Designated Doodler

I am convinced that I am truly weird. At ten years old I was watching JAG and building model F-14's. I daydreamed endlessly and wished that my artistic skills could be capable of depicting them. I'd hide in my room, playing James Taylor and imagining alternate endings to the television shows I had become obsessed with. Legos, Barbies, Playstation and Basketball were great, don't get me wrong. But I was happiest when I was nestled atop the tree in our backyard, watching the sunset. I loved books, music and sports like most kid's my age. But I never felt like most kids my age. I felt truly weird... because I was. The things that they worried about - I didn't. And the things they never even considered - were the things that I worried about. Even now, as a teacher, I have yet to meet a student who is anything like me. And it makes me wonder if there is anyone out there like me. Keenly aware. Cautious. Extroverted. Anxious at times. Strongly grounded in my ...

I remember playing dodgeball when I was in elementary school. The gym seemed huge and the bright overhead lights flooded the light wood, polished floor that squeaked when I pressed the toe of my shoe on it and slid it across. There were lines on the floor and I didn't know why. I remember how often I was frustrated by my peers. Sometimes they'd say things that were nonsense, or they wouldn't listen to the teacher, or even each other. Looking back on it, I realize now that organizing a group of six year olds into cooperating, must be like herding cats. We fluttered around the gym, ready to play the game that was just described to us at length. Throw the ball to the other side of the line and try to hit someone, then they're out of the game. But if they catch it, you're out. As we grew up, I think it got more complicated…something about freezing people…but those rules were yet to come. This was dodgeball, straight up. It was all our little brains could process...

I remember that exact moment so well. Sitting down at my new desk in my new room at my new house with my first piece of homework. It was English, it was easy, and I was more than ready to escape the relentless desert-scape that was the panhandle of Texas. One of my Dad's old coworkers used to say that Borger wasn't hell, but you could see it from there. Houston felt like a new start. I had painted my room with my mom before we had even moved into the house. The room was blank and in the dim evening light as we worked it transformed into a beautiful light blue. I remember lying down to go to sleep on one of those first weeks spent in the house, thinking to myself, this is the room you're going to grow up in. And it would be. It was the room where I celebrated my 13th birthday, the room where I spent my time watching JAG, building model airplanes and teaching myself how to draw. It's where I read my favorite book for the very first time. It's where I cri...

The sky kisses the roof in a sherbert sunriseBathing the red house on the corner In brilliant yellow light That makes the grass glow neon green Is it the day of the yard sale Friendly unfamiliar faces Buying snippets of your life Little chunks of memories Passed to others for the right price Or is the day I learned to drive As gathering storms swirled In the dark gray skies Rain hurling down On a girl with wide eyes Maybe it's a day from this very month Where we came together in hugs and words And laughed in tandem In a life and room transformed The walls, the house, just a whisper of what had been Close your eyes And pick a memory at random Starring the home on this land Where you once stretched To reach the sink with baby hands Where you felt the burning smack Of spitting water on a sunburnt teenaged back Where you hugged your loved ones Before they left this earth It held your family It took your heart Watched you grow tall Saw you depart We...

Leaving Pennsylvania is never easy. It's where I grew up, it's where the majority of my family lives. And every time the car leaves Beaver and heads towards the airport I get the same sad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don't feel like I'm going home, I feel like I'm leaving home. I remember meeting my Principal before starting kindergarten. I remember catching fireflies in jars with my cousins and playing chameleon with my grandma. It's where my uncle taught me how to drive and where I picked out my first little baby kitten when I was five. There were family dinners and slipping beneath the table with my cousin so that we could sneak off to go play Playstation. We would slide around on the kitchen floor in our socks and pretend that bunk beds were rocket ships. There were fireworks on hilltops bursting above bridges on the 4th of July and Super Bowl parties with black and yellow chips. I slept on Snoopy sheets at my grandma Barb's and watched Re...

In Pennsylvania In a quiet town, in the red house on the corner of the street Is a childhood A girl in the backyard on a starry night that smelled of sweet grass small hands gripping a large glass, hot on the trail of glowing fireflies Or sitting in the kitchen under a green glow as nimble fingers Strung together beads of faith with grandma The glow of the streetlight shone through the yellow room I once shared with Mom when we visited And the other room, The blue room, Where once the girl fell out of bed in the middle of the night and met the wood floor. And in the middle of childhood, in the living room, two tiny faces lit from the glow of Zorro closed their tired eyes. And all the while the house watched As life came And went And stayed, and visited and reminisced of a childhood and it's memories In a quiet town, in the red house on the corner of the street

SafetySuit's song "Let Go," and Jordin Sparks' song "Freeze" get me every time. You know what I realized today? I realized that I listen to music non-stop for eight hours a day, five days a week. It's how I get through the day. But damn, that is a lot of music. I also possess the uncanny ability to know exactly what songs my friends would like, and if they specifically tell me they like a song, somehow I can remember that five years later to make a CD for them. Sometimes I just don't understand my memory. I can forget something that is relatively important but be able to play a conversation back in my mind nearly word for word even if it was from a year ago. And I can remember an episode of Monk from season 1 in 2002. I remember the shoes I wore when I was five and played little league, I remember the story that a sub told us in 10th grade biology about his former life in Poland, I remember the toy I got in a McDonald's happy meal when i wa...