On 2019-03-06 I was reading an article on how childhood memories get scrambled and lost. So I thought it'd be neat to write down some of mine. They might already be scrambled, but at least they won't be lost!

The curvy orange seats at the hospital

We were there visiting Heather after her accident. Going to the hospital was just a routine thing that we did. My dad and I explored the building sometimes. One hallway on one of the top few floors had a big window looking out into a courtyard. I think we could see the helipad from there. And there were those curvy orange seats along the wall.

Some helicopters have wheels

Like the ones at the hospital. I vaguely remember that we went up to the roof to see one that was parked there one time. Vaguely enough that this could be totally made-up.

Other helicopters, like the ones on M*A*S*H and my Fischer Price one, have skis.

Wasted orange juice

My dad carrying me around the kitchen. I had a glass of orange juice. As we passed the sink I dumped the orange juice in. "You wasted it!" said my dad. That's when I learned what "waste" meant.

Crayon-riding elves

When you close your eyes you can see patterns moving around. I imagined that those patterns looked like the sandy bottom of the ocean as I was passing over it. Sometimes there'd be a dropoff, and that was vaguely unsettling.

I slept in the room with my parents for a few years. One time I was not falling asleep right away. The door was open a crack, and a wedge of light was projected onto the ceiling from the hall. These little people flew in riding giant crayons, which was pretty weird. I think they wanted me to join them.

Waking up in my own bedroom

Maybe I was already using it as a playroom, but I never slept in there. I always slept on a foam mattress in my parents' room! It was scary to wake up alone in a different room!

Apparently I didn't know my way around the house, at least not in the dark, because I went crying down the hall, through the living room and kitchen to Heather's room, where I sat and cried in the doorway. Maybe because I was able to open sliding doors, but not the swingy knob-kind yet? But anyway, I sat there and cried and woke Heather up, thinking "if I wake Heather up then someone will come to get me!"

Sometimes your field of view suddenly seems very big

And sometimes you have this sensation of chewing on plastic

It might be something to do with the things they stick in your mouth at the denstist when they're taking X-rays.

The old beltline

Sometimes on weekends Dad would go to Menards. I loved going to Menards because they had a second floor that you could go up to and wander around in the cabinet displays. I loved going to Brunsell for the same reason.

Anyway, the Menards we'd go to was on the east side of town. So we'd take the beltline to get there. But back then the section of the beltline that passes over the marsh was only under construction. So we'd take the old beltline, which was Broadway. My dad would point out to me the construction and explain about that being the "new beltline".

We probably ate soup and hotdogs when we got home. And Dad would watch football.

Cool games at RadioShack

I liked to walk down to Radio Shack in Nakoma Plaza with Dad. He'd go down there occasionally for parts for his electronics projects. It was cool to see what he was doing, but the real reason I liked going to radio shack was to ooh and ah at some video games they had on some computers. "Those were probably Tandys", Dad says. Some of them might actually have just been screen savers, but I liked to think that they were games that I could play if I could just figure out what key would start it. One program that definitely was some kind of game featured a 2-block high character jumping around a dense blocky maze.

Nakoma Plaza

Until at least the late 90s it had a different configuration. I think Anchor Bank used to be where Goodwill is, now, or maybe Goodwill has been there the whole time and the bank was the next shop down. Then perhaps another couple shops, and then Toys R Us was the main thing that has since been replaced by Home Depot. Then a few more shops, including RadioShack, and maybe a Walgreens (if it wasn't the first or second shop on the other leg), where I used to get a Push-Up when I went with Mom.

Then the strip mall took a turn to the left. There was an opening between the two legs that I think was covered by a small bit of roof connecting them. You could walk through and find yourself in a small parking lot with a sewer grating. To the west was the Brunsell lumber yard, and to ths south was a magical expanse of thorny bushes.

If instead of wandering through the opening to the meadow, you turned left to continue along the storefronts, you'd pass a book store (this might have actually replaced the Walgreens, so they didn't exist at the same point in time) and a popcorn shop that always smelled very enticing, and maybe a couple other shops that were either vacant or just not interesting to me. But the storefronts were cool because they had a facade of large flat rocks on the front. It made it pleasant to walk past them, especially if you were eating a Push-Up.

The Kohl's grocery store was the last store along this side. The facade of large flat rocks continued maybe to the entrance of Kohl's. And the Kohl's vestibule itself was interesting, because there were distinct in and out lanes separated by a guardrail, both of which took a 90-degree turn, and between the entrance lane and the back and right walls of the vestibule were piles of black rocks, just like they use to cover the sloped walls of highway underpasses. I figured that those rocks were the "coals" after which the store was named.

Nakoma Plaza Meadow

Undeveloped land between Nakoma Plaza, the railroad tracks, and the Verona Road frontage road, which used to have a house along it.

I remember there being a lot of flowers there, which is why I refer to it as a 'meadow'. It was probably full of brambles and invasive weeds, too. So while we often walked past it, we never ventured very far in. So it gave a sense of wilderness, of unexplored territory, even though it was bordered on three sides by infrastructure.

