trip down memory lane

Did I miss out by not being a "normal" teenager? I wondered this as I was riding the bus yesterday morning. It was just after 8, I was on my way to meet a lady and her two little girls that I'm going to be babysitting. These teenagers got on the bus - two girls - and they sat up in the back. They were so loud - talking and laughing - at 8 o'clock in the morning!!! It bothered me that they were so loud, but hearing what they were talking about got me thinking again about how I was never like that as a teenager. I think of this every time I see a typical teenage girl - because I was just never like that! I hear them talking about boys or clothes or other trivial stuff - and the older ones talk about parties and getting drunk and using their fake IDs. It makes me stop and go whoa! is this what teenagers are like? Not to say that I was never goofy or trivial - but I certainly missed a lot of that typical teenage stuff. I always preferred hanging out with the "older" crowd, and I think I was more mature than most kids my age. Which is probably why I'm now dating a much older man - and finding it to be just the relationship I was looking for. I guess being homeschooled and living on a farm had something to do with all that. I just didn't grow up the way most kids do now - or even back then for that matter. Just kind of interesting to ponder...

I have a lot of good memories from being a kid. I should start recording them, write a memoir or something. I had a random memory tonight and had to write my parents an email to share it with them. It was one weekend, around 15 - 20 years ago, when Denver, Dixie and I were really little - Hiram was either just a baby or not yet born - and my parents went off to Hope, BC for a marriage retreat weekend thing, leaving us with my grandparents for the weekend. The one thing that really sticks out in my mind about that weekend was the little treats they left for us to have each day that they were gone. I remember juice boxes - which we didn't get very often, so they were definitely a treat - and those invisible pictures that you color over with a pencil to make the picture appear. I think there were some water color pictures too - that you paint with water to make the picture appear. And each day, maybe even at each meal - I don't remember for sure - we would get another one of these treats. They weren't anything huge or spectacular, but they sure meant a lot to us kids! I still remember them almost 20 years later!

My mom used to make paper horses with us. We would make them out of cardboard boxes - you know, the thin ones like cereal boxes and stuff. She would draw them and then we'd use one as a pattern and trace others - then color them with pencil crayons. In particular, I remember a yellow appaloosa - yellow, with a white patch on the rump and yellow spots on the white. I remember spending afternoons, sitting on the livingroom floor making paper horses...

Then there were the forts - including hay forts in the hay bales. There was the old barn we would go play in - finding all kinds of old fun things, like the cow bell, and the old rifle. There were the baby goats and horses we saw being birthed. Or how about the Saturday afternoons spent playing with cousins and other friends from church - the Densmores and the Andrews. There were the swiss army knives we did chores to earn, and hanging our heads over the bathtub "Sabbath" morning so Papa could pore water over our hair to get it wet. ("Hang your head over and hear the wind blow...") Hated it at the time. There was the playing dress-up with Mom's old clothes - and others that came from the thrift store or somewhere. And I could go on. So many memories. I really had a great childhood, and couldn't ask for better.

And there's my trip down memory lane for tonight...