RSS SubscribeThe 6 Childhood Facts Meme
Like Sumangali, this is my first response to a meme as well. It started over at John’s blog from New Zealand, A Sensitivity to Things when he first posted hilarious childhood commentaries written by Pavitrata and then John added his own as well with equally humorous aplomb. At first I was reluctant to jump on the bandwagon because my childhood wasn’t all peaches and ice cream. In fact, one of my childhood facts might be about my elaborate plans to run away to the local park on a lake where I would try to imagine I could live comfortably and make do under the picnic table/cooking grill mini-pavilions scattered through the park grounds. Ah the dreams of childhood! I did at least used to worry that it might get chilly in winter time living outdoors.
But as I looked through old photos in albums and shoe boxes, my new scanner seemed to just beg for the first foray into digitizing some of those bygone days. What fun to finally live dangerously and post a photo of myself in a tutu for the world to see!
Here goes:
1. Patent Leather Shoes
My mother tells me on good authority that I went through a longish phase where I insisted on wearing dressy patent leather shoes (preferably red) regardless of the occasion or accompanying attire. I scarcely recall as much but there are photos aplenty attesting to this early fashionista side of my nature at a wee age.
Note the patent leather shoes - me aged 6
2. The Swing of Delight
My favorite hangout was the backyard or school playground swingset. Whenever I felt down and out, I retreated to a session of high flying swinging, occasionally with a jump into the air off the swing for good measure. It was my personal version of sanctuary. When I first began meditating on the Eastern spiritual path of teacher Sri Chinmoy, I actually used to walk over to the swings in the park near the now 3100 mile race course and swing while singing a song to cheer me up that Sri Chinmoy wrote called Phulero Dola with the Hindu imagery of the swing of delight. In fact, I consider it a great act of restraint on my part that I have never bought a Hindu statue of Radha and Krishna together on a swing.
Me aged 2 on the backyard swingset
3. Ballet Ruled
In Michigan where I grew up, I started taking ballet lessons at the age of 5 or 6 at the Nancy Sue Whitson School of Dance which taught the Cecchetti method and continued with great devotion until my mid-teens when the teacher demanded that you give your life to ballet completely or drop out - I chose the latter. My favorite time of year was when we prepared our big recital productions. It took weeks to memorize and perfect the choreography and all the Moms had to either make or more occasionally buy the costumes. One of my favorite activities any time of the year was to while away hours in the living room that extended into a dining room, hearing a great flourish of music in my head and imagining intricate choreographed productions as I danced across the floor.
It is much to my chagrin and embarrassment that now in my adulthood I am the proverbial clumsy and nonathletic achiever despite my occasional super-sized efforts. One year I went every day to a health club and worked out with weights and other machines, ran 2 miles every day, did 8-10 mile runs on the weekend, aerobics, etc. and it still took me 6 1/2 hours to run the New York City Marathon. Maybe that super competitive ballet stage was a previous incarnation right within the current one??
Me Age 11 as Ballerina
4. A Doyenne of Domesticity
I loved to play with dolls, paper dolls, the clothes in the dress-up trunk in our basement and make-believe “house.” My youth and teenage years saw me quite the Martha Stewart of homemaking. For fun my girlfriends and I would host dinner parties for our parents to attend. I baby sat neighborhood children constantly - one summer full-time on weekdays for a working mom. I made and sold desserts to my Mom’s friends, worked for a catering company as my first outside job, worked cleaning houses, thought designing and stitching my own needlepoint was great fun, would spend hours stringing popcorn and cranberries and making homemade ornaments at Christmas time, the list goes on and on.
Proof yet again that morning doesn’t always show the day can be found in the eventual denouement of me as a radical feminist once I hit the ground in college and I never married or had any children in spite of all that practice in my youth. I don’t ever seem to have much energy for domesticity lately - what with working full-time and a long commute. Now if I vacuum the house once a month it is a minor miracle worthy of a blog post in its own right.
