Apropos of nothing....

I remember this nutty kid from elementary school named C. Roop who wore a dishtowel around his neck pretending to be Batman.

Everyone made fun of him but he was really kind of cool. But I was cooler so I couldn't be his friend.

I wonder what ever happened to C. Roop.

He is probably totally cool now.

I remember being a little kid in a house next door to the gas station.

Across the street was another gas station (the one with the dinosaur).

Across that street was another gas station.

What occupied the fourth corner I don't recall (a sign company? I remember a cow.).

Because this intersection was my orbit I thought the world was made up of gas stations.

Each night I would tell my mom "I love you more than all the gas stations in the world."

We still say that to each other to prove our sincerity on certain things.

when i lived in toronto, every time i visited a friends apartment building, i would see a name on the directory that was the same name as a kid i went to public school with, it wasn't a particularily common name and i always thought, why don't you buzz and ask if it's him, but i never did, and i've always wondered if it was

Thanks, djjd.

Nice.

As a teenager I was prone to depression and I found my therapy in walking.

At the end of one school year I walked out on a train bridge and snapped my locker lock onto a pipe that dangled beneth the rails.

During furture depressions I would visit the lock.

One day, a bad day, early, I was going to visit and met a woman walking her dog. We walked toghether. I showed her my lock and she showed me where the cranes were nesting nearby.

I returned home feeling peaceful.

I sometimes wonder if she wasn't an angel sent to save me.

While I do still get depressed, I have not visited the lock since that day.

I sometimes wonder if the lock is still there, some 30 years later.

in the mid seventies, i spent two weeks each summer camping with my best friend and his family, there are three things i will always remember about those trips, one is the fact that we cooked all the meals over the campfire, two was the small town nearby that still had an ice house, in a small building by the lake you could get ice from a packed in sawdust, that had been cut from the lake the winter before, and the third is something that happened on the return from the last trip we made, on the way home the weather was oppressive, and the threat of a huge storm was constant but nothing happened, upon returning home however we learned that a good friend of the family and father of of one our classmates had been killed that afternoon, it was my first experience with the death of a peers parent

I remember going on trips with my Papaw...to deer camp. The whole family would go, aunts, uncles..cousins..everyone of us. It was just time for all of us to be together, sleeping in the bunk beds in the corners, the fire....the food. WE always had so much fun going there.

And I remember the smell of that Beech Nut chewin' tobacco that he used....I always loved the smell of it. Still to this day, I'll pick up a pack everynow and then to smell it. It reminds me of him.

<gasp>

Beautiful.

Thank you both for making me djjangle and shiver.

We called my grandpa Papaw, too.

I once had a swedish pen pal. We both were 14 years old
and over time we developed a deep friendship
I actually had a crush on him, and when he told me
he had an opportunity to visit, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately,
it took another year for him to finally visit and by that
time I was too busy with other friends, that I hardly
had time for him.

Disappointed he left a few days later, and he stopped writing
to me. I never heard from him again and I wondered many times
what happened to him......

when my sister was a teenager she had a pen pal in germany, they kept in contact for many years and still write occasionally now, anyway, when she was in the naval reserves a freind in the regular forces was going to be stationed in germany, near where this pen pal lived, she wrote to her and told her about this person asking if she could maybe meet him and show him around, he lived off base in some rooms he rented froma very nice german lady, and when he showed her the penpals address and sked her if she knew the area this girl lived, and if she could give him an idea of how to get there (it was about 100miles away), the woman replied, i certainly know where this girl lives, she's my granddaughter

so it is, as they say, a small world

What a calamity, Jane.

It is kind of funny the way that when something highly anticipated arrives it is almost easier to ignore it.

I wonder why that is.....

Thats a great story, djjd. Forums such as this make pen pals of us all.

When I was in the 8th grade I did something, I still don't know what, that angered the Girls That Mattered.

When I came out to my locker on lunch break I found that they had written "BI+CH" on my locker in big black letters.

