Dork World
I read other authors’ blogs, and many of them are so wonderful! It makes me just a little bit jealous because very few bloggers ever showed dorkish tendencies even as children.
Sad to say, I was a very dorky kid. Or maybe I was a nerd. I’m not sure of the difference, but I know I wasn’t a geek. I don’t have that kind of smarts. 🙂
Not long ago, Cousin Liz reminded me about what a dork I was. The scene of my dorkdom was Grandma Reeves’s house. At my dorkiest, Grandma lived on a wonderful farm, just outside of my smalltown world where I grew up. We called her farm the Mead Place because, well, the Mead Family owned it, and my grandparents rented it.
There was a huge garden, which Grandma brought to life each spring, a pen for Granddad’s hunting dogs, a barn where Blue the Cow lived, three ponds to fish in, and a horse to ride–yes, it came with the place. And the house! I loved that house. Of course, I was six or seven when they moved to our Small Town World. It might not have been the newest house in the world, but to my eye, it was fantastic.
You’d think that, since it’s the scene of so many of my dorkisms, I wouldn’t have so many fond memories. But I do! The house was two-story with a farm kitchen (naturally), one bedroom downstairs, three or four up, a screened-in front AND back porch, and a staircase with a banister you could slide down if you were very careful.
Cousin Liz came out from T-Town and stayed with Grandma for a week or two each summer, which thrilled Sister Debbie and me! We adored Liz (we still do) because she never treated us like little kids, even though we were several years younger. Instead, she treated us as if we were teenagers, too, as well as friends, so we loved to be around her.
Liz always stayed in the middle upstairs bedroom at Grandma’s, right over the screened-in front porch. The bedroom had two windows for good ventilation. I’m not sure if the windows didn’t have screens on them or if Liz knew how to take them off and then replace them, but the summer she brought one of her friends out from town with her, those screens didn’t get in the way.
That particular Dork Night, as I remember it, was beautiful. Because there were no street lights in the country, you could see every star in the sky. The moon was so bright; it made the two giant cedar trees in the front yard look silvery. I don’t know if Liz and her friend were admiring the night or were just having fun doing something a little bit dangerous, but they decided it would be fun to go out onto the roof of the front porch. I remember watching them go out one window and come in the other. After a while, they decided to sit on that roof and chat a bit. Liz looked in the window at me. “Want to come out here with us?”
Get ready. Absolute, undeniable proof of my natural inborn dork-ability is about to happen. *sigh* I can only guess what I looked like. Remember those prissy little girls who wouldn’t play Herd-of-Horses or Wolf Family on the playground at school because they might get their dresses dirty? (Didn’t you play those games? I thought everyone did.) Those were the girls who closed their eyes when they talked, always made 100% on their homework, and never, ever folded their paper the wrong way. I probably looked just like one of them—not. If I did, that would have been the ONLY time in my life I did. I promise. But that one night . . . *sigh, again.*
So, nerd that I was, I channeled that I’m-a-pain-in-the-patootie-girl and answered, “I don’t believe my parents would want me to do that.” I feel very fortunate that Liz and her friend didn’t fall right off that roof laughing. If the tables were turned, I would have. She didn’t even call me a dork or a nerd. I probably would have done that, too. She just went back out and sat with her friend. They might have been smoking, but I wouldn’t tell on Liz. No matter what! *sigh, a third time*
So now you know. Once a dork . . .
I have no memories of the Mead place, and but I wish they had lived there longer. It sounds like a perfect place to explore!
LY
It was so much fun! I loved fishing in the pond closest to the house and sitting on the porch with Grandma and Granddad. Sweet, sweet memories.
LYM
Oh, Lisa. It was great. Sorry you don’t remember!