During this time frame Jackie became the neighborhood babysitter. She was actually really good at it. At this time she was still really fun and I do remember her chasing us around the house cackling like a witch and trying to catch us and tickle us. And the kids she babysat spent lots of hours at our house and sometimes that was a good thing and sometimes that was a bad thing….
One group of kids was a band of brothers …. 3 of them. Their parents were on Dad and Jackie’s bowling team and so we not only spent all week together but then the weekends also… and as the years went on I actually joined a bowling team with the two older brothers. I loved going over their house because as far as boys go they were actually really fun…they were definitely always looking for trouble but I didn’t mind it much because they usually let me in on it and the oldest brother was actually my first crush… I remember after bowling we would always go for pizza and he always put salt on his pizza and I thought it was the weirdest thing ever but because he was so cute I was absolutely willing to overlook this little oddity.
There was also a brother and sister that lived kitty corner to us…. the Bordattos. She didn’t watch them every day but when she did I liked it because the girl was my age and we had a lot of fun together but the little brother was a pain in the behind and actually chucked a matchbox car at me one day and almost sliced my eye…
There was another brother and sister…. Adam and Karen….they were there Monday through Friday and I really liked Karen… she was my age and always wore her hair parted on the side which I thought was just really sophisticated, and she had it pulled back by a barrette and her clothes were always really really clean. She was quiet… but nice and the best part was her little brother was nothing like the Matchbox throwing kind… he was timid and would do anything Karen told him and we took advantage of that probably more than we should have….
And then there was Kim….Kim was a force to be reckoned with and I had no idea that just a few short years later she would become the most popular girl in the entire school but as luck would have it she and I hated each other with a passion from first glance… and she made my life a living hell every single moment she came over. Picture Nellie from Little house on the Prairie and then amp that up about 50 notches and you will come close to the visualization of Kim… Her favorite game to play with me was to ask me if I wanted to play Barbies and I of course would say yes and so she would tell me to dump the Barbie bin so we could play and as soon as I dumped it she would say to me “Never mind I don’t want to play and the last person to touch the toys has to pick it up” and she would walk off and I was left to pick up all the stuff….and the worst part was I fell for this little game of hers at least three times a week! What a schmuck! Kim seemed to be everywhere I was…I started bowling and she started bowling… I started taking roller skating lessons… and of course she started taking roller skating lessons…but the worst… the very worst was when I entered my “rainbow” fashion phase.
I loved me some rainbows and would happily convince my mother to buy me any garment with a rainbow on it that I could get my grubby hands on. I would draw them with chalk on the sidewalk, I would doodle them in notebooks, and one of my first real attempts at interior design stemmed from a spiral notebook and a set of Pentel markers and I drew fifty five rainbow designs and hung them from string from my canopy bed…. I loved them and then one day I went to school and there was Kim wearing a rainbow windbreaker!
This was just at the beginning stages of her ride on the popularity express train and she was starting to develop a small following and when I saw her with that rainbow jacket I was just shooting mad because I apparently thought that I owned the market on rainbow paraphernalia… and I felt kind of special because I liked rainbows before rainbows were really cool. But within days of Kim’s rainbow windbreaker her cult following began donning rainbow necklaces and shoelaces and purses and hair barrettes…and she spotted me one day with my rainbow shirt on and called me a copy cat in front of all her friends! And I was just spittin mad because she knew that I knew that she played in my room and saw all my rainbow designs and my entire collection and I had it before she even thought of it but no one would believe me….silly I know but that rainbow started a feud that would last into high school with this girl!
So long ago but wow who knew six little colors in an arch could cause such a sting in my memory banks! Remind me to thank Noah for that one!
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Questions of the Day:
• Who was your first crush?
• What was your favorite type of pizza and did you have a special place you ordered it?
• Did you collect anything when you were a kid?
• What is your most embarrassing fashion moment?
• What kind of bed did you sleep on when you were little?
• What did your bedroom look like?
• Did your mom or older sister ever baby-sit kids that came over to your house?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard!
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