Memories...

On a local BBS someone started a "nostalgia" topic and it got me strolling down the lane. This is probably more than you'd like to see but once you open the flood gates...

I remember...
...looking up at my mom as she collapsed in tears at the hospital desk when told that my father had died
...being intimidated in the first grade by Sister Wilhemena at St. Mel's (yeah, a saint named "Mel". Go figure!)
...hanging out with my friends in the tunnels dug in the field down the street in Fair Oaks
...trying to think of sins bad enough for confession
...swinging at the various "anatomically correct" pinatas at my godparent's house every Easter since before I was born
...looking out my window to see if I could spot Neil Armstrong on the moon
...wearing a funky metal bar brace to bed that kept my feet splayed outward to correct my "pidgeon toe"
...riding my red, Schwinn Stingray (with a white banana seat) all over the neighborhood and in the park
...swinging wildly at my big brother while he held me off with his hand on my head, his arm extened until he grew bored and just shoved me to the ground
...seeing a dog frozen to death at the bottom of the bell tower at St. Philomene's
...riding my bike home from school and getting the front tire hit by a car, knocking me to the ground but that was about it
...watching helplessly as my sixth grade big brother was beaten up by eighth graders
...playing crack the whip out in the grassy area of the school when the fog settled in and obscured us from the teachers
...arguing with my brother to watch Star Trek reruns rather than the boring old Watergate hearings
...always being one of the last picked for any sport
...putting a fishhook throug my finger when my godfather tried to show me how to fish on a camping trip up in Markelyville
...the traditional week in Sly Park for sixth graders where after one particularly long hike, the bus broke down to take us back and we had to hike even more, almost missing lunch but they scraped together some chili for us and it was the best meal I had ever had
...my first crushes on Kim Ehrhardt and Carolanne Maxham
...starting to tell dirty jokes in middle school
...feeling special because I made it into Jazz Band
...seeing Count Basie and later Dizzie Gilespie in concert
...giving up the trumpet because there's no way I could tolerate marching band
...my first play: learning how to do an Irish accent from a priest, sitting offstage right with all the girls in the play while the rest of the boys were by themselves off stage left which lead to my first real girlfriend
...the softness of her lips for that first kiss and that strange dizzying buzzing in my head for about an hour or two afterward
...my second play where I got a lead I thought I didn't deserve and the awful feeling of impending embarrassment on opening night knowing that people would be watching me and how that nervousness completely melted away after I said my second line and I was hooked forever
...riding my bike down the American River Trail countless times, eating wild blackberries and sucking on anise
...coming out of a rehearsal for a dictatorial director in college and learning that John Lennon had been shot
...hearing a friend come out of the closet and learning that gay people are all around me and experience all the same things and feel all the same things and are really no different from me
...skipping a philosophy class because my friends and I deduced that it would be far more educational to continue our discussion in the pub

And my earliest, most precious memory is a single image of my father as I looked back over my shoulder after coming down the hallway. He was laying on his side on the couch in a white tank top. He looked up and smiled at me.
That is my only memory of him. He died when I was barely four years old.