Ok, so I forgot yesterday was Tuesday. Which is my favorite blog day usually, because it allows me to be even more self-centered than usual and tell you about things in my life from more than twelve minutes ago and pretend that you give a poo about where I come from or what nonsense shaped and molded me or whatever. On the other hand, I'd be surprised if you cared about what happened to me 12 minutes ago either, because that story mostly involves re-reading an article about socio-emotional factors affecting achievement outcomes because the first time I read it I more stared at it and turned pages than actually read any part of it.
So, because I want to and because you have to read this because the rest of the internet is on break today and you know you can't just go read a book, I'm going to tell you about how one time I moved. Ok, lots of times I moved, but this is about the time that I moved between Kindergarten and first grade, because my mom was going back to seminary at an age which, it interests no one but me to point out, was suspiciously close to my age now.
We moved from a house in what was, at that time, a small town in Minnesota, to a town house apartment in what seemed to me to be the bustling metropolis of Alexandria, Virginia. Since I was, what, six years old, I don't remember the exact time line, but I do remember I didn't have to do any packing or hauling of furniture, and instead I got to hang out at my grandparents' awesome house in New York, where they had a pond and a big wheel thing that looked like a duck, which I'm now questioning why I couldn't do for our move to Nashville too. Anyway, at some point there was a giant moving truck that someone drove the wrong way up a one way street and at some point there was a little bit of sock skating on the floors, but at the most important point there was a cross-country drive in a car with my grandpa, who was and is my hero because you could sit in a car with him for 400 miles and just think about the way the numbers on the clock change or the funny shapes of the clouds or how great Punky Brewster is and he wouldn't interrupt your thoughts*.
Anyway, on this car trip at some point we stopped at a restaurant and joined the chatty cathies** for lunch, which was also nice and there was probably grilled cheese involved--all I know for sure is that Suzie really enjoyed it, because she decided to stay behind. Which I did not notice for at least another hour or two. Oh, and Suzie was a doll. Except that she wasn't, she was a real person/my best friend/a surgically reconstructed Frankenstein's monster version of the original Suzie, made for me by my grandma***. And she was all alone in some restaurant because I had been thinking about my kneecaps and whether they would pop off if I pulled hard enough, rather than the safety of my charge.
So, I had to clear my throat a few times I think, and maybe even started crying before I actually thought of a sentence to say, but eventually communicated to Grandpa the tragedy that had occurred, at which point he wordlessly turned the car around and drove some hundreds of miles back to the restaurant on a rescue mission. Suzie now rests safely on top of a bookcase where she is queen of all she surveys.
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*When I called my grandparents, my grandma would put it on speaker phone to talk, but I wouldn't hear a word from my grandpa until the end when he would say "Nice talking to you!" That's a quality conversation, in my book.
** Grandma and my sister. And maybe my parents? I don't remember.
*** I loved her so much her face and hands and feet kept coming off. And Grandma loved me so much she kept sewing her new ones.
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