memory lane @ jen's ink pen ...

It's been a while since I've joined in a linky party, I had to miss a few when I was feeling totally swamped over the winter, but I'm going to give Jen's new Memory Lane project a try ... I'm psyched to join the fun, Jen, thanks for organizing and hosting this!

So the first question is ... what do you remember about your very first best friend?  This one intrigues me because I moved around quite a bit after my parents divorced when I was six years old.  Being fairly transient, plus the upheaval of a remarriage and new baby in the house, making friends was not easy.  I remember having one close friend, a neighbor by the name of Mia Wigmore, when I was about nine - but we lived there for only a year so although she was a great friend, I wouldn't qualify her as a bestie.  I didn't really have an actual best friend until I was about ten years old.  She had that classic native Florida look with the blonde hair, fair eyes, and very tanned skin that never burned.  Her name was Robin Perkins and she lived directly across the golf course in both our back yards.  The youngest of 3, she was a spitfire with a confident personality, so the shy and displaced part of me loved every bit of her.  We had a wonderful friendship, perfectly suited for 2 girls at the ripe old ages of 10 and 11 - we wandered all over the golf course after hours, writing our initials in the sandtraps, collecting lost balls, playing in the sprinklers, we once even swam in the little golf course lake with all our clothes on (ew, that water!) ... and of course, sleepovers, tree climbing, and neighborhood bike rides were frequent.  It was truly the very definition of a childhood friendship - happy, innocent, active, giggly, and carefree all at once.  Sadly, we moved to the other coast after just 2 years, right after I finished the 6th grade ... I saw her once right after we moved, our moms met halfway so we could all grab lunch together and do some back to school shopping, but after the school year started I never saw her again.  I can't remember if we wrote letters for a while, but we were completely out of contact by the time the new school year was over.  I have only had 2 other "best" friends since then, one in high school who earns the title of my oldest friend (almost 29 years of friendship - gasp!) and my destiny friend who is truly like a sister to me, a close dear friend from the instant we met at age 21 ... how I wish there was less distance between here and North Carolina!  Anyway, back to the question - the "first" best friend - with internet tools like google and facebook these days, I have tried a few times to search for both of my childhood friends ... but I don't have any high school info and the name Robin Perkins (and even Mia Wigmore) is fairly common and if they married and changed her names, the trail went cold long ago I'm sure.  It's too bad - I would love to find out how their lives turned out ...

image from here

Ok, so Jen's next question is ... what did your childhood bedroom look like, smell like, feel like, or sound like?  Well, this one's even more tough with the amount of moves we had - I didn't really have one special bedroom as a child.  Unbelievably, I do remember snippets from the bedroom I had when my parents were married, my room from birth to age 6.  One treasured item that I can still clearly remember was my apple table and chairs.  Imagine a round wooden playtable, painted red with a scalloped edge and a quote (that I can't remember) painted around that edge.  In the center of the table was a green "stem" that you could grab to lift a circular cutout from the table's surface ... below was a bright green vinyl bag hidden underneath - storage for all my crayons!  Between the smell of the vinyl from the storage compartment and the wax from the thousands of broken crayolas inside, I can still smell my beloved apple table ;-)

Third and final question is ... do you remember being allowed to do something as a child or teenager that you would not think of allowing your child to do today?  Hmmm ... this is the toughest of all because I was never really inclined to push limits (dream child through the adolescent years!), so my entire childhood was fairly safe and tame.  (First year away at college, however ... ugly might be the best word there.  'Nuff said.)  Since I have no specific example from my 'at home' years, I guess I'd have to say obvious things that are probably true of everyone in my generation - I grew up never wearing a bike helmet or a seat belt, smoking cigarettes was still reasonably accepted (even for teens), and I don't recall a whole lot of background checks on who I was with or who was in charge.  On that note, I'm now having a flashback that works well for this question ... I remember going to a drive-in theater with my aunt and cousins in 1979 to see The Amityville Horror.  Oh. my. Lord.  Scared out of my mind doesn't even begin to cover it ... so to answer Jen's question, horror movies are definitely not something I'd encourage for my ladybugs ... unless they want to carry a lifetime of therapy with them ...

Thanks again to Jen at Jen's Ink Pen for organizing "Memory Lane Mondays" - hope to see a lot of my peeps over there too!!