I hid in the bathroom after school that day and when everyone had gone I went out and attempted to scrub the word off of my locker.

A few minutes into the scrubbing, Marcus, this mean kid, this total bad-ass guy that everyone was afraid of, shows up and starts laughing. I thought I was really in for it.

Instead, he told me those girls didn't matter and that I was okay for a honkey-hippie-type girl. "Wear it with pride, bi+ch" he said.

The next day the janitor had cleaned my locker and you could only see the faint outline of the word but I have worn it with pride ever since because The Girls That Mattered didn't matter at all. Especially when scary, mean Marcus thought you were okay for a white girl.

I wonder whatever happened to that kid, Marcus. I owe him one big thank you.

Boomerang--

The older I get the more I remember very tenderly acts of small kindness that I never paid due attention to at the time.

As a child and teenager, I could cherish every single wound inflicted upon me. Now that I've had a half a century to reflect on my wrongs, I realize that my "rights" are far more worth cherishing.

Before I was 22, three theatres where I'd spent a great deal of time and done a great deal of growing up had burned down. In my mind and my memories they are still intact.

I remember this kid named Rudy in 1st grade. He was really shy and all the kids used to taunt him.
They made up a horrible diddy about his name after the new Dennys commercial:
Rudy tooty fresh and fruity, turn around and wipe your booty.
And he would cry. I remember one time I started singing that in earshot of him and he cried so hard he was taken to the office. He didnt come to school the next day.
I wonder how Rudy is now.

I remember being in 6-8th grade ( you know, when you have the big identity crisis :-) ) and having a real hard time with the word Afro American.

Being black and cherokee, I never fit into any crowd other then hispanic. My DNA showed no prominent BLACK features , and most people were clueless as to what CHEROKEE was.. Not speaking spanish and not accepting of the ' baggy pants -homeboy- ' behavior I became a serious loner. At that time I was trying to straighten my hair, lighten my skin and fit in somewhere.
This young woman ( well she was my age) at my school one day took me aside. Out of no where. She had the darkest black skin I have ever seen. Even in my attempts of denying my black heritage, I found her beautiful. She was in one grade up from me . She just walked up to me and pulled my arm and said come here, I want to talk to you.
This child proceded to tell me how silly it was to straighten my hair and try to talk white. She said that I was just making a fool of myself because everyone knew I was black. I was just too dumb to accept it and that made me stupid.
Granted.. her words were childish.. but she made a big impact on me.
I always wonder where / what she has become. I never have forgotten her face.

It is funny, isn't it, that we can remember our own crimes against the Rudys and the C. Roops of the world and remember equally the kindness of the Marcus' and unnamed girls who are wiser than we are, while our own kindness' are lost to us.

Shewolf, I love that story about that girl. I love that girl.

Noddy, your comment about the long gone theaters so reminds me....

My father traveled on business - always.

When he would come home he would drop us kids off at the movie theater where we would stay, all day. My oldest brother and sister would joke that we could soon expect a new kid in the family.

Was I "The Magnificent Seven"?
Maybe "Psycho"?
Perhaps "Pollyanna"?

I often wonder what movie my siblings sat through while I was conceived.

Were they at the Rialto or the Orpheum?

Both long, long gone.

I think that our kindnesses are lost to memory because basically we are kind people--we acted from the heart and there was nothing memorable for us about the exchange.

I've concluded that my mind hangs on to imbalances, to unfinished situations. When a balance has been acheived, I can let the memory go.

I remember, 7th grade, Aerosmith had yet another big hit and became popular with the school age kids ( yet again)
Steven Tyler had this way of painting his nails..
He woud take black fingernail polish and paint a strip right down the middle of his nails. Nothing else.. just black strips.
OH MAN! I thought that was the most awesome thing I had seen anyone do.
The next day I went to school with black strips painted on my fingers. Looked AWFUL.
-Embarassing/silly/oh my god I cant believe I did THAT- moment. :-)