Tagged by a preacher

Preacher Beege to be exact. What? You haven't read her blog yet? Get over there now and check it out. I'll wait. Just don't forget to come back okay?

She's assigned me to tell you my top five childhood memories. I'll tell you five but can't guarantee they're my top. Maybe they're just the ones I remember most vividly.

1. When I was about five years old my family and I went camping in West Virginia at a place (and I don't know if it was the name of a town or the name of a mountain or both) called Spruce Knob. We had one of those pop-up trailers that my parents and my sister and I slept in and my brothers slept in a tent. Not all of the particulars are fresh in my mind but there are a few things about that trip that I remember.

• We picked blackberries nearly every day. There were bushes all over and my mother would make a blackberry cobbler every afternoon.
  
• One afternoon while picking blackberries I kept getting stung by little sweat bees.
• I was the only one besides my dad who didn't get poison ivy.
• I walked with my brothers down to a lake or maybe it was a river. Anyway it was two miles away from our campsite and my mother couldn't believe my little five year old legs could carry me that far.
• My mother forgot to bring spaghetti with us so we had to ride to a general store to find some. The only spaghetti they had was this very thick spaghetti that we weren't used to and forevermore thick spaghetti has been called "Spruce Knob Spaghetti" by our whole family.

2. When she was sixteen and I was nine years old my sister was a lifeguard at the swim club to which our family belonged. Late in the summer there was a rainy afternoon that the pool was open but no swimmers were there. I went down to the pool and she was the only lifeguard on duty. We spent the afternoon together just hanging out in the pool and we talked and talked and talked. I adored my sister - still do - and having her undivided attention for a few hours was wonderful to me.

3. My cousins and my siblings and I liked to play "Rock Band" on rainy afternoons. We'd hang out in my cousins' playroom and play on the record player over and over The Loving Spoonful's Summer in the City and we'd act like we were the band. The ironing board was the organ, the upright vacuum cleaner was our microphone, big mop buckets were the drums and assorted tennis rackets and flyswatters were our guitars and we'd take turns trading off "instruments". And of course everyone wanted to be lead singer so we'd practically have to come to blows over who was next to sing. When we talk about it now we always call it The Flyswatter Band.

4. When I was in the 3rd grade a girl named Casie and I got into a knock down, drag out fight over jump rope at recess. There were four of us - me, Casie, a girl named Suzanne and another girl I can't really remember. I think her name was Susan and she wasn't someone I was really friends with. Casie and Suzanne were on one team and Mystery Girl and I were the other and we were playing Casie's favorite jump rope game, Queen Bee. She and Suzanne would chase each other through the rope while Mystery Girl and I turned the rope and when one of them tripped up we'd change places. Casie didn't like rope turning so she's turn the rope wrong - lifting it as we'd run through, etc. - so we'd mess up and she could get her jump turn sooner. I finally told her she was cheating and she and I got into a nasty argument over it. I can't remember who started it but pretty soon she was kicking the hell out of my shins with those big ass lace up hard leather Stride Rite shoes and I was yanking the shit out of her blonde hair. It freaked Suzanne out and she ran and told one of our teachers that we were in a fight. I remember thinking "I'm doomed for this." when the fight was broken up because Casie's mother was a teacher at the same school and friends with our teacher. Nothing really came of it though. I don't remember being punished for it at all and I think all we had to do was apologize to each other even though Casie was pulling clumps of hair out of her head all day and my shins were black and blue for weeks afterwards.

Later on in high school the topic of this fight would come up and Suzanne would say "You were crazy! You both scared me to death! I thought you were going to kill each other!".

It even made an amusing story at Casie's rehersal dinner when she got married. I was one of her bridesmaids and we laughed like mad telling the rest of the wedding party about being two crazy fighting nine year old girls.

5. When I was very young - too young to go to school - I would get into my sister's records and play them over and over while she was at school. I'd play her Beatles albums (and I give her full credit for starting me on my love of the Beatles) and her 45s, always being very careful not to drop the needle on them or scratch them. I can close my eyes and remember sitting in front of the record player and me playing her 45s of Nancy Sinatra singing "These Boots are Made for Walking" (with the flip side of "The City Never Sleeps at Night") until I knew every word.

I won't do a specific tagging but wish at least some of y'all would do this anyway because I love to read about the stuff people remember from childhood. Except I will tag Brandi . I always tag Brandi.