I Remember.....

I Remember........

Piercing my friend T's ears in grade 8 with a safety pin and an ice cube.

Bullies calling my mixed-race friend J (her mother was Black and her father was white) in grade 8 a Zebra and a Half-breed

My friend S in grade 8 telling me her uncle raped her at gun-point

Going down to the beach with my friend L in it was either grade 2 or 3 after school and swimming in the lake by ourselves, no adults, and when I got home and told my mother she freaked out and at the time I didn't see what the big deal was. I was just like, What? We just went swimming! but now as a mother and I look back it horrifies me.

Crossing the busy urban Toronto street with heavy traffic all on my own at age 4 and 5. I can still clearly remember racing in-between traffic crossing the street, waiting and timing it just right to get across. It's no wonder I never got hit.

Picking beautiful flowers from my Babushka's lush garden in her backyard.

Getting my tongue stuck to a frigid metal pole in winter when I was in grade 2.

Discussing IT in grade 10 with my friend A and how I told her, Ewwww, I never want to do it! It sounds so gross! I'll have to force myself though if I want to have a baby.....

The very first time a relative molested me at age 4( which continued until I was 12) and him threatening me if I didn't co-operate he'd throw my fave. stuffed dog toy into the furnace.That's how he got my compliance.  :(

Finding 20$ laying on the street in Jr. High and it being enough $$$$ at the time to buy both a Guinea pig and a hutch.

Going motorboating on the lake at the cottage with my uncle and cousins.

That time one of my gerbils got loose and hid under the couch and bit my big toe, clamping on really hard and not letting go and it hurt like f*ck and no matter how hard I shook it off it wouldn't let go, spurting blood everywhere and my mother finally had to hit it with a jar and stun it to knock it off.

When I ran barefoot (as I always do every summer and still do even to this day) on the grass at my aunt's house and stepped on glass and it all got embedded in my feet really deep and my mother had to painfully pluck each piece out, one by one.

One time in the Caribbean where I slipped and fell on the wet deck getting into a catamaran and plunged into the sea and my camera was around my neck and got soaked and completely ruined.

When I was prego with one of the kids and I fainted right in the food court in the middle of the mall and woke up laying flat on my back with a circle of curious onlookers looking down over me and how embarrassed I was.

Camping out overnight in the backyard with a friend and the neighbours all yelling at us all night to shut up.

Laying down in the back of the station wagon as kids with sleeping bags in the back and waving at other drivers behind us and making faces at them.

Catching frogs in the creek and that time at camp when I fell in and got my clothes all soaked.

My friend D calling me Horse-feet for always going around barefoot, even climbing fences and trees barefoot.

My friend D and I that one summer we wore our matching pink Pink Panther T-shirts with our names on the back in white felt.

When my friend J and I both won free records at the CNE for wearing our radio station T-shirts.

When my BFF S and I dressed up like hippies and took the streetcar downtown and everyone stared at us.

That one time my hubby and I wore rubber pig noses out in public.

One time I was shopping and my hubby sat down outside the store in the summer heat and took his hat off and rested it beside him and someone walking by thought he was homeless and threw money into it.

C in grade school. I was friends with his sister D and he used to always make faces at me and I called him " C The Face-Maker."

H when he was a kid called cockroaches clockroachers and croakrogers.

That time at Parliament Hill I met former PM Mulroney when he was PM and I was surprised and said to him, Is it really you? and he laughed and said, Yes! It's really me!