I Can Smile at the Old Days

So I feel like writing. Not for any reason, really. I just feel like doing it. I should probably be doing this in my "memoirs" file, but for now, I'm writing here :).

I had a pretty good week. Nothing stands out as spectacular. Just a whole lot of the sameold sameold. Good news is that my phone has returned to its normal self and I didn't even have to make any changes. Perhaps it was just that they were working on whatever tower my phone "hooks" into when I'm at home. But since I still went to Best Buy with my sister, it meant I got to see the girls a little extra this week. Emily is starting to put phrases together. She grabs my hand and says, "Come on -ila." She also likes to point at things she knows the names for and she says them out loud and wants you to repeat them. Which is hard when you're driving and she is looking at something in a book. Funniest thing: she is 100% sure what a guitar is. She's been saying that word for months, which I think is hilarious. It's just so random. Amazing what kids pick up. Anyway, so I got to go with Christina to pick up Desiree from school. Oh how big she has gotten. And it's amazing the things that excite them. When we got to my car, Desiree said, "Aunt Hila's car!" I'm not sure what is exciting about riding in my car, exactly. I certainly don't get excited about my ghetto vehicle. But it's nice to watch her eyes light up over something small. I "forced" them to listen to Weird Al on the way back to the apartment. The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota to be specific. I asked Desiree if she would want to take a vacation to see a big ball of string. She made a face and shook her head like I was crazy. Hahaha.

On Wednesday, I went with my mom and a few other ladies to see the BYU Dancers at the high school. It wasy way way way way awesome. They did dances from Native Americans as well as from various Central and South American countries. They didn't do Panama, and I was kind of bummed about that, simply because that would have rocked. But it was still really awesome to see what they did. They also did some of the islands like Tonga and Samoa. Really cool stuff.

Today I went to get my eyeballs inspected. Woohoo! I had all new eyeball tests. One tested peripheral vision and I had to press a button everytime I saw a blinking light anywhere in my vision. One took a picture of my eye and was basically a bright camera flash going off directly in front of one eye at a time. That was fun. And one (the glaucoma test) involved the dripping into my eyes yellow liquid. Which was gross, when I wiped away the extra yellow tears on a tissue. Just looked nasty wiping that away from my eyes. Although I will say that was a lot nicer than those annoying air puffs they do in some places. I was always anticipating the puff and trying to force myself not to blink. So anyway, I got good news on my eyes: they are healthy. They are going to try to get my records from the Wal-Mart in Alabama, so they can order the exact same kind of contacts for me, because the doctor is happy with how they fit on my eye. I have more of a football shaped eye (astigmatism) and he said mine is moderate to high... So it takes a special lens -- a toric curve -- to fit my eye. Anyway... I'm complicated, what can I say?

I've been reading a lot lately. At least I'll meet one of my goals this year ;). I completed my 5th book of the year. 25 more to go to meet my goal.

I was thinking about m&m's earlier. Now that they are in every packet you buy, it's funny to think blue m&m's didn't used to exist. I remember the year they came out, because my 1995-1996 Balboa High School yearbook had a few pages in the back with current events for that year, and the m&m's adding the blue member was in there. So was a picture of a rat or mouse with a human ear growing on its back. That picture has always grossed me out. It's a shame my mind can picture it so clearly. Ew. That was also the year of Dolly the cloned sheep.

