7.3.05

The first seven years of my life are not very clear.  I do remember some things, like the big ceremony we had when we graduated from kindergarten, being with my cousins and paternal grandmother during summer, my mother wearing this amazing yellow dress that was pleated and fancy when she brought my birthday to my kindergarten class at King Street Baptist Church in Cocoa. 

I remember visiting my grandfather's house.  I remember my second grade teacher who spoke in a quick Irish brogue. (Why is it called a brogue? For anyone else we would say accent?)

I remember vacationing in North Carolina.  I remember going to see the outdoor drama "Unto These Hills," which tells the story of the Cherokee people.

I remember writing my first poem in first grade and having it put in the school paper.  I  can't remember that teacher though. 

I do remember that when I came back to school after the car accident she and my father were talking at the school (a prelude to my return to class) and she told me that I would be her "Sunshine Girl" that week and got very excited.  You got to wear a paper sun.... (That was Sunshine Elementary School in Miramar, Florida.)

I do remember more from my earlier life.  I remember starting first grade at Cambridge Elementary School in Cocoa.  I remember recess and nap time and throwing up on my desk and being sent home.  We would get a garbage can on wheels full of half-pint milk cartons before naptime.

I remember being in a play there.  I had a bit part and we used my Halloween costume because everybody had to be dressed as something.  I was a clown in red and green.

I remember going to a park near our house that had a lake.  There was a roped off area for swimming and an alligator came swimming past the rope.  The boys who were life-guarding threw rocks and Coke bottles to make it go back to its side....  I don't remember ever swimming there again.

I had a swing set in the backyard and played with a boy named Gary Kessler.  I think he was my first crush and I think he offered to marry me.  He used to call me "Jamboree" because he couldn't say "Jean Marie."

I had a fire truck go-cart and a little red tricycle. 

I used to love going to the library.  It was a nifty place. I remember puppet shows. I met Smokey the Bear there.

It was in that house that I saw the shadowy outlines of dogs one night and woke my dad.  Our dog was in heat and all the boys knew it.

I had incredible eyesight.  At age 40 I have yet to need glasses but my vision when I was a kid was superb.  I saw things moving in pitch darkness.  That is how I came to have a pet garden snake named Sammy.  I saw him wiggling in my room and walked back out.  "There's a snake in my room." Response: "How can you tell, it's as dark as pitch." Me: "I saw it."

Sure enough, there was a handsome little snake by my dresser.  He probably somehow slid in through a window after slipping up a bush.

It was in Cocoa that we would sometimes go to check out "The Jumping Flea Market" after church.  It was there that I picked up a raggedy pink stuffed dog.  That dog became my best friend.  It was the one thing I asked my father for when I woke up in a hospital a few years later.

The other thing I remember, and I am sure I wrote about this already, was going to see an Apollo launch from a shore just opposite the site.  I was a night launch and even from our site, the rocket looked massive.  The countdown came and this conical skyscraper made fire and rose to heaven.  I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5.

Today I have a window air-conditioner going.  My "feline companion" and I are alone.  Outside, even though it's just before 11 a.m. there is the sounds of fireworks all around.  They started last night and seem to be answered by reports from other directions.  Boys will be boys (and some girls, too) but I kind of miss the time when they were illegal in this state. I know the hospitals do.

I skipped the opportunity to go be with family in Orlando today.  I might end up feeling guilty but I don't want to be with my people these days.

I will go north in the afternoon, stop in to give my step-brother's collie some tranquilizers for tonight and then probably go on up to Cristy's mother's for their holiday pig-out and pyro-technics.

I might (but probably won't) go to the MCC at 5.  I am curious... but I hate church.  I believe in God but rarely have I heard a sermon that meant something real or sat among people who meant what they said when they prayed.  I am no better but I can't stand to lie.

A day like today must be hell for returning veterans.

The cool thing about the fourth (or the 3rd, as this happens to be)... when you are travelling on I-95 or even the turnpike... there are fireworks going off everywhere.

Have fun and stay safe.