I Remember

I remember Hopscotch and roller-skates.

I remember when my father learned to roller-skate. He fell on his right cheek and it turned plum-purple.

I remember my parents practicing ballroom dancing in the living room. My mother wore a twirly skirt and my father wore his black souliers. The carpet they danced on was green like grass.

I remember my brother laughing so hard, a giant green booger landed in the sand in the playground.

I remember asking for a picture of a boy I liked. He signed the back of it like he was famous. I just wanted the picture.

I remember going to Sunday School and being asked to leave. I was colouring paper-cut angels, which formed a king’s crown. I was wearing it when I left the class.

I remember learning to ride a two-wheeler without the training wheels. It was pink and had a basket in front, but I never put anything in there.

I remember burying pennies in the ground, thinking they’d grow into trees just because I was told they didn’t. I just wanted to see for myself.

I remember someone at school told me a bee could still sting you even though it was dead. I saw a dead one behind the curtain and touched the pointy end. It’s true. It does sting you.

I remember being on a swing and swinging toward a bumblebee. It could not be avoided. It hit the centre of my forehead and fell to the ground bouncing like a rubber ball. I got off the swing to take a look at it. It lay in the sand, still. I was embarrassed for the thing. It just didn’t have a chance.

I remember dissecting a white rat. I pinned it down and broke two of its joints. The instructions said to start the cut at the hole near its back. My lab partner, Brian, turned his head away and said he didn’t want to do it. I wanted to impress him and picked up the scissors and shoved them in. Cut open, there was a brown sack, the shape of an earlobe. I took it out, labeled it, but then went and cut that open too. It gave off a bad smell. I knew then, it had to be the stomach for sure. The heart couldn’t carry that kind of rot.

I remember trying to fit my size-five feet into a size-three shoe just because it was cheaper.

I remember riding the bus for fifty cents.

I remember yo-yos and hula-hoops.

I remember when my co-worker got married. He left his computer password on a yellow notepad for me and said he’d be back in a week.

I remember throwing out my red running shoes and Vincent, who lived next to the laundry room of the apartment building, returning them to me because he knew they were mine. He tied the laces.

I remember a friend stealing a dictionary from the classroom for me because she knew I didn’t have one at home and that I wanted one. She took it out of her knapsack and gave it to me in the parking lot. We quickly climbed a metal fence and on the other side we started to run like we were being chased, but no one was after us.

I remember auditioning for Little Red Riding Hood in a school play. It was the scene after the wolf told me he would eat me. I fell to the ground and pretended to die. I stuck my tongue out at the corner of my mouth to look dead, but I didn’t get the part.

I remember telling my Home Ec teacher I wanted to be a model. She said I was too short. She hung her lingerie in the classroom and flirted with the repairman. She taught us how to cook pizza and pigs-in-a-blanket. We baked cakes and they always collapsed in the middle.

I remember handwriting.

I remember buying a lot of white dresses. When I got married I wore none of those.

I remember when I had to dial a phone.

I remember when I had a pen pal in Loon Rapids, Minnesota. We wrote three letters to each other and then I sent him a photograph of me. He never wrote back after that.