(Don’t ask. It was ugly. The original is in blog heaven and I
can’t call it back. Clearly, I have a lot to learn). I did learn an important lesson tonight. Make sure that you have a backup copy somewhere. I had my handwritten copy however, I had made changes in the wording as I typed it. I now have a copy.
Here is more stuff from my life that you probably don’t
know.
1. I used to pretend I was riding a horse when I rode my
blue Schwinn two wheeler. When the street was repaved, I would ride my bike all
the way to Nepessing Street, gliding along. It felt like I was flying.
2. The first time I ever saw a hummingbird was in a cemetery.
3. One time the leaves that had been raked into the street
from our yard. The city would come along with a truck that would suck them up
and carry them away. My sister and I were home alone. Someone drove by and dropped a cigarette out
of their window and set the leaves on fire.
We ran outside and started beating at the leaves with a rake. Luckily the leaves were damp and smoked more than
a full-out fire.
4. I have a phobia about memorizing. (More about this later).
5. I have almost drowned on three separate occasions. I have
listed them under separate
5A. my first time was at the age
of three when I went into the water from the beach in Metamora at Lake Minnewanna. I was sitting on the beach playing the sand.
My mother was on a blanket with my baby sister. My brothers were out on a
floating dock in the middle of the lake.
At some point I wandered into the water and I was quickly under the
water. I remember looking back at the
beach and watching a fish swim by me and then seeing my brother Craig splashing
our after me.
5B. a second episode happened when
I was six. My dad, both of my brothers, my sister and I were at Mirror Lake.
Mirror Lake had no beach. It had a very mucky bottom, with rotting trees, water
lilies, and plant matter. There was a dock and a spot to back down into the
lake and launch a boat. Of course it would not have been as bad if it had
happened after we went fishing but it didn’t. I was standing on the dock
waiting to get into the boat. I had my orange lifejacket on and started to climb
into the boat. My dad had the boat lined up beside the dock. I lost my balance
and fell into the mucky water. My dad reached over and hauled me up out of the
water, put me in the boat and we still went fishing.
5C. my sixth grade Sunday school class
went to our teacher’s house for a picnic.
Her name was Mrs. Mohler and she lived on Skinner Lake. Mrs. Mohler was in her late seventies. She
had a long dock but there was no beach.
She told us that the water was fine as long as we didn’t go off the side
of the dock because it had a mucky bottom. The boys went running off the end of
the dock and swam out to the floating dock.
Several of the girls went running after them and swam right out to join
them on the dock in the middle of the lake. The few of us that were still
standing on the dock started climbing down the ladder at the end of the dock
and started swimming around. It was my turn to go down the ladder and before I
had gotten off, another girl started down, knocking me off the ladder into the
water. I got hit hard enough to go down below the water. Mrs. Mohler was wrong.
The water wasn’t mucky on the side of the dock. It was mucky all the way around
and I was stuck in it with my face below the water. I kicked and struggled,
grabbing at the other girls until I finally grabbed onto the dock. All the time
this was going on, Mrs. Mohler was sitting in a chair on the dock. She just
kept saying, “You are fine. Don’t worry. You’re fine.” Needless to say, I did
not go back into the water.
6. I always knew that the real Santa lived at Hudson’s
Toyland in downtown Detroit and it was the Santa that I say, not the other
imposters in the other rooms. My mother
told me that they were Santa’s helpers.
7. I was once the Arc Angel in the live nativity at our
church. The stable had a steep pitch in
the roof so in order for me to be seen above the nativity, I had to stand on
the top step of a ladder. If it was
windy then someone would have to hold my ankles. The Hallelujah Chorus
would start and then I would appear. There were several angels and a few of us took
turns being the Arc Angel. The rest of the angels would stand around the
nativity looking angelic.
8. I ran away from home for the first time when I was two. I
ran to the end of our block on Monroe Street, heading south. I ran the full
length of the next block, passed the North End Store and got half way down the
third block before my brother caught up with me.
9. The day President Kennedy was shot; I was in the fifth
grade. The teacher told us that the president was dead. The buses had been called and we were sent
home. I ran all the way home to an empty
house. I thought the Russians were going
attack us with an atom bomb.
10. I was a walker, as opposed to a bus child at E. E. Irwin
School. I remember at the end of the
day, there was a tornado warning. The
buses were already at the school. We
were let out of school and I ran home, terrified to an empty house. Mrs. Pretti, the babysitter hadn’t arrived
yet. I went down to the basement. It was a Michigan basement.
11. I had a lot of hobbies as a child: stamp collecting,
first day issues, postcards, sugar packets, dolls, butterflies, bugs, paper
dolls, ceramic figurines of girls, miniature tea cups, scientific stuff like a
physics set, and box with nature stuff in it, including birds nest, robin’s
egg, cool stones, feathers.
12. One of my hobbies was Betsy McCall. I received my first
Betsy in second grade for my birthday. She was the small one. For Christmas, I received the tall
Betsy. My sister got both too. I had an
extensive wardrobe for both dolls. My brother Craig had a girlfriend by the
name of Susie Boyce. She sewed a lot of clothes for them. My father built each of us a wardrobe with
sliding doors and drawer at the bottom.
They were painted pink with black doors.
I even had an engagement ring for the big Betsy. I don’t have the wardrobe anymore but I still
have both dolls and their wardrobes.
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