When I was a kid…

• I always wanted to be good at gymnastics. Oh how I wished I could whirl and twirl around like some of the other girls, but I was too tall for one thing and not completely coordinated enough to stick any landing.
• I always wanted my name to be Dawn. Don’t ask my why. I don’t still think that, and very much love my name, but if you would have let me, believe it or not, we would have gone to the courthouse and my name would have been Dawn Dawson. It goes together SO well…ha.
• I remember thinking that everyone was kind. I don’t remember mean people in the world. Truly.
• I loved organizing my clothes, money, and toys. I would do it over and over and over, and I played house and decorated my room…a LOT.
• I loved two shirts that I vividly still remember them. One that said “acores” and was a gift from my parents and a mission trip they went on, and the other was a light teal Nike polo that I wished I could wear everyday, because it was so cool guys. I’m telling you. So cool. It was a sad day when I grew out of that one.
• I went to sleep almost every night with a tape recorder playing Michael W. Smith in my room, and Roxanne and I used to do gymnastics in our bed, holding our feet up high and straight to the ceiling until we were too tired to go on, and then we’d just sing more Michael W. Smith until we couldn’t handle it anymore and passed out cold.
• We used to practice fire drills at our house, by jumping out of our bedroom windows. We would practice opening our window, leaping to the grass outside, and running to the curb. I’m serious, we really did. I think our neighbors thought we were crazy, but if there really was a fire, I’m telling you, we had it down.
• I remember when we had a wall vac in our house in Wichita, KS, and my brother Andrew got sick one night and threw up all over the place. Grandma was watching us that week and she sure did take that wall vac and suck up all that nastiness into the wall. It stunk up our house for the whole week, so bad we had to get a vacuum guy to come out and clean out the system when my parents got home. How you even do that I will never know, but it was awful to live with that stench.
• I remember one time I got a bag of runts at a birthday party, and I was so excited about them that I hid them in my bottom desk drawer, to eat slowly for a long time. Well, my brother ate them all one day, and my mom made him buy me more. I think that was the worst possible punishment for him. A) he had to spend his own money on his sister and B) he had to spend his own money on his sister.
• I had this room in the basement one time, and it was the scariest place ever. I thought I would love it, but I remember being scared about 80% of my life living down there. I would run up the stairs, and I always thought an invisible witch was trying to catch my heels as I got up the stairs, so I RAN up the stairs every. single. time.
• Once my grandma bought me this cute little chapstick heart necklace. I swung it around my fingers in the bathroom once, trying to twirl the whole necklace completely tight, and busted it before I ever even used it. I was trying to be like the lifeguards at the pool who spin around their whistles all the time, and I guess you can’t do that was cheap heart chapstick necklaces.
• We made the best forts under the ping pong table growing up. All the time.
• I remember one Valentine’s day, school was cancelled, and we got to come inside from standing at the freezing bus stop, and mom got us a basket of Valentine’s day gifts. She always got us these wonderful sweet gifts, that mom of mine, and so we got to open them and play with the stuff she got us all day on that snow day. She bought me a red unitard, and I wore that thing without pants for a whole week at home, and probably every other day to school, as often as I was allowed and was socially acceptable.
• I used to put bows in my hair, as in all the bows in my bathroom, which is saying something. I would make signs that said, “I am the queen of bows. I have all the bows in the world in my hair” and insist that mom took my picture. Rox was my helper, and she would quietly and strategically place them all for me because she’s sweet like that.
• Once, on the bus to elementary school, I turned to say bye to Roxanne and she threw up on me. Bless her heart, she was so deathly sick from getting hot on the bus with her coat on in the winter and the heater running too high. My mom had to bring me new shoes to school that day.
• I used to run and slide down the hallway onto our waxed floor on my pillow. My brother and sister and I would run and slide over and over for hours, and it was hilariously fun. Once, my mom put a few too many coats of polyurethane on that floor, and slipped and fell on it, leaving a big ole mark where she landed. She had to sand it down and redo it and I felt so genuinely bad for her, but since you could always see the mark where she fell, and I secretly loved that I knew what it was from.
• My brother Andrew used to draw all over his room with permanent markers. Just stick people talking about life or whatever came to mind. He was a pretty artistic then and always has been.
• My sister Roxanne was always the best at playing the Violin, and I was always jealous. She is the most musical in our family, and I love that. She’s always been the best singer too, and I love most when she does duets with my dad.
• My mom used to practice her solos for church at home in the living room. On Sundays, sometimes she would let me pick out the dress she wore, and I loved when she trusted me to do that for her.
• My dad used to wrestle with me and my brother and sister on the living room floor, and I remember winning about half the time. Knowing what I know now about wrestling, he really let me have it, allowing me to win only half of the matches. 🙂
• My dad always has a pocketknife in his pocket. When you ask him if has a knife, he always says without fail, “Do I have my pants on?” 🙂
• When we went camping growing up, which was every summer always, my dad would pull out his pocketknife and we would put Nutella on crackers by the creek. Then he’s just wipe it off with a napkin and put it back in his pocket. Later that day we’d use it to cut up an apple or open a jar, or cut off a tag. Those pocketknives are pretty useful little things.