I Don't Know Why I Remember...

During one of the first weeks of the semester, I had an assignment in my Intro to Fiction class in which we had to write paragraphs starting with "I Don't Know Why I Remember." I didn't have a blog topic, so I decided to post a few of my favorites that I came up with this week. Although all of these are at least loosely based on real memories, it is a FICTION class, so these are fictionalized. Enjoy!

-     I don’t know why I remember shooting the cats from next door with water guns. The cats belonged to the witch next door. Sometimes we heard her cackling in her house with the peeling blue paint.  Her cats would crawl into the back of our mini van or use our lawn as a litter box. Our parents discussed their “overpopulation.” I didn’t know what that word meant, but as the oldest, I wouldn’t admit it. I told Josh and Brigitte that it meant we needed to have a war with them. That was in our Power Rangers phase. My brother was always the red ranger and my sister the pink. They had first choice, but I was always the leader and that day I led the cats to screech and the witch to cry. But it didn’t feel like a victory.

-     I don’t know why I remember the color of my cousin Heather’s room. Deep Royal Blue. She painted it the summer after my 4^th grade year, just before I came to visit. I remember thinking she’d drown in that blue from all the time she spent locked in her room with her beat box blaring. I sat outside her room in the carpeted hallway, waiting for her to play. She didn’t say a word to me the entire summer. My aunt said it was hormones. I still blame Deep Royal Blue. 

 

-    I don’t know why I remember the M&Ms. Ten of them every Sunday. I sat in the wooden pews with a coloring book on my lap. About halfway through the sermon, my grandpa tapped my shoulder and pulled a Ziploc bag with ten plain M&Ms. He always winked and squeezed my hand after the secret exchange. I slipped one at a time into my mouth, checking to make sure my parents didn’t notice. I’m sure the streaks of red, green, and blue on my sweaty hands gave me away. As I got older the pocket sneaks turned to crumpled five dollar bills or pieces of gum, but I still secretly hope for the ten M&Ms.