Time is a funny thing, isn't it? I mean, I can remember a lot of details about my BHS days. I can remember that I didn't finish all of Great Expectations in 9th grade (and still haven't to this day and should probably rectify that), and that was probably the only thing I was ever assigned to read for an English class that I didn't finish. I can remember writing the ending of a short story entitled "The Lady or the Tiger" for that same English class and having my English teacher make a comment on my paper that I am "a writer!" That meant a great deal to me. I think it was at that moment I started to realize I could do this well, if I put my mind to it. I can remember the kid that got punched over a Starburst at my lunch table in 10th grade (Brad and I still laugh about this -- about the random stupidity of it). I can remember standing outside of the high school, waiting for the bus with Brad, and making sure we talked loudly about "Mom" or "Dad" so that others would know we were brother and sister and not boyfriend/girlfriend. Because that was like my worst nightmare ever that someone would think I was dating my brother. (Which wasn't nearly as bad as the customs guy in Atlanta asking if Brad and I were married in 1997... Um EW! He was my brother! I was 16! And what did that make Christina, who also shared our last name...? Our daughter?). I can remember the day we got our scores on the PSAT test and hearing people in the hallways point me out as the girl who scored higher on the test than either of the two "brains" who went on to be co-valedictorians in 1999. (I never took the "hard classes" until I was forced to in 11th grade because they decided I wasn't challenging myself...). These were the days before privacy acts and student IDs that were not your SSN. These were the days that everyone knew who the top scorers were and what their scores were. I can remember walking the halls of the 100s and seeing my picture hanging on the wall as one of the straight A students. But I don't remember actually taking the picture. I do remember that my friend John, whom I had this massive crush on, was also hanging on the wall. I remember sitting in Anatomy and Physiology class, taking the test on the bones unit. It was one of the hardest units of the year. I remember he told us beforehand that he would be grading on a curve because it was hard. And I remember there was a picture of a bone on one sheet that we had to identify. He had it turned on its side so it was sort of "camouflaged" in that it wasn't positioned the way it would be on a body. I remember I had recognized it and turned the whole paper around to orient it so the bone would be the way I was used to it and therefore help me to identify all the holes, etcs in it. (It was the axis bone, which is one of the top two on your spine and helps hold the skull up). I remember the teacher walked around from table to table and when he saw that I knew what the bone was and how I had oriented the paper, he said, "Ah! You figured it out!" I guess I was one of the few. I scored highest on that test in the class. It shocked me. I remember when I earned an A in that class for the 2nd quarter, that the teacher looked back at my first quarter B and said, "I don't know how you got a B the first quarter..." I remember attending high school stateside for one year. As it happened, I wound up in school with most of the rich kids in town. They dressed like they had jobs. I was used to the casual jeans and t-shirt look of Balboa HS. So I rebelled in my own way. I wore exactly what I had my whole high school career to that point. And flip flops. Which I had never done in Panama. My love of flip flops remains to this day. I remember Senior Skip Day in February 1999. I remember hearing about a kid in my class -- a kid who sat in front of me in Honors Calculus -- being shot to death by his own brother that morning. I remember calling my mom at work and crying. He had been a nice kid. And I was shocked. A little bit of my innocence was taken away. I remember marching out of the Dothan Civic Center on graduation day, where I had sat with the Honor Court on the stage, and hearing faintly over the other screaming and yelling of the crowd, my name being yelled by my older brother, my younger brother, Angie, Julie, Tatiana, Gregory, and Bonnie. I remember feeling relieved I had not tripped in my high heels in front of everyone, especially because I had to go up and down that stage 4 times instead of 2.

Yes, time is funny. In a nutshell, those are my four years of high school. Not all of the four years, it's true. I have a myriad of memories. But sometimes I still feel like that 16 year old girl, laying out in front of the Goethals Monument with my art class, sketching one of the massive trees growing nearby (on a day the a/c had gone out in the building). But it's been 14 years. I can hardly believe it myself. So much life has happened. And there is still so much to come. I finally understand what my parents always meant when they told me they didn't feel 40 or 50 or however old they were. I don't feel 30. And sometimes I'm amazed that I am.

By the way, this is a song title post :).

So, what brings on these memories that are "so high school"!? Well, it could be all the time I have to ponder life at the library. Or it could be the book I just finished reading that was centered around the events of a high school. Or it could be all the My So-Called Life I've been watching (or as Brad has been calling it for all 16 years: My So-Called Stupid... but what does he know?). Or maybe it's because I just wax nostalgic sometimes when I feel like writing and I just allow my fingers to do the talking and wander where they will...