writing prompt #1 What Five Things Did You Love The Most When You Were Six Years Old?

My childhood was full of happiness, fairytales, wishes, dreams. By number three, I forgot that I was only supposed to write 5 things that I loved and continued to 6. I might have to do a "Part 2" at some point.


1. I loved how my parents packed my lunch for school. Mom would write little notes or draw pictures or stars, smiley faces, and hearts XOXO on my ziplock bags. Looking back now, I think about how different my lunch usually looked compared to my classmates' lunches: wheat bread on my sandwich, fruit juice, and a cloth napkin.

2. I loved jean mini skirts and my frilly white dress with candy stripes on the sleeves and skirts. When I wore the white dress I felt like I was the mot beautiful thing in the world. I remember wearing it while dancing around in our garage, bouncing off and on my dad's home-made workout bench.

3. I loved the game "Oh Chicken." This is a game my sister and I made up that involved repeatedly standing on one arm of the couch and falling backwards intoning, "oooooooooohhhhh" while falling and  "CHICKEN!" when our backs made contact with the couch cushions. My sister and I played our game until we grew too tall to fall so trustingly onto our couch without the fear of hitting the backs of our heads on the other arm.

4. I loved Bond Crosby. He sat across from me in Mrs. Swank's 1st grade class. He had a military crew cut and played pencil hockey with me . I remember constantly trying to reconcile that his name wasn't "Bill Cosby," or "James Bond."

5. I loved when my friend Elizabeth's mom would make the car dance. Miss Betsy would pick us up from gymnastics, or brownies, or school and on the way home would drive maniacally down our neighborhood streets, one hand gripped on the steering wheel, moving it as if she were wiping it down, the other waiving convincingly in the air. The car jerked left-right-left-right to the beats Ace of Base's "The Sign,"  or Gloria Estefan's "Conga." Elizabeth and I shrieked and laughed and demanded that she admit that it was her, not the car that was dancing, which Mrs Betsy of course denied and simply switched driving hands to waive the other frantically out the drivers' side window.

6. I loved singing and, therefore, the Little Mermaid. I loved that my mom made me a Little Mermaid Costume for Halloween. It was a little purple bandeau, and a long, straight, green skirt with a little stuffed fin at the end. It was a dream came true, despite being made to wear a white turtle neck underneath my purple bandeau because it was cold. How dare my parents ruin the illusion of me being an actual mermaid! I've since given myself hypothermia for the sake of a costume looking cool. I had good parents with better sense than I had.