I keep promising, don't I?
So I had to go back and reread all my posts, because MM read them. Nothing too horrifying, thank heavens. Still, I noticed that I frequently would put a parenthetical remark about a detail and promise a later post. Well, I'll try to catch up on some of those stories over the next several weeks.
The very first parenthetical remark refers to my summers at my best friend's house in the Rio Grande Valley. I never completely understood why Kim and I were friends--she was everything I wasn't as a child. She was sun-kissed goddess beautiful, knew how to work her peers, and understood boys. She spoke Spanish like a Mexican, and ran fast as the wind. She could have just focused on the friends who lived close by, but when we moved from Brownsville to San Antonio, she invited me back to visit every summer for several years.
Kim and her family lived in El Rancho Viejo, a resort area close to McAllen. The first couple of years, we'd play in the sandtraps whenever we could get away with it (funny, the golfers had issue with having to watch out for little girls). We'd go to the mall (it was the early 80s), and we'd hang out at the pool, which had this *excellent* waterfall feature that I thought was so exotic and cool (it was the early 80s). We rode bikes all over that resort, exploring just because we could.
As we got older, playing in the sandtraps progressed to going to the convenience store to spend oodles of quarters playing Donkey Kong and PacMan. Going to the pool became less about playing in the waterfall and more about meeting boys. The waterfall became more of a place for the boys to try to steal kisses--an entirely different kind of play--a different kind of exploration.
We'd go rollerskating, and I always envied Kim her grace on those heave, awkward, 4-wheeled death traps. We'd go to the beach, and we'd do her shopping for the fall school wardrobe. The first time I saw MTV (BowWowWow's "I Want Candy" to be exact), I was with Kim, babysitting one of the neighborhood kids.
The summer between our sophmore and junior years, Kim and her family moved back to Ohio, where her parents were from. I'm a terrible letter writer, and back then, we had no email or cheap long-distance, so we lost touch.
I know when she went to college, she joined a sorority. I know her little sister, Beth, lived her dream of moving to New York to study fashion design. I know in 1991 (or 1992?) she and her husband got pregnant. Even though I suspect we no longer have much of anything in common, I wish I knew where she was and what she was doing now.
The very first parenthetical remark refers to my summers at my best friend's house in the Rio Grande Valley. I never completely understood why Kim and I were friends--she was everything I wasn't as a child. She was sun-kissed goddess beautiful, knew how to work her peers, and understood boys. She spoke Spanish like a Mexican, and ran fast as the wind. She could have just focused on the friends who lived close by, but when we moved from Brownsville to San Antonio, she invited me back to visit every summer for several years.
Kim and her family lived in El Rancho Viejo, a resort area close to McAllen. The first couple of years, we'd play in the sandtraps whenever we could get away with it (funny, the golfers had issue with having to watch out for little girls). We'd go to the mall (it was the early 80s), and we'd hang out at the pool, which had this *excellent* waterfall feature that I thought was so exotic and cool (it was the early 80s). We rode bikes all over that resort, exploring just because we could.
As we got older, playing in the sandtraps progressed to going to the convenience store to spend oodles of quarters playing Donkey Kong and PacMan. Going to the pool became less about playing in the waterfall and more about meeting boys. The waterfall became more of a place for the boys to try to steal kisses--an entirely different kind of play--a different kind of exploration.
We'd go rollerskating, and I always envied Kim her grace on those heave, awkward, 4-wheeled death traps. We'd go to the beach, and we'd do her shopping for the fall school wardrobe. The first time I saw MTV (BowWowWow's "I Want Candy" to be exact), I was with Kim, babysitting one of the neighborhood kids.
The summer between our sophmore and junior years, Kim and her family moved back to Ohio, where her parents were from. I'm a terrible letter writer, and back then, we had no email or cheap long-distance, so we lost touch.
I know when she went to college, she joined a sorority. I know her little sister, Beth, lived her dream of moving to New York to study fashion design. I know in 1991 (or 1992?) she and her husband got pregnant. Even though I suspect we no longer have much of anything in common, I wish I knew where she was and what she was doing now.