RouletteWeekend

Memory can be weird. Or maybe it’s just the things that you end up remembering can be questionable. The prompt for today was to describe a smell and the memories associated with it. Which lead me down a rabbit hole of something like memories.

I have a memory, I think it’s my oldest one, where I’m sitting on the carpet wearing oversized headphones listening to the Bee Gees or some other 70s band while the smell of Pine-Sol floats through the air. I think my mom is cleaning. In this memory, I think the carpet is shag, brown. I think I’ve seen this picture of me in a photo album, but I’d have to go to the shed and look through my death boxes to find out. My death boxes are the boxes that nobody is allowed to go in until I’m dead. Except for me, of course. And apparently for this project, I will be dragging them out and trying to remember.

One thing I do remember, maybe not around the same time, but I think in the same house, before my mom basically kidnapped us from our dad, is my older sister and my younger sister in the backyard. My older sister and me were trying to talk my younger sister into eating a mud pie. I think we were trying to convince her that it was chocolate. This memory is kind of muddy. No pun intended. And I’m not sure if it’s even real and I don’t know where my brother is in all of this. My little sister is pretty much always the same age in every childhood memory I have of her. She’s one or two. She’s wearing a multi-colored striped t-shirt and her bangs are cut short. What’s even more funny about this memory is that now that I’m typing it out, I think I was the one with the straight short bangs and the multi-colored striped t-shirt. I guess we will find out when I make it out to the shed for the death box.

I remember a boy kissing me in kindergarten. I think he was in kindergarten too. And I can see his face. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Same height as me. We are standing beside a brick wall, presumably a school wall. A quick peck. Innocent. I think.

And then there is a whole gap in time. All of a sudden I’m in 4th grade. I had a friend named Jenny whose brother was a student teacher in our fourth grade class. I guess that would have made him in his early 20’s. He was tall and always had a mint in his mouth. When he answered questions, he would get really close to you so nobody could hear what he was saying and you could smell the peppermint from his breath. I think I had a crush on him. I also think that was the year we went from attending public school to going to St. George Catholic school.

I was in middle school and had a boyfriend named “Stinky Hinky.” I remember his nickname, but I don’t remember his actual name. Nor do I remember what he looked like. I don’t remember what we ever talked about. All I remember is being on a school bus with him and holding his hand. And I remember being teased about it and breaking up with him. What a shitty middle school experience…for both of us.

Another middle school memory is being a borderline juvenile delinquent with my siblings and the neighbor boys, playing a game called stretch with a pocketknife thrown into the ground. The person to your right had to stretch their foot to it without moving their other foot. My brother lost a toenail during one of these intense games. We’re lucky it wasn’t a whole toe and I’m pretty sure it never grew back.

Which leads me to the smell of Aqua Net hairspray in a can that we used to draw pictures on a wooden fence and set it on fire before it dried watching our masterpiece quite literally go up in flames, if only for a brief moment.

I’m pretty sure that’s the behavior that got me sent to Alabama to stay with my aunt. Or maybe it was my older boyfriend who almost took my virginity in the attic of an abandoned house that smelled like dirt and wet wood. I’m not sure why my aunt even agreed to let me come. She was successful, childless, and had way more important things to do than to take care of her sister’s pre-teen daughter for however long I was there.

My aunt was very health conscious back then, she still is. I remember she tried to get me to eat healthy and all I wanted was fast food. McDonald’s if we are getting specific. She was a member at a gym. I think it was Court South or something like that. They had a pool. One day, she dropped me off there and went on a shoot or to work, which I think was the same thing. She is a photographer.

That day, I spent most of the day in the outdoor pool at whatever this place was that I was at. It’s funny how I don’t remember a whole lot about my childhood, but I remember meeting a boy in the pool named Reed. To this day, I have no idea what his last name was and I never saw him again after that day, but our conversation in the pool, even though for the life of me, I have no idea what we spoke about all day, but to this day he is one of my fondest memories and I always wonder what he grew up to be.

It’s funny how something so insignificant can leave such a lasting imprint on your psyche.

Now that I’m an adult, I wish I would have learned how to eat right and exercise like my aunt tried to instill in me way back when. I often think about what it would have been like to have been raised by a parent who cared about health, what would my kids have been like if they had been raised on fresh food and not processed boxed macaroni and cheese with hot dogs cut up in it? But then I remind myself that I don’t speak to this aunt, because while she may be health conscious and skinny, now that I am an adult, I don’t really like the kind of person she is (but that’s a whole other story) and while I may have raised my kids on Chef Boyardee and boxed cereal for dinner, they grew up to be kind, caring, and considerate of others without much of a selfish or self-centered bone in their bodies. And for that, I’m grateful.

I’m not sure why all these memories have me surrounded by boys and men. Maybe it was the lack of a father figure that made me curious? But I’m not a psychotherapist — if you are, feel free to let me know the meaning.

As far as memories go, I think that’s all I’ve got for today. And even though it’s not all smells, it’s a start.

See you tomorrow.