In a Minor State of Nostalgia

For just a moment, hopefully a long one, a jog down Memory Lane.

It's difficult for me to fathom that almost 16 years have passed since the days when trying new recipes on our Easy Bake Ovens and playing endless MASH games were daily priorities of my friends and mine. Our primary concerns were determining which friend got to "be" Baby or Posh Spice, which boy was the cutest, who would be joining the town cheerleading team in the summer and who would be the first to have a bra.

A few other things that came to me, for the record,

-Disney movies (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Aladdin, and 101 Dalmations, top 5)

-Backstreet Boys/N'sync/Spice Girls/LFO/Hanson

-Nerf Footballs, Barbies, Pokemon, Pogs, Furbys, Nintendo, Gigapets

-Playing Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, Donkey Kong, Pokemon and Pogs with my brothers

-Being a proud member of West Warwick Cheerleading Team and seeing who got to yell the cutest players name and number out, I always got my brothers :(

-Fantasy syncronized swimming in gram's pool

-The Maise Quinn grass at recess trying to build that ultimate cheerleading pyramid

-The Horgan playground after school (the metal enclosed slides, the bridge, the parallel bar that Cheryl always used because she was a gymnast, the "big" swings, the splinters)

-Going to Roller Magic and playing spin the bottle

-Putting on gymnastic "shows" after school, even though we only did cartwheels and forward rolls

-Snapping each others bra in Mr. Driscoll's science class, and actually breaking Vanessa's

-Those MASH games that determined if you were to be poor and have 30 kids or not

-Going to Gelina's in Coventry to get ice cream was such a treat

-Getting voted student of the month wasn't such a nerdy thing, it was cool

Being a kid was awesome, that's the long and short of it. You didn't care how much the heating bill was, who the President was, or when taxes were due. All you cared about was waiting at the lunch table to see if you got that lucky sticker under your tray, how many books you could add to your list to get free pizza at Pizza Hut (without actually reading the books), and when you were going to get to go on a field trip.

We all have so many memories of our childhood and when you get to thinking about it, it can quickly become overwhelming. At the same time, while we retain so many stories from the past, there is also so much that doesn't come back to you.

Sometimes I wish we had the capacity to remember every single thing that has ever happened or will happen in our lifetime. It would be cool to see software developed in the future that can be installed into our brains at birth and act as a storage space, like a drive on a computer, i.e : Life of Shawna Marie Spencer

Life of Shawna Marie Spencer:\Childhood\1997\September\Saturday the 24th\12:25:45 pm

You would probably find in that folder the memory of my mother, my step father and myself driving in his red and white Chevy Bronco, windows down, to The Big Y in Connecticut just because. You would find me in the backseat staring endlessly at the beauty outside, the trees, the grass, the blue sky and the big white puffy clouds. We would just drive there, using all the back roads of course, walk around for a while, and drive back home. We wouldn't even purchase anything. Oh how I miss those Saturday drives. Things were a lot simpler then.

Me being me, and thinking the world is going to end tomorrow, I feel as though the government has already prototyped these instruments and are using them on our soldiers. Oy vey.

OK, this is the point where I stop my rambling and call this a blog post! Let's make a toast to all of our childhood memories, to the one's we'll never forget! 

XOXO

Shawna