I'll do my best. These memories are like the dark balls in the deep valley from the movie "Inside-Out", so old and dusty they're about to dissolve and blow away. Glad to write them down now before they're totally gone...
Long Leggity Beasties
Everyone looked so tall. So many of my memories are from the ground looking up at something or someone giant.
Dogs and Dolls
My father loved animals, and our house flocked with them at any given time. As a small child, we had cats and dogs, birds and hamsters and gerbils. The dogs scared me. We had a very high-energy Dalmation puppy, and he needed feeding. I needed to feed him. Not sure how that became my job, but that dumb dog would pounce on me and lick me and nip me and I hated it. Got so scared of him after awhile that I think feeding him kinda stopped, and my dad yelled at me about it, then gave it to my brother to do or did it himself.
Other dogs in the neighborhood wouldn't leave my alone. Our neighbor to the right had two of those St. Bernard dogs. Placing a small child in front of a dog like that is the stuff of nightmares, and I had my share. Also, across the street, another neighbor thought a St. Bernard a good idea, and I walked by these beasts, running up to the fence and woofing at me, showing teeth, every day of my kindergarten year. Terrifying.
My dolls comforted me to some extent - I had several. Never any Barbie dolls, even though I asked for some. My mother didn't like them or what they represented, so I went without those. I had one of those sock monkey dolls you see today - my mother actually took some socks and made that stinkin' sock monkey doll. No prefabricated dolls in those days! I also remember one large doll I named Maude or Molly, that I literally hugged the stuffings out of, over time.
Reading
I took to reading very early, before school. My brother claims he read to me (and he probably did), but I remember more clearly my grandmother reading to me in her rocking chair, and then I would take the book back to my room and try to read it myself.
My favorite one was a book with a gray cover about the seasons, with pictures of trees and leaves. I also loved Dr. Seuss stories. By the time I hit kindergarten, I was into hard-core reading at a second- or third-grade level, and my all-time favorite activity. In the first grade, most of the other kids were in the reading books labeled Level 6, 7, or 8 in big groups, and I sat in a group all alone at another table, reading the book labeled Level 21, 22, and 23. Something felt very different about me.
Piano Lessons Gone Awry (Sorry, Linda!)
We had a piano in our home, and Mom thought it a great idea for me to learn. Our neighbor and one of her best friends, Linda Shirts, taught piano, and she tried to teach me.
I had zero inclination to practice beyond Chopsticks, and eventually dropped it altogether, not realizing the value and usefulness of playing piano later in life. I think I even fought my mother over practicing. But even when I learned the value of it, the interest never did more than ebb at a very low level.
Rocking Chairs and Losing my Grandma
My grandmother's rocking chair held a lot of good memories for me. Sitting with her, or even sitting without her and opening that baby up, felt great. Although I did have to watch out for the cat's tails or brother's fingers. I also had one of those rocking horses on springs that I tended to abuse, just because it was so fun to try to get my head to touch the floor while still sitting in the saddle.
I remember sitting on that rocking horse after my grandmother died, even though I was technically too big for it (age 7 or so). She went to the hospital and never came back. I didn't see her again until her funeral, and while she did look like a deflated version of herself in the casket, when I touched her hand, she felt like the rocking chair: wooden and hard.
I blamed myself for her death, and it made me sad to see my mother cry. Grandma had spanked me a few weeks back for going au natural in the backyard (my brother told me it would be great, and it was, until the neighbors saw), and in my childhood fury, I went before the Lord and prayed for her death. And then she died.
Many years later, I knew it was the heart disease from years of smoking and the colon cancer and not my demands before the throne of Deity, but the guilt persisted for awhile.
Tying my shoes
My determination to learn how to tie my shoes grew over time. For many weeks and months, I could do it, but only with one loop. I couldn't manage two.
So one Saturday when I didn't have school, I sat my butt down in that rocking chair with my shoes, and vowed never to move from that spot until I could tie my shoes with two loops.
I did manage to do it after a few hours, using a cheat hack of tying the bunny ears, but finally I had the two loops. Later on I refined my technique as I got better at working my fingers, but that became my first notable success in life.
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Nothing in my whole world compared to the excitement of Saturday mornings. In those days, all the channels played cartoons, and you couldn't record them to watch them later. So if you missed them, they were gone, and who knows if they'd ever come around again?
My favorites included Justice League cartoons (why has there never been a Wonder Twins movie?), all the hippy-dippy Marty Kroft shows (Shazam, Sigmund the Sea Monster, Land of the Lost (the teenage son Will was sooooooo cute! but almost too scary for me), H.R. Pufenstuf (I even went to see the Pufenstuf movie in downtown Salt Lake when it came out), the Bugaloos, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and the Lost Saucer (not Jim Nabor's proudest career moment, I would wager).
We also had the Schoolhouse Rock videos that would play between shows and cereal commercials, which was like a sing-and-dance break for kids, so you could sit still again despite all the sugar you'd had for breakfast and watch more shows.
It was so sad every weekend when 11am rolled around and the grownup shows came on. Time to grab a book or go outside!
Temple Square
Whenever I did venture outside, this place beckoned me. Even if I couldn't go, I thought about going. First of all, I could walk there. It sat only a few blocks away from my house. Even as a small child, sometimes I walked over there by myself.
I would steal all the missionary pamphlets and take them home. I would watch the new couples emerge from the temple doors (including one couple once that looked a lot like Donny Osmond, but a lot of guys looked like Donny Osmond back then).
I loved the buildings, but I loved the visitor's center most of all. This spot felt like Disneyland to me, because of all the interactive exhibits, and especially the movie "Man's Search for Happiness".
I couldn't get in unless one of the missionaries stuck in their key and turned on the movie, and I was usually too shy to ask, but I would watch the theatre and sneak in when someone else decided to see it. I couldn't get enough of it - a world of wonderment for me.
I also loved the circular walkway that rose into the sky and you saw all the planets and stars on the wall, and I pretended I'd died and was going back to heaven, and then at the top was the Christus - this gigantic statue of Jesus Christ. I didn't get close - it was so huge it was intimidating - but I loved looking at it, and wondering how Jesus would look when I did see him again.
They also had a puppet play that talked about the church's Family Home Evening program that I would sit and watch, and then it was time to run into the Book of Mormon presentation and wait until someone turned it on for me (the best part was always when the whole room went so dark I couldn't see anything, not even my hands in front of my face, and then the light got gradually brighter around the figure on the screen who turned out to be Jesus visiting the people in America. Such drama, and I ate the whole thing up. Loved it).
There were the busts of the modern-day prophets after that, but by that time I was satisfied, and wandered out onto the grounds to look at the temple and the flowers before heading home.
That's probably enough stories for today, children. Another round of them tomorrow...
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