This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs....get the picture. Remember those commercials? Obviously that could apply to my last post. I was going to delete it or rework it but then I decided to leave it as a visual remember to myself to say no to drugs. Well, at least while blogging.

Flashback Post #1

Jenny.

I spent my first 9 years living on Bridgewood Drive in the town of Santa Rosa, CA. The rainy winter months kept us inside but as soon as Spring started warming the air we were out on the street. By summer my brothers and I would be on the road playing tag, sardines, kick the can and any other game we could think of with the neighborhood kids. The clatter of bikes, wagons and bare feet was only interrupted with the echoing call of "CAR!" as kids scattered to the sidewalk, joining in the chorus as they ran. Then, as soon as the car passed, the barrelling wave of children scrambled back to the street to resume their games. As the rambunctious games rolled up and down the street, I was never too far from my best friend, Jenny. She is the center of any childhood memory I can dredge up
Jenny and I would play from morning until mom would ring her brass farm bell and cry out, "Everybody come for diiiinnnnneerrr!" As my brother scurried home (my sister, being a teenager never scurried if she was outside at all) Jen and I would walk each other home. We lived 5 houses apart and usually walked to our halfway mark, the yellow dead end sign where we would swing around and fret about how long it would be until we got to play again.
The thing about Jenny is that she was the exact opposite of me. She played the violin and piano. She excelled in gymnastics. Her waist long blond hair flowed behind her as she ran uninhibited through her life. She was fair, outgoing and a year older than me. I was small, dark and although I insisted on growing my wiry brown hair, the best I ever got was a knotty brown explosion that only got larger instead of longer. With coke bottle glasses that never stayed on my tiny nose and a serious speech impediment we were an odd pair. I never knew what she saw in me but I loved her fiercely.
On Sundays Jenny would run over in her rainbow tube-top and cotton short shorts and wait patiently while I threw off my lacy blue Sunday dress and shiny leather shoes and jumped into my own runaround clothes. Then off we'd go. Climbing trees, jumping on the tramp, sneaking down into the creek and always on some secret adventure. We were Indians, spies, punk rockers, government agents, astronauts and explorers. We'd use magic powers, invisibility spells, hexes and fairy dust. And every evening we walk to our pole, worn out, keeping our eyes to the ground to avoid the snails and slugs that would ooze through our toes if we weren't careful enough. Only planning our next day's adventures kept our spirits up as we sprinted off to our separate homes.