Childish Thoughs

Have you ever tried to remember back as far as you can? To your earliest memory? These memories are usually random snippets, vague and sometimes seemingly unrelated. But as you look back, there comes a point where you remember things well. You remember the emotion, the event, the importance of things and these things are all very clear to you. As search my memories, it seems that between 5 and 6 years old is when this clarity was achieved. I remember Jaxon Higgs kicking me outside in kindergarten and I dropped all of the feathers I had been collecting and they blew away in the wind. I remember my dress blowing up in the wind while I was waiting to go into the classroom and Jacob Briggs saw my underwear! I was mad rather than embarrassed. (Darn all that wind in Idaho! That, along with the boys, seemed to cause me a fair amount of frustration at 5.)
What has brought this sudden awareness of these memories has been due to Lydia. Lydia is 5 and it seems that things keep coming up in her life that remind me of my own time when I anxiously awaited teeth to fall out and concentrated so hard on tying my shoes.
For example: Lydia has sight words she learns in Kindergarten One of her new sight words is 'of'. When I saw that word on her little slip of paper, I went right back to Mrs. Kurshal's room, standing beside her desk. She had a long skinny sheet of paper with several words on it we needed to read to her. One of those words was 'of' and I read it as 'off'. That word was SO hard! I was so frustrated that I got it wrong! That's all it took though- for my teacher to tell me I was wrong. From then on, I never struggled with reading 'of'.
Silly story I know, but that is just one of several in the last week or so that has been pulled out of the deep recesses of my mind, due to the sweet goings on of my little girl.
I guess I now understand why people always say, "I remember when I was your age . . . "

Dear Manufacturer

Dear Manufacturer,
Do you have any idea the anxiety that the little stick you supply produces for millions of women? 3 minutes anxiously awaiting . . . Sitting there on the bathroom counter, ever so slowly developing and all the while, thoughts run through the ignorant woman's brain- What if I'm pregnant? Will insurance cover it? I can't be sick for the next 3 months! When would the baby be due? Or- who is the Dad? (Though this thought has never run through my mind personally, I know that more than one woman has thought it.) Or- What if I'm not pregnant? Women cry as they hope and pray that two little lines will appear. So much hangs on those two little lines.

I commend you manufacturer, that your results seem quite accurate. You don't mess with the pregnant woman- making her think she isn't pregnant and then she is. Or visa-versa. Well, you have probably learned by now, that you don't want to mess with a woman who is hormonal like that. I know women get false results all the time, but that is because we are anxious to know when we will start throwing up. That's understandable right?

Manufacturer, thank you for the reassurance that you offer. A woman starts smelling the sink drain from the family room and she can take your pregnancy test and be reassured. She dozes off before Curious George gets himself out of trouble and she turns to you. She feels the urge to really slug her husband, and you have the answer to the question of 'Is it just PMS, or something far greater?'

In conclusion Manufacturer, I am grateful for the product you provide, and I am grateful that this time around, there were two little lines.