::Earth-Shattering Distinctives::

:: Monday, May 16, 2005 ::

Writing Exercise #2
"Memory is Imagination"

"Begin with the phrase, 'I remember' and start writing. It doesn't matter whether you stick with one memory or list several."

1. I remember having pneumonia, bronchitis and chicken pox when I was little and watching way too many sitcom reruns and thrillers.
2. I remember snow on our wedding day in a town where it only snows every ten years.
3. I remember hot summer nights outside with the neighborhood kids, playing and laughing until we were all called in.
4. I remember being three and referring to the 1 year old boy named Teddy who lived next door as my boyfriend.
5. I remember babysitting for the first time at the age of 11 for a lady with two boys who lived across the street. My mom was home in case I needed her, but I remember feeling so incredibly grown up.
6. I remember lining all my dolls and stuffed animals up on the sofa, playing school with them and yelling at them when they got the "answers" wrong.
7. I remember being two and biting the head off my cousin's rubber turtle and him crying about it.
8. I remember visiting my great aunt and uncle at their home in the hills of El Cerrito, CA and seeing it for the last time for my aunt's wake shortly after Bill and I got married.
9. I remember learning Spanish at age 19 and how fun and exciting it was to learn more and more of the language with each passing day until I achieved fluency.
10.I remember my dad teaching me to play chess at age 3.
11.I remember understanding the gospel at age 11, crying during the sermon and thanking the pastor for his preaching.
12.I remember being in seventh grade and teaching a first grade boy named John to read in a junior high/elementary school tutoring program.
13.I remember #12 being my only positive memory of 7th grade.
14.I remember how cliquish, gossipy and catty the other 7th grade girls were.
15.I remember wearing green eye shadow in 6th grade and the other girls teasing me. The next time I wore it was in college, and everytime I put on makeup I think of that green eyeshadow incident and smile in the mirror. Sometimes I kiss the mirror and wipe the lipstick off in a few hours.
13.I remember being premillennial and dispensationalist as a young person and constantly being afraid the rapture would come, and I'd be left behind because of some sin in my life. I remember coming home several times, finding no one home and panicking a little. I also remember praying to God the night before a test; and instead of praying to do well, asking Him to make the rapture happen so I wouldn't have to deal with it. Of course, it didn't help that I had a poster of a chimpanzee at a desk with writing above him that said, "If I die before I wake, that's one less test I have to take".
14.I remember getting braces in the eighth grade and being so happy when I had them removed a year and a half later.
15.I remember baking banana bread with a friend as a reconciliation gift for the annoying neighbors next door, and us putting whole grapes in the batter.
16.I remember being so glad when I got to highschool and saw girls who were taller than me.
17.I remember being around 2 or 3 and being terrified of a mechanical lion in the window of Mott's Toy Store in Oakland, CA. My parents said I screamed in terror even if we drove by the store. My mother would say, "Just look at him straight in the eye and say, 'I'm not afraid of you, Lion!'"
18.I remember also being around that same age and being afraid of a stuffed, white cat in my bedroom. I have no idea on earth why it freaked me out, but it did.
19.I remember traveling in an airplane for the first time at 29 and it being one of the most exhilarating things I'd ever experienced.
20.I remember drivers training classes in highschool, and our Driver's Ed teacher, Mr. Richardson tapping the break on the passenger's side to the beat of the music on the radio.

:: Mal du siecle 1:52 PM |