Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 1

So, it’s NaBloPoMo and it’s my first time doing this. I must admit that it is somewhat daunting, but I am committed now and it dovetails with a project that I have been thinking about for some time, my autobiography. When I was 12 in 7th grade English, my teacher, Mrs. Winmill asked us all to write a 3 page autobiography. I wrote it very carefully though at the time I wondered what I really would have to write about. As I got started, I found there was more for me to say than I could in 3 pages, so I condensed it and submitted the paper. Mrs. Winmill gave me an A on the project and told me that I had talent, I could write. It was a watershed event in my young life and from that time forward, I wanted to write and take pictures for a living. Unfortunately I believed other people as I got older and tried accounting, teaching and other things until I fell into computers. Computers were a choice, but not my heart’s passion. So, this month, you will be reading my heart’s passion and seeing some old photos from my childhood and teen years (scary, I know). The format will be 10 days childhood, 10 days teen years and 10 days for adulthood. Safire, my daughter, asked me how I was going to organize it and we came up with the chaptering. Thanks, Sweets!

My earliest memories are of playing around the house and at times in the fields around my grandparent’s home. These were pleasant places in a rural or semi-rural setting. Warm days in the summer and cold in the winter, bucolic in the small town I lived in and in the one my grandparents lived in. In front of our house on Redondo, there was a big porch. All of the homes in this neighborhood were little brick boxes with large porches. As children, we made up our own games and generally ran the street with no fear. This game involved a dare, who would go under the porch. It was dusty and dirty and I knew somewhere that my parents would not be happy if I brought any of that home on me or in my pants cuffs. However, I went in anyway. It was dark, with rays of light poking through the crossed slats that blocked out most of the area underneath. The smell was moldy, earthy and redolent of things that were either dead or maybe fed on dead things. We crawled in and I looked up at the light and tasted the dust I saw floating there. After a while more kids came in and we thought this would be a cool place for a clubhouse. It was private and we could hide from our parents here. Just as we were getting settled, one of us heard a rustle and looked down......

SNAKE!!!!!!

My eyes locked on the slithering creature as it wound it’s way towards my hand and I decided this was no good as a club house. The other kids were screaming and crawling to the exit with all speed. This kicked up more dust and I lost track of the snake. Frankly, I was not interested in where the snake was by that time, I just wanted out from under the dusty porch and into the sunlight. When we were all out, we wondered what type of snake it was and how big it really was. Truth be told, it was a garter snake and about a foot long (in my memory), but it grew in the telling as snakes in stories always do.

See you tomorrow.