

Amanda Coate

Alana Craib

Charles DeMotte

Jane Edwards

Gabrielle Evans

Rita Feinstein

Joyce Frank 

Rachel-Elizabeth Frank

Will Fudeman

Nancy Gabriel

Caroline Gates-Lupton

Gwen Glazer

Maggie Goldsmith

Sue Heavenrich

Sophia Hiller

David Hirsch

Gay Huddle

Jayalalita

Linda Keeler

Noemi Kraut

Susan Lesser

Eve Levinson

Pat Longoria 

Yiwei Luo
Antonia Matthew

Perri McGowan

Ginny Miller

Peggy Miller

Sylvia Miller

Sue Norvell

Karryn Olson-Ramanujan

Rose Pinnisi

Ana Malina Ramanujan

Ruth Raymond

Maude Rith

Mihal Ronen

Julia Grace Brewster Rosoff

Jessica Ryan

Sue Schwartz

Rachel J. Siegel

Greta Singer

Maryam Steele  

Janet Steiner

Diane Sullivan

Werner Sun

Lottie Sweeney

Lynne Taetzsch

Claudia Tracy

Roxanne VanWormer

Gabrielle Vehar

Joan Victoria

Nikki Wall

Martha Blue Waters

Quina Weber-Shirk
Amy Weinsoff

Deborah Wells-Clinton

Barbara West

Annie Wexler
Jhenna Wylde

Sharon Yntema

Zee Zahava

Tian Yi Zheng

Yue Qin Zhu

Annemarie Zwack