One Hundred Memories

Just for fun, here's my list.
I'm reminded how my unremarkable roots have afforded me as much biographical material as Haven Kimmel.


I repeated kindergarten; my mom enrolled me when I was 4 years old before there was such a thing as pre-school.

I'm the third of four children and I have four children, each one born in a different season and combination of city & state.

I have visited all US states except Alaska--most of them in summer road trips before I turned 18--and Mexico, Canada, and France.

I love to read.

I hate to sweat.

When I was six, my hair was 3' long and often pulled tightly into the perfect ponytail or braid until the day I took my Grandma's scissors out to Grandpa's barn.

I crawled under the victorian buffet in the dining room to avoid a spanking and watched while my usually stoic mother sat at the table and sobbed.

I took piano lessons for ten years, without a single recital.

I was a 10 year 4-H member and as a junior leader, I attended the National 4-H Congress in Washington, D.C. where I held hands with a boy for the first time. He wore a neck brace.

I winked back at my future husband the evening we met at the Sweet Shoppe at the Purdue Memorial Union.

I missed my second grade class Valentine's party because I was sick with German measles. My teacher, Mrs. Barr, delivered my decorated "mailbox" full of cards to my house.

I've had the mumps on both sides at once--the sight made my brothers laugh until they couldn't stand themselves.

The biggest disagreement I ever had with my parents was over their refusal to allow me to stay up after 10pm on a school night to watch TV's heartthrob doctor, Ben Casey.

My antique childhood home at the corner of Locust and Main streets was built before the Civil War. When I saw it last summer, it was empty with yellow danger tape stretched across the porch.

Eight blocks away, my name is engraved on the exterior of the Henry County Historical Society building in the heart of Middletown, Indiana. I suspect my mother knows why.

I used to sit at my upstairs bedroom window and wait until the DX gas station across the street turned off its sign before I climbed into bed. It's where my dad bought his Lucky Strikes.

On July 20, 1969, I huddled with my cousins in front of a little black and white TV in their house in Lebanon, IN, and propped my eyes open to watch men walk on the moon.

I've held four elderly pets in my arms as they died; three were euthanized.

My first grade boyfriend faithfully carried my books to and from school and asked to kiss me once by the pine tree in my back yard.

I've dated two boys who later became morticians.

I was a teen-aged candy striper at the hospital where I was born. At the annual volunteer event, the candy stripers performed, There Ain't Nothin' like a Dame for the hospital nuns.

I silently endured my elbow being inadvertently shut in the car door for the length of a gravel farm lane because I didn't want to cause a commotion.

I've raised three ducks and four Easter chickens and named them after the characters of Car 54, Where Are You? I rescued a Muskovie duck from the Lafayette, Indiana animal shelter, named her Gertrude, and set her free on the Tippecanoe River.

My dad showed me how to hypnotize rabbits.

I helped bottle nurse 13 Airedale puppies when their mother died the day after they were born.

I had an imaginary friend named Davis.

I was a habitual teller of tall tales by age 7.

I used to wrestle my little brother to the ground and pull his ears.

I've been to Radio City Music Hall and seen the Rockettes. The movie was The Chalk Garden.

My best friend and I performed "Let's Get Together" ala Hayley Mills, The Parent Trap, in a school talent show.

I was lost in the woods while at a family picnic.

I've studied French, German, and Spanish.

While my family attended a women's '96 Olympic soccer game in Athens, GA., I stayed home and surfed the Internet for the first time.

I burst out crying and then sat down, embarrassed for life, when it was my turn at a high school public speaking contest.

My dad bought a new Chevy every year or two while I was growing up; my mom insisted each new auto be midnight blue so no one would notice.

My first car was a used red Corvair, stick. I quickly arranged to trade it for a used red Corvair, automatic.

I was baptized on my ninth birthday.

I have never doubted my salvation, nor ever felt worthy of it.

Growing up, I lived in 2 places within 10 miles of each other; since then, 13 places, 900 miles apart.

I tearfully sang There will be Showers of Blessing in a devotional circle while standing in a downpour at Camp Indogan.

I left church Camp Indogan early due to extreme homesickness and happily did ordinary things at home, like shelling peas and swatting flies.

My garden wedding was at home, and all the decor, dresses and food were handcrafted by friends and relatives. (I hope someone remembered to pay the preacher.)

I didn't think I would ever be able to marry unless I could walk an aisle in high heels.

