I Remember: 5 friends share early memories, by Barbara Ann Brazill, Martha Blue Waters, Meryl Gay Young, Sharon Kathryn Yntema, Zee Z. Zahava
I remember on my fourth birthday I wore my favorite outfit: a white ruffled blouse, a navy blue taffeta skirt, white socks with lace and Mary Jane shoes.
I remember eating fried spam and watching I Love Lucy every day at lunch hour.
I remember the moment I realized Baptists don't know any truth but their own.
I remember being on a horse that got scared and leaped over a gate while I clung to its neck.
I remember endlessly throwing a tennis ball at a small target I had secretly painted on the garage door, increasing the distance as my aim improved.
I remember my parents hired a baby sitter for my brother and me and we found out the next week that she had kidnapped a child a few days later.
I remember crying all the way to camp each summer and then crying all the way home.
I remember when our class took a trip to the rum factory, and we were allowed to climb up the indoor mountain of sugar cane granules (as high as a two story house!), and then slide back down.
I remember wearing white buck shoes and dusting them with powder to keep them clean.
I remember telling my mother she looked like Loretta Young but she said "No, darling, I look like Natalie Wood."
I remember jumping out the hayloft window into a giant mound of freshly mown hay and not being able to breathe because I was allergic to hay.
I remember stabbing myself with a pencil in fifth grade so I could get out of taking a math test and I still have some of that pencil lead embedded in my leg.
I remember how exciting it was when we had to board up our house when we were expecting a hurricane.
I remember taking the bus to downtown Buffalo with my best friend and talking with British accents so people would think we were exotic.
I remember when I was terrified of men with beards.
I remember when my father learned to drive, I was 12 and he was 35; he was such a nervous driver, it was always terrifying to get in the car and I had fantasies of what my tombstone would look like and how people would cry and say "She died so young."
I remember how I always got stuck drying the dishes and putting them away because my bossy big sister only liked to wash — and those giant greasy clumps of goo that remained on the back of plates after she had carelessly washed them and dumped them in the dish drainer.
I remember buying white go-go boots with my babysitting money.
I remember being told "you can't always get what you want."
I remember thinking that if I could only manage to talk fast enough then I would be speaking Spanish.
I remember playing basketball by myself in the driveway.
I remember walking arm-in-arm with my younger sister on MacDougal Street when a man blocked our way, screaming at us — "goddamn lezzie commie fascist maggots" — and we were so shaken up we ran right to the Orange Julius store for a smoothie to settle our nerves.
I remember the day I got my first phone — a blue princess — but not really having anyone to call.
I remember eating too many green tamarinds and getting very sick.
I remember thinking my grandmother had slivers in her face because when I had to kiss her I could feel them sticking me, but now I know that it was just old lady chin hair (because I have slivers now too).
I remember going to great lengths to mime "dying of thirst" to get a coke when my family had guests over.
I remember being sent to visit my cousins in Michigan and when I came back home I discovered that we lived in a different house.
I remember when there were flocks of pelicans flying over the ocean near our backyard.
I remember my mother would go shopping for me because I refused to go, and she'd bring home two piles of clothes — one that I liked and one that she wanted me to like.
I remember riding in the back of a station wagon for the long drive to Florida, facing backwards the whole time — five days.
I remember eating my mother's warm-from-the-oven cinnamon rolls, dripping white frosting all over my face and hands.
I remember going every Saturday to voice, dance, and acting lessons, with my five best friends in junior high, and thinking I was surely going to be on Broadway someday.
I remember swinging on a homemade swing, from a tree that went over a gully, and doing fancy twirls as I went.
I remember stealing a paperback — Valley of the Dolls — from the drugstore.
I remember my best friend sat with someone else on the bus ride to school one day and I didn't know why.
I remember the way my grandfather used to say good-bye (toodle-oo) and since he was the one saying it I just assumed he was Talking Jewish (meaning: speaking Yiddish).
I remember watching The Mickey Mouse Club on T.V. and standing up to sing, but my fingers got pinched in the chair and I screamed.
I remember trying to drink "Tiger's Milk" (a combination of orange juice, milk, and brewers yeast) that my mom read about in an Adelle Davis book.
I remember turning my cardigan sweater backwards, on the bus, on the way to school, because it looked tougher that way.
I remember wondering how my sister often got out of going to all the extra church stuff my mother always dragged me to.
I remember my parents being friendly to each other once a year, on Christmas morning.
I remember smoking my first cigarette in my grandfather's car with my cousin, and we smoked every butt in the ashtray and then threw up.
I remember writing the word "fart" on the wall of a bathroom stall but I felt so guilty that I confessed to my teacher and she said "Good girls don't even know that word so I'm sure you didn't write it."
