meme: 5 things

oops, memed by miss vicky a few days ago. too many favourite toys and records and moments with friends to draw from, so i have opted to recall more touchy-feely things (shocking, i know). though let it be known i can reminisce with the best of them about the joy of my lite-brite or the go-go's.

5 things i miss from my childhood

neil: having conversations with my little brother about his hot wheels collection, transformers, or the art of getting to level 5 in donkey kong... not about relationship hell, financial fears, dad's ailing health, or mortgages.

mrs. sandercock's piano: i swear to god that was her name, my piano teacher for something like ten years. her house had such a strange smell, her face was terribly unkind, and all the other rooms in her house were creepy, but the time i spent with that funny looking old lady with the bad hair at the piano in her music room were special. countless hours of old school tough-as-nails music training were still the best escapes of my life.

silky and snoopy: those two rabbits were like my frigging babies. i doted on them and showered them with affection and lobbied on their behalf and would have committed murder for their happiness. i'm sure they had a good life in their insulated castles and the enormous carnival that was our backyard. that is, until one winter while we were away - they were left in the care of my uncaring uncle who let them out for a brief romp in the snow and then totally forgot about them. i still hate him for that, and am still haunted by the thought of how those bunnies became petsicles. the horror.

the gap: i have always been an overly sensitive gal, and was even then. i always knew i was different, that lots out there is very unfair, that people are mean, that so much in the world is just not quite right, but there was still a kind of space between me and all that. the thing about chronology and maturity is that the distance between me and all that gets shorter and shorter, if there at all. which brings me to ...

not knowing any better: i'm not saying my childhood was blissful and smooth. not by any means. but i'm glad all that shit didn't rob me completely of my innocence. there was still the bubble that felt safe (sure, the adult version can be manufactured and installed for temporary security, but ain't the same as the bubble automatically included with childhood). i have grown less hopeful, extraverted, and gutsy because i know too much. i miss the naivite that makes kids take risks, uncalculated ones, unknowingly. i miss youthful fearlessness, not the conjured up mantra-driven version of today.