Things That I Miss

Last night, when I was standing in the shower, I got to thinking about how many things I really fucking miss in my life.

2:18 pm

• How it was so special to stay out and play past dark.


• Dynamite magazine, Weird Worlds magazine, and Sassy magazine.


• Colored ice cream cones.


• My grandma's chicken nuggets and biscuits.


• Recording mixed tapes from songs on the radio--waiting forever to hear that *one specific song* so you could record it.


• Maniacally flinging pool balls at each other on my neighbor's pool table.


• My parents shouting "around the world!" when we were eating ice cream cones (which was the secret code that your cone was dripping and you needed to lick "around the world" before it got all over your hands).


• Those bathtub crayons.


• The special days my dad brought me a kit-kat home from work.


• Sitting outside in the freezing cold, reading a book in the igloo we built in the backyard.


• Playing the book-reading games at the library.


• Choose Your Own Adventures books.


• Getting to go to the library and then coming home to scour my books while I sat on the couch with legs too short to reach the ground.


• The aftermath of sunburns, and the lack of skin-cancer knowledge attached to them.


• The hideous hideous fashion of the 80's.


• Wearing crooked side ponytails.


• Peel-off nail polish.


• Unicorn collectibles.


• The trouble pop-o-matic bubble.


• The smell of crayons and gluing crayon shavings onto paper for art.


• Getting sticky hands.

8:29 am:

• Running down the sidewalk full-speed in bare feet.


• Falling and scraping up my knees.


• Getting a meticulously crafted basket of strawberry-shaped pieces of bubble gum packaged in a green strawberry basket which I ate ever so slowly so as to delay the pleasure of them as long as possible.


• Tying one end of the jump rope into the fence so you could skip rope with only two of you around.


• Waking up eagerly on summer mornings to find brown-wrapped packages or magazines left on the piano with my name scrawled across them in stinky permanent black marker.


• Riding bikes barefoot after it rained.


• Sneaking off to wander up to McDonald's with my best friend.


• Cherry coca-cola slushies from K-Mart.


• The feeling of my tongue working its way around a loose tooth.


• Being afraid of the attics.


• Our hideous kitchen wallpaper.


• Imagination and making things out of nothing.


• My barbie pool complete with functional shower.


• The entertainment of kiddie pools.


• The way the cold marble of the aquatic-animal-shaped fountains at the kiddie pool in our neighborhood slapped icily at your thighs as you climbed around on them; shooting the fountain streams at your friends by pressing your fingers carefully over the holes.


• My wobbly 1970's-looking first three-speed green bicycle.


• Hula-hoops.


• Setting up the presidents on their styrofoam platform at my grandma's house.


• Climbing my grandma's tree.


• Stopping at the gas station on my walk home from school to buy Big Chew and Garbage Pail Kids cards.


• The way it felt to climb in between clean sheets after a bath on a hot summer night after spending all day running around outside.


• Chasing lightning bugs around the back yard with bare feet in the cold-dusk grass.


• Peanut-butter and graham crackers when I got home from school.


• Making fake "braces" by pressing bubble gum awkwardly over your teeth and then walking around talking uncomfortably because of the gum.


• Playing waiter with Annie's mom's serving platter.


• Trying out those first swear-words in front of Super Mario Bros. at my friend's house.


• Spud.


• Freeze tag and tv tag.


• Having a face-painting booth on the sidewalk instead of your typical lemonade stand.


• The intense fear that came with playing Concentration.


• The old record player that would give us a slight electrical shock whenever we went to use it.


• 21 Jump Street.


• Thinking that my parents were strange because they had a piece of shit in a box in the basement (which I later found out was a rubber piece of shit, which really didn't make it that much less strange).


• The weight of my purse from the rolls of quarters my grandma would secretly slip us as a treat.


• The homemade Sit n' Spin that my friend's father made us which was really just two very large tiles held together loosely in the middle with no pole coming up to hold on to, resulting in large chunks of knuckles lost to spinning around feverishly with our hands gripping the top tile which never succeeded in keeping us on the damn thing for more than a minute or two.


• Rollerskating on the cement floor in my best friend's basement.


• Sleep-over dance parties.


• Not feeling compelled to brush my hair.

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