The Horse Incident

I cannot tell you when this happened, but there was a horse incident.  I was in elementary school, at least 3rd or 4th grade, probably.  A good friend from church, Diana, asked me to spend the night at her house on Vine St. in south Euless.  We did not go to school together, just Sunday School.  Anyway, at the time, at the end of Vine was some street, Pipeline? maybe.  Don't know but there was pasture there with horses owned by an older couple from church.  Apparently, Diana, her sister Donna, and their friends were allowed to play on the property as long as the couple knew they were there.

Much to my dismay, Mother had me pack shorts and sandals for the overnight instead of jeans and tennis shoes.  I was definitely prissy looking and uncomfortable in the sandals.  We got up Saturday morning with the intention of playing in this pasture at the end of her street.  I was in shorts and sandals!  We walked there and the fence was what you think of on a ranch, wooden with three rails between the posts.  So we just slithered between the rails as we were skinny little things.  On the property was a wagon, I guess like the bottom of a buckboard wagon with real wagon wheels.  We had been playing around it or near it or something when the horses on the property wandered near.

I had, at this point in my life, zero experience with horses which means I was terrified of them.  I don't remember verbatim what was said but we ran to the wagon from where we were playing and climbed aboard for safety so the horse wouldn't get me.  At this point there is only one horse hanging around.  Well, I am ready to get out of there.  I would guess it was around fifty yards or so back to the fence from the wagon with one tree between the wagon and the fence.  While the horse is not paying attention to us, we run for the fence.  But we scramble up the tree for some reason.  Safety is what my head is thinking.  Now I can climb the tree, no problem but I am wearing sandals!!  And because I am in sandals I cannot seem to get higher in the tree than the lowest branch.  My feet are sweaty and sliding around in the sandals and I am scared out of my wits.

Then the horse parks his hind end right beneath the branch I am trying to stay on with sweaty slippery sandals on my feet. I am squatting on the branch in the sandals looking down at the horse when one of us notices a hornet land on the horse's hind end just beneath my feet!!

Pretty sure I am crying by now and scared to death that if the hornet bites him, he will buck and kick me out of that tree.  Had I dangled my feet, I could have stood on the horse's rump as he was that close!  We decide to jump and hightail it to the fence before that can happen.  And so we did and made it through the fence and walked back to Diana's house.  My feet were all nasty with a bit of pasture dirt and sweat.  I remember great relief to be on solid ground and out of that pasture.  Probably still crying, too.  However, I was not invited back to Diana's for a sleepover.  I was too much of a scaredy-cat, I guess.  We remained friends and I keep up with her on Facebook.  Wonder if she remembers the horse incident?

More Early Memories

The other memories I have from before age 5 are mostly about a house on Katrine in Haltom City.  I remember a lot of random things about that house. The part of the street it was on was near an intersection that was a triangle.  It had a cyclone fence that I played Barbies through with a girl next door.  There was a sidewalk in front of the house and I think my mother and I would walk next door on occasion.  We walked to the triangle area too.  The front porch was small with about five steps.  The posts were iron railing with scrolling leaves or something on them.

Inside the house, I remember the hardwood flooring throughout the house.  I remember the hall closet because there was a clothing barrel in there with my toys in it.  I would jump up with my stomach on the edge and lean down into the barrel to retrieve my stuffed tiger.  If you know me at all, you know I love the big cats and the little cats.  The tiger was my favorite stuffed animal.  It was smallish and yellow with black stripes like a real tiger!  After my little brother, Timmy, came along we shared a bedroom with twin beds.  My picture in my head of that room is the doorway from the hall.  You could see in there and see the twin beds.  They had wooden headboards in a light color varnish.  That is my memory, not sure how accurate the description is.

There is a memory from that time frame that is a story told by my parents. Saying that to say I am not certain I remember the incident or if I remember the story my folks tell.  It was summertime, I think, and we had relatives or close friends over but I don't recall who.  Mom, Dad, and the guests were inside playing 42 or something.  Timmy and I were either in bed or just playing in our room.  Apparently there was a scream outside coming from across the street.  All the adults went out on the front porch to see what the commotion was all about.  Not sure if someone at our house or a neighbor called, but the police were called.  911 was not dialed, as that did not exist.  You actually had to call the police station.  Anyway, the story went that a teenage girl and a friend had staged a pretend kidnapping at a car across the street.  The girl was admonished by the police that this was not funny at all.  She was trying to get some attention from her parents I guess.  Anyway, I remember this as a highlight of our time at the house on Katrine.  We lived there until June of 1963.

My Earliest Memory

Picture in your mind a stark white room with very bright lights.  That room is my earliest memory.  I was lying on a table and the lights were in my eyes.  My parents were in the room and so was a man in a white outfit.  He put a tissue over my eyes and told me he was taking a picture.  That is all I remember.

My parents tell me what happened that day.  This part is not my memory but theirs.  It was a Sunday morning and I was 2 years old.  My parents bed was next to a window and I was jumping on it.  Then I fell and hit my forehead on the window sill.  Apparently I bled a lot.  So they took me to the emergency room. I got a butterfly type bandage, no stitches for the tiny cut in the middle of my forehead just below the hairline.  The scar is still there but you have to be looking for it to see it.

So, just a few years ago I asked my mother about that picture they took.  I told her what I remembered about the tissue and the man placing it over my eyes.  I wanted to know where it was.  Did she have it?  I don't remember her exact words, but no she did not have that picture.  That was an x-ray, not an actual picture.  I was, I don't know the word I'm looking for here, but I was upset that the picture didn't exist!  Wounded or mortified?  One of those words.  How dare them!  Not my parents but the doctors.

That memory is so vivid that I truly believed there was a picture somewhere I had not seen.  Between 2 and 4 years of age, I have no vivid memories like this at all.  The trauma must have somehow caused me to remember that incident above all else.

Starting Over

Inspired by my son, I have decided to begin posting to this blog again. I changed the color scheme from green to watermelon. I will eventually change the name of the blog. It started as posts for a library reason. Now it will be geared toward family maybe or personal, not quite sure yet.

So here goes.

Starting with my sister. She is a school teacher with two girls and a wonderful hubby. Her oldest just turned 15 and her youngest is 10. Both lovely girls, my nieces. My sister and I have become very close over the last 2 years. Pretty much due to my daughter and an ex-boyfriend that my sister and brother-in-law introduced to my daughter.

We stay close because we communicate, no longer about my daughter's love life, but about everything. We are nearly 8 years apart. Some of my memories of growing up revolve around my sister. She and I, being the girls in the family, were allowed to have our own bedrooms. But that did not mean that we slept in our own bedrooms. She would, invariably, on stormy nights in North Texas find her way to my bed. Our parents' made her ask permission, of course. She usually had to wait on me to return from a date to ask. When I married at 20, she was 12 so as my husband and I got to the serious stage, she had to stay up later and later to get "permission" and eventually she just got in my bed anyway. She will tell you something entirely different to be sure as neither of us recall anything 100% correctly anymore.

Amazingly, as adults, we never fight. Pretty sure I fought with all my siblings growing up except my youngest brother. A story for another day. We do tend to call each other for advice or just to have someone hear what we are saying . Don't get me wrong, our husbands are both great guys ready to listen to our woes. But there is something about telling your sister what's going on that is a comfort.

Last night I was in bed late and couldn't sleep. She texted me about something and I told her I was in bed but not sleeping. She said the same was true for her last night. We said a couple silly things and ended with LOL!!