Childhood Memories

Reading To Kill A Mockingbird, I think about my own childhood. My first day of school- I didn't know how to read, but I had a new bookbag. I don't really remember it- remember more the picture that was taken, me standing tall beside the back porch, my new bag over my shoulder, my hair short and curly, and something in my hand- my recess snack perhaps? I look nervous or serious, and faded, but that's the film from the 1970's. It's always off color.
I don't think I learned to read until the first grade. We were taught that when we could reach our arm across our head to touch the opposite ear then we were old enough to read. Later, reading No Flying in the House, I tried to kiss my elbows, hoping I was a fairy who could fly. I wanted to swoop down the hill to school instead of taking the stairs carved into the hill. (My family was notorious for leaving the house when the first bell rang, scurrying down the hill and slipping into our seats before the five minute tardy bell.)

In summers we ran free in ways that nowadays children can't. We'd go till lunch, and sometimes take a picnic with us to be gone all day. My friends and I played pirates on the lake, paddling the canoe from one end to the other. Sometimes I played with my older brother, but usually when other friends weren't around. I got left out when he and my sister ganged up on me. When we were very young we played together more- school, and church and restaurant. My brother married the neighbor girl in a ceremony performed by my older sister. I played the piano. We served whole courses in our restaurant with the only ingredient graham crackers. My sister cut my leg fringing my cowgirl skirt for some game we played.

There was no haunted house in my small town, but there were hot steams. One was the path where Analisa's father had buried the mad dog. For years I ran full tilt from one road to the next on that path, with the ghost of the dog nippin at my heels. Other paths were scary too- crossed by snakes and other scary things who lurked in wait for me to walk oblivously by. They never got me though.
Some scary things I knew. I was afraid alot and would have quailed at any Boo. Other scary things I didn't know about until years later- grown up, I understood about the Mr. Radleys and stepped into some other shoes.