Seven windows to my soul

Though dates had little meaning to me then it must have been September of 1977 that my mother registered me for kindergarten class. As I recall the teacher ran it like an open house where moms sat down and filled out the necessary paperwork while kids got to try out the standard array of classroom toys: blocks, cars, dolls, etc. Light refreshments were served in the form of animal crackers on napkins and orange juice in Dixie cups

These were the real animal crackers too and not the more economical bootleg Animalitos that I pick up in the ethnic foods aisle for my kid now. The cups were those standard run-of-the-mill pattern everyone had in their kitchen at the time. You know the one I mean? Harvest gold flowers with a fold-out handle on the cup for easy holdage. Speaking of which, be sure and check out this video for Dixie Cups in honor of Earth Day.


Anyway, I remember not caring for the orange juice because it had pulp floating on top. Now I prefer extra pulp while my toddler whines about it the extra fruity goodness and makes a point of dramatically spitting it out when I try and pass it off on her hoping she won't notice.

Another early school memory is from when I was at the listening center with Kristie in first grade. We each had those gynormous headphones on and were listening to some audio cassette that I'm sure told us to circle the red balloon or write the letter A or some other equally engaging task. At one point in the exercise, Kristie leaned down into the speaker of the tape recorder to tell me she thought it was almost time to line up for lunch. She thought somehow that by talking into the speaker of the tape recorder that the sound would electronically be transferred into my ears.

Stupid Kristie.

At 13 I took piano lessons. I had played the trumpet in band so I wasn't totally ignorant when it came to reading music and I had practiced my piano recital piece ad nauseum I'm sure much to my family's delight. It was I Just Called to Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder.

When the time came I chose to play the song without sheet music because I had been told that would leave a bigger impression on the audience. I made it through almost the entire song, including a major key change, without so much as a single flub, but for whatever reason when I got back to the refrain on the last verse I missed my fingering and quickly broke tempo in order to try and correct the mistake. Scott, a fellow student, claimed he couldn't tell that I had goofed. He no doubt lied, but he was kind that way.

Nice Scott.

Not long after my seventeenth birthday I was living as an exchange student in Seyssinet, France. I took classes with several other American highschoolers during the morning, and we were all left to our own devices for the rest of each afternoon. There was this one chick who always wanted to scribble defaming remarks about me in my workbook. She was cute and a year older than I, but because I was a late bloomer, I didn't know at the time that workbook scribbling was some highschool girl pre-dating ritual.

One day she proposed getting together to hang out in the park after school. She wanted champagne to commemorate the event and indeed it was easily attainable at the local grocery store so I bought a bottle. Several giggles and quaint remarks later the bottle was empty but I wasn't feeling particularly intoxicated nor had the courtship progressed beyond sideways glances and flips of the hair, so I proposed going back to the grocery store for a bottle, only this time for a bottle of rum and a bottle of Coca Light.

I'm sure some of the more pessimistic among you can see where this is going. You would be right in your assessment. I've got family who reads my blog, so I'll spare y'all the sordid details, only some of which I even remember to this day.

There was the expected first shared kiss, another shared kiss, feeling up, being felt up, vomiting, foggy memories, having to move to a vomit-free bench, regaining consciousness with a semi-circle of nosey locals watching the show, getting on the wrong tram and having to eventually take a taxi back home. The brief courtship didn't last long after that. OK, not at all. The paramour did suggest weeks later that we stay in touch once we got back to the other side of the pond, but I think my ego had been damaged by the whole thing, so I never tried to contact her after that.

Some chicks you just gotta stay away from.

While going to college I still lived at home. One morning when I was in my early twenties I woke up at oh dark thirty to the sound of a ringing phone. Still asleep I instinctively picked up the receiver but said nothing. I could hear my father on another extension talking with some other man whose name I recognized but had never met. Without even needing to eavesdrop any further to determine what was going on, I hung up the phone and whispered My grandmother just died. She had been my last living grandparent.

By the time I hit thirty I had been married a couple of years to my wife whose grandmothers were both still living. One day one of them called, and again I answered the phone. When I learned who was calling I was quick to tell her that my wife wasn't home but would be back within the hour to which the elderly woman replied That's okay. I called to talk to you.

I had agreed to help her with some shopping the day before and apparently something made it into her grocery bag that wasn't hers. She was calling to see if instead maybe it was mine. When I asked what it was in the bag she explained that it was a toy car -- not a matchbox sized car but a model replica sized car -- and she thought maybe I collected them and was therefore the rightful owner. Incidentally I don't collect model cars and never have, but I liked that she had thought of me in this way. After years of being grandparent-less, on that day I felt like I was a grandson again.

Only last week my wife and I were talking about the television shows my daughter has, much to my dismay, taken a liking too. One of these god-awful shows is Big Big World which is hosted by a huge Plushy who talks like a washed-out stoner who hails from the West Coast. I told my wife that Meryl and I don't watch that show very often because, as I put it, the show comes on at the buttcrack of dawn. Meryl, who being not yet two years old and therefore at the stage where she parrots back everything she hears, responded simply yeh . . . uh huh . . . butt crackers.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the seven windows to my soul.