I owned two pairs of Earth Shoes and one pair of Earth boots.

I prefer my dental work without Novocaine.

My dad called me LeeLee. My mom calls me Lee Ann or Sharon, which also happens to be my big sister's name.

I was elected class treasurer by my Junior and Senior classes which instilled in me optimistic hope in the democratic process and left me a tiny bit cynical about political systems.

Geometry is the highest math I ever learned.

P.E. was my most agonizing high school class and it was Statistics in college that still gives me nightmares.

I quit school chorus after 5 years in junior and senior high because the new director was incompetent.

I was a hallway monitor during chorus class my senior year.

I used to drive a tractor to spread pig manure on my uncle's dairy farm.

I saw white deer in Seneca, New York when I lived in Trumansburg, near Ithaca.

I discovered a wild hen turkey and her poults at a revolutionary war ancestor's grave in an obscure cemetery in the middle of an Indiana field last summer.

I was responsible for the daily care of a pony who tried to brush me and my sister off everytime we rode her.

My husband resembles Paul McCartney.

I am famously unphotogenic.

I married a genius inventor. My dad and grandfather were also inventors. My other grandfather was an authentic singing hobo who read the dictionary a to z and had his letters sent to me, postmarked in odd places, such as Hell and Pitcairn Islands.

I hate to swim.

I'm a published poet.

I've been to Second City in Chicago.

I like to lie flat on the floor and imagine the room is upside down.

When my sister married, and I had a room to myself for the first time, I painted it Horizon Blue. It was the only blue thing in my parent's house, not counting the car in the garage.

There is a building at Indiana University named for a family member.

I earned my BA from Purdue University in 4 years, and picked up my MRS two weeks later, almost 31 years ago.

The highest paying job I've had was, as a member of the UAW, assembling ignition switches and inspecting armatures in a Delco-Remy factory.

I learned how to re-upholster furniture.

I liked to climb trees.

My favorite pie is homemade black raspberry and my favorite sandwich is the renowned Hoosier breaded tenderloin. After extensive statewide research, I've determined the best 'loins are at Shouts, Anderson's bowling alley.

My first date was with my dad to a drive-in movie, Tammy Tell Me True.

My dad won a trophy at the Daughter/Dad Bowling Night when I was in junior high. I found it, 25 years later, in his desk drawer after he died.

My favorite Disney movie was Sleeping Beauty.

One of my biggest disappointments is that Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland is a prop.

The Indiana State Fair was the highlight of my adolescent summers.

I drove my girlfriends through a haunted cemetery on a dare.

The first time I drove a car (Datsun B210) with a manual transmission, I wrote down ahead of time when and where I would make each gear shift.

I sewed orange curtains for a green GMC van sporting an orange racing stripe and replaced the back seat with a rocking lawn chair before my husband and I drove it to Utah one summer. Years after we discovered its quirky ignition, we'd spot it parked around town, stranding its current owner.

Sighting a bluebird makes my day.

My college roommate pierced my ears.

I've felt the earth quake.

I've skidded off the interstate in a snowstorm riding in an old Volkswagen Beetle on the way to the airport.

I've watched the sunrise at the peak of Haleakala Volcano and then coasted a bike down the Maui mountain to the Pacific Ocean.

The best blueberry muffins I ever ate were in Providence, Rhode Island. The chef revealed his secret recipe was Jiffy Mix.

My mom and I sewed all of my clothes while I was growing up.

I learned how to exhale smoke rings in college.

I didn't enjoy coffee until I was 50.

I read the Bible in plain English for the first time while taking two semesters of Bible as Literature, taught by my favorite college professor, former Jesuit priest Jan Wojcik, at a state university.

I've been to Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota twice.

I attended the World's Fairs in Seattle, New York City, and Knoxville and ran into people I already knew at all three.

I watched a moose run through our campsite at Yosemite.

I like to whistle.

I had a canary named Sunshine that would sing in the dark.

I can identify 50 trees.

My big brother instructed me not to say anything unless I can spell it.

I am a flawless speller.

I was stopped for speeding on the Blue Ridge Parkway and in Old Town Lilburn for passing at a break in the yellow line--resisted the urge to explain and received warnings both times.

I've seen where buffalo roam.

I stayed up all night when my dad died and gazed into the dark sky, imagining his whereabouts.

I saw sundog rainbows for the first time the October day we buried my dad.

I linger at cemeteries until the grave is closed.