Here's me when I was five. Almost all of the red was out of my hair by then.I know I'm not supposed to, but I can't help it. I always jump on the little cord at the gas station on my way home from school. It dings and a guy who works there comes out and sees it's me and yells. This is only fun in the morning when I'm with my brother, but I still do it by myself, anyway. Since I'm in kindergarten, I get out of school eary and have to walk home alone. I jump hard to make sure it dings, and then I run even harder to get away from the man who swears and calls me a brat.
I have to walk through the city on my way home from school, and I get scared and run a lot of the way. One day, someone had torn apart a porno magazine and spread the pages all over the playground. Some boys I knew thought it was funny to chase us girls with the papers full of naked ladies and I ran for three or four blocks, before I got tired and saw that the boys had stopped chasing me.
Another time, everybody said that there was a guy who was throwing bowling balls out his car window, so all the kids left school right away for a week, until my sister said she didn't think it was true. How could you throw a bowling ball at a kid?
Sometimes it's okay to walk home alone - like when they change the billboard by the gas station while we're at school and I get to be the first of all us kids to see it. My brother will come home to tell me it's different, and I will get to say, "I know. I already saw it."
By the end of kindergarten, a girl named Karen moves to my school and she walks part of the way home with me. We jump on the gas station cord together and it's even more fun than with my brother, because she doesn't call me names when I can't keep up with her. Soon, I will be in first grade and I will walk - just walk home with my brother and my new friend Karen.
6 comments:
I had to walk about half a mile to school. My brother would walk with me in the morning too but then my mom would pick me up because I would have had to cross busy streets to get home and she didn't like that.
We didn't get to stomp on the cord at a gas station. There wasn't one on the way :( but if we wore our roller skates we had a nicely paved road to skate on 80% of the way there.
I love the outfit in your photo. I had a dress that felt like crepe paper with a HUGE orange bow at the top with enormous pink and white flowers on an orange background for the dress fabric.
what a cute little picture! so funny that you were already churlishly annoying the gas station attendant and running at 5
This is one of my favorite blogs, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
My name is Fringes
(hi, fringes!)
and I'm a churlitaholic.
(nods of agreement and encouragement)
Your recall for details of your childhood shames me. :)
If someone were to ask me what I did when I was 5 I would have to reply, "Stuff." (The all-purpose Male answer) :)
Great post...
I did that when I was a kid walking home from school too. I only had to walk about a half mile, but back in those days it seemed like a cross country hike. Of course I got in trouble because the gas station guy lived on our street and ratted me out to my folks. Busted!
Rachel,
I'm sure my mom would rather I didn't walk through downtown Phoenix by myself either, but she didn't have a lot of options back then. I would have loved to roller skate to school. That sounds so cool.
Margaret,
I think it's more pathetic, than funny, but I'll take funny. Yes, I will.
FRinges,
Thanks. That means so much to me coming from you, since you are one of my favorite blogs too.
Bice,
I think I put events from a few years, to make one for the sake of a story, but I do have a habit of remembering bizarre things.
Evil-E,
What a drag. Luckily we didn't know the gas station guy from Adam.
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