Questions - Part Four

First, I must say that you all came up with a LOT of GREAT questions...thank you so much! The answering might just take me into next week...and then I promise to get back to crazy baby stories and all that. But this is FUN!

mjd asked: What is your favorite childhood memory?

I have been thinking and thinking about this one. I feel like I was a pretty happy kid, and I have a lot of pleasant memories:

Walking down the street to my great-grandma's house, sitting on her lap while she mowed her lawn on the rider, then eating peach Schwann's ice cream on her back porch. And then she'd serve me vienna sausages and cottage cheese, we'd watch "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom", and she'd let me break out her old 8-tracks and dance to "Purple People Eater" and "Splish Splash, I Was Takin' a Bath".

Spending sweltering summer days at the lake with my friend E. Her family's house practically backs up to the lake, so we'd go down the trail behind her house and play in the cove, playing various games that probably gave our mothers heart attacks and high blood pressure - "Rip and Ride", "Baptism", and "Drowning" were a few of our favorites. And, of course, underwater "tea parties."

My entire fourth grade year - I had the best teacher ever, Mrs. Dial (I even went back as a college student and did my student teaching with her). It was a year of starting to have "boyfriends" (aka "going together", and no, I don't know why we called it that, because nobody went anywhere), popcorn parties, charm necklaces, slumber parties, jelly bracelets, the year I became obsessed with music, namely Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson (!), and the year of a thousand skating parties, where you got to ride in the Big Skate on your birthday. Ahhh.

And there are many more. But my very favorite childhood memory would have to be kindergarten, which maybe is why I ended up teaching that very grade. The details are all a little hazy now, but now and then, I'll flash upon specific incidents, and it just takes me back to that warm, safe feeling of my first year in school...singing songs, playing in the pretend kitchen, and hearing stories. Loved it.

Speaking of school, luckymslucy asked: What was your most embarrassing high school memory?

This is REALLY lame, but I've just racked my brain and this is the only one I can think of...and if you know about my DEVASTATING HEART POUNDING FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING MUST TAKE PEPTO BISMOL AND VOID BLADDER BEFORE GETTING UP IN FRONT OF PEOPLE, you'll understand why it haunts me.

One day in Advanced English 4, I had to recite a Robert Frost poem from memory, in front of the entire class. Standing up (in my cheerleading uniform!), my face already burning red with fear, this is what I said:

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow
My little horse must think it queer (oh, dear lord, WHY did I pick this poem...as the audience snorts and giggles)
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and Frosted Flake (oh, $#it, I meant FROZEN LAKE. See? The food issues?)

And then the class pretty much dissolved in laughter and I'm pretty sure I was near tears and did not complete the poem.

Not terribly embarrassing, I know, but the gods of embarrassment must have just saved up all the really embarassing moments for motherhood...have you read my PUKE IN THE MALL story?

mjd also asked: What do you hope for your children?

That they will turn out normal eventually and not need excessive therapy. The end.

Just kidding! Sort of.

I want them to know how to be content and happy with who they are. I want them to always feel safe and loved. I want them to have fond memories of their childhood. I want them to be kind and helpful to others. My heart melts when I hear G say to L, "Come here friend! Come play with me!"...I hope that they will always be close and learn to lean on each other.

And of course, I hope that with me and their father as their example, that someday that they will marry and have their own children...because I want them to know first-hand the HELL that they put me through at ages 2 and 3. Just kidding! Sort of.

I guess that all sounds pretty generic, but stuck in these toddler years, it's hard to even see past tomorrow.

I just hope every day that I am building them up in some way, and teaching them to be problem solvers and learners. I like to think that I allow them to explore and be curious and ask lots of questions. I hope that I am giving them the discipline they need, so that they will be responsible and respectful children / teenagers / adults.

Okay - up tomorrow...Silly Hily wants to know which "Sex and the City Girl" I am, Mrs. S wants to know what I consider to be my best traits, and Gigi wonders what I consider myself to be an expert on. Those should go well together!