5. Learning to Read
My parents tell me that when I learned to read it became my raison d’etre. I read voraciously and without discrimination. I snuck books to bed with me under the covers, sometimes read a story at the same time as walking the mile home from school and loved to sit in a lawn chair or by the neighborhood swimming pool devouring yet one more novel. In one way at least I followed suit from my childhood in my current job as a public librarian. We don’t get paid to read books but we do get paid to read book reviews and decide what to order. Too bad I have to read the titles for the book group I lead at work on my own dime as well…
6. Forbidden Fruit
Can I blame my incurable fondness for chocolate on the childhood rule that we were only allowed to have a candy bar once a week on Sunday? While this didn’t mean we ate like raw food fanatics the rest of the week - somehow I think Pop-Tarts were a common breakfast food at our kitchen table - it did create an aura of mystery around chocolate that only increased its desirability as the “forbidden fruit.” Now even when on weight-reducing regimens, I still fit in prudent quantities of good quality chocolate as long as it is in moderation.
Well that’s enough meme for one day. Thanks John for the invitation to take a trip down memory lane. It was rather fun after all.
Explore posts in the same categories: children's wisdom, meme
Sharani, may I be the first to say you’re a fantastically good sport for taking part in John’s meme, especially with an illustrated contribution!
I had exactly the outfit you’re wearing in the first shot, (except, alas, my socks were white instead of red). I saved it only for dancing in our living room at home.
I so wanted to learn ballet but — ever the pacifist — allowed myself to be bullied out of class. The other girls insisted I was a boy because I had a blue leotard (instead of pink like the others), and short hair (instead of Goldilocks style as they did). I thus never got near the heady heights you reached, tutu and all! Respect is due
Sumangali, the world of ballerinas was hardly frill and pink cotton candy as you rightly recollect. In our case, the leotard HAD to be black and the tights had to be pink. When you graduated from slippers to toe shoes, it was as if getting a black belt in karate. Never mind that the shoes were a peculiar form of torture that lambs wool only went so far to dissipate. I promise I wouldn’t have mistook you for a boy ring curls or not.
Well done on dredging the depths of your childhood to find these choice pearls Sharani!
I myself thought my life was over rather than beginning when I was forced to wear patent leather shoes—it was the height of the sneaker craze in the early 80s you see—and did my best to scratch and otherwise wear them out, as quickly as possible.
On the other hand, the first time I went ice-skating, aged 5 and in Canada, I insisted on a pair of white skates, and had a less than happy time, like Sumangali in her blue leotard the only little boy of hundreds not wearing black.
Hi John,
You have enlightened me on the passing fashions of patent leather shoes. I did not know they were a craze in the 80’s. I was merely 15 years ahead of the curve on that trend.
Canada would be the place “de rigeur” to ice skate for the first time! sad it is that at the tender age of 5, the color of one’s skates should carry such import. Good thing you weren’t my younger brother - mine had such a sweet angelic face that I often insisted as the oldest of the two of us that he dress up like a girl when we played make believe. Consider yourself saved with a whole hemisphere and a decade or two between us.
Enjoyed seeing the photos and reading snippets of your childhood Sharani.
Your mention of “…a session of high flying swinging, occasionally with a jump into the air off the swing for good measure” brought back vivid memories of contests as we called them, with my brothers and sisters: who could swing the highest and leap off the swing when it was at the highest point in the arc. Because we used no reliable form of measure, many a ‘discussion’ ensued as to who had won.
We graduated from our swing set in the backyard and went a few blocks away to an abandoned Army fort. In one tree there was a platform with a rope knotted at the end. We would climb the tree, stand on the platform, grab hold of the rope and push off, swinging over the swamp. When the rope was at the highest point in the arc, we had to drop - if you hesitated for a second, you landed at the edge of the swamp - yes, swamp - and landed on the protruding roots of trees. Ouch! I can say for sure that it was an ouch.
I so much liked reading your six memes (is that a word?!) so much that I am searching for the link to John’s original invitation hoping to read more from others.
Hi Niriha,
Adventure was the order of the day, yes? Did you let out a Tarzan-like whoop during those jumps? What John, Pavitrata and Sumangali wrote on the same subject are links within the beginning of my post. Typically a meme is kind of like an electronic chain letter where you tag 5 other people to blog on the same subject. When John started this one, he made joining in optional - very courteous of him, yes? That way it was purely voluntary whether or not to hike down that memory lane.