Behind Dorn's

It's a magical place. The track "China Babies" by Akido reminds me of the feeling of being in the pit next to Dorn Hardware, maybe on my dad's shoulders, looking out through the fence at the apartments behind the store. Due to that fence, it was an inaccessible area, as far as I was concerned.

I think Mom and I did eventually go for a little walk back there when I was older—maybe 10 or 11— though that memory has a very dream-like quality to it.

Buying the new kitchen TV

I went to Sears with Mom. We got a color TV to replace the black and white one in the kitchen. I thought the black and white one was just fine. I had watched Sesame Street and Mr Rogers on it for many years.

When we got home I watched This Old House on the new TV.

Not necessarily that night, but This Old House had a "scary" episode where a watermelon got smashed.

Horse farm

We'd get in the red car or the van and take Heather to ride horses. Somewhere around Park Street we'd pass some storage sheds on a hill off to the south. At one point along the route we had to pass under a railroad bridge and the tunnel was only one lane wide, so we had to be careful not to smash into other cars.

While others struggled to keep Heather on her horse while riding around in circles, I would wander around outside with one of the adults (usually my dad, I think), pointing out "the old barn" (it was falling apart), feeding apples to the other horses, and maybe drinking an orange soda (they had a pop machine there and the orange was my favorite).

One time we watched the sun set. It was all big and orange and setting. We couldn't really see sunsets from home because of all the trees and stuff around, so I think this may have been where I learned what "sunset" meant.

They had outdoor trails, too, and I always wanted to explore them, but I don't think I ever got to. My exploration was limited to that bit of land around the old barn and between the horse-riding barn and the corral.

One time I wandered a few stalks into the corn field that surrounded it. I may have gotten yelled at for that. How cool would it be to get lost in a corn field, though?

We'd leave around or after dusk, turning left out of the driveway, down the highway, under the railroad bridge, back past the self-storage building.

40 is the highest number

A Sesame Street cartoon had a guy counting stars. He got to 40, and then said "and many more!" So I got this idea that 40 was somehow the largest number. Tha notion didn't last too long, though. By kindergarten I was annoying my classmates by counting to a few hundred out loud.

Seasons passing

One of my PBS shows (either 321 Contact, Square One, or Sesame Street) had a little cartoon where a guy and his dog sat down on a hill to watch the sunset. The night came and went, another day, and time started going faster and faster. The seasons started changing. The dog got impatient and ran off. Years were passing by, and that guy just sat there on the hill, all alone.

Snowy silence

I once dreamt that there was lots of snow, which was great, because I could build snow forts. I was out in the yard messing around. At some point I walked out to the corner of Reetz and Hammersley. Maybe because I wanted to watch meltwater flow through ice tunnels and down the drain. The chatter in my head stopped and it was eerily quiet. There were no cars driving around. I was out here all alone. I did not like the feeling.

Afternoon passing by

I was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing Mario mazes. I'd been at it for a while. It was a sunny summer afternoon outside. I started to have this feeling that as I sat there alone drawing mazes, I was missing out on the nice day. As if I should have been out having an adventure or playing with other kids.

That feeling is why I try to go to music festivals every year now.

Southside railroad walk

I went with Dad to get the car fixed. We took it to somewhere on the south side of town. While they worked on the car we went to look at a caboose on some nearby railroad tracks. There's a picture of me in the photo album standing on that caboose.

Then we went back to the car shop. They weren't done working on the car. We got a handful of peanuts from some vending machine (I remember it as being the same kind of machine that gives you gumballs or dumb little stickers) and then left again to walk up the tracks, because I had been badgering Dad to explore the tracks with me. We walked far enough to pass under the beltline, and then it was time to go back to the car. I probably protested.

Some years later I had a dream that the other way (south, past the caboose) there was a switchyard.

Peanut butter and jelly and baloney and cheese

If PB+J is good, and baloney and cheese is good, all those things together must be even better, right? I suspect that was my reasoning for always asking for this kind of sandwich, because it's the same reason I always wanted every different kind of cereal from the cupboard mixed together. Mom would dutifully make them for me while I drew pictures and watched PBS waiting for Sesame Street or Mr Rogers or Bob Ross to come on.

"You used to love Sewing with Nancy!" my mom says. "Not really; it was just what was on between other shows that I liked."

I spent a lot of mornings hanging out with my mom. We'd do exercises, and she'd make me do chores and stuff. There was a big chart that she'd made and photocopied that had icons for the different tasks (clean your room is the one I remember, probably because it was the most annoying) on one axis, and the days of the week on the other. Maybe a picture of herself in the corner (or maybe doing something with her was one of the tasks).

When I was in kindergarten we'd do all that in the morning and then I'd go to school in the afternoon. Elspeth would walk with me.

Remember This

If I tell myself "remember this", will I actually be able to remember that random moment forever?

I only really remember the first couple of times.

• Sleeping over at Bobby's house. Not asleep, yet, just looking under the bed at some toy he had that had long black stick and then a red part.
• Crossing the gravel road at Diane and Ray's farm.
• More recently (February 2019) I was telling Sara and Kitaya about these. And that night I did it twice. Once while looking at the bathroom stall door while taking a dump, and then a few minutes later on the treadmill. Maybe the experiment doesn't count for anything now that I'm writing it down.