Thanks For the Memories

I have a theory that God made me at the end of the workday when heaven was waiting on a new shipment of parts. The supply chain angels may have fallen down on the job. After God had already put in a full day of making miracles, listening to a multitude of problems and a variety of special requests the production day was drawing to an end. The plant thought they would crank out one more human being then call it a day. I can make a strong case that this last human being was me and believe this because I have a large round head placed on top of a long skinny neck. Not exactly an engineering coup d'etat. My poor delicate little neck has been holding up a big bowling ball head for more than forty years. I feel sorry for my neck so I give it a lot of extra time on a pillow while I am lying around watching television.

When I was little I had short white blond, stick straight hair that my mother cut for me to save money on a hairdresser. My mother was a ahead of her time, no pun intended, because she had the forethought to cut one side shorter than the other sidea cut that came into fashion about twenty years later. Go MOM

My skin was very pale white and I just can't describe how attractive this looked with my hair. I had loads of freckles on my face and my two front teeth inverted inwards. Let's not forget the scar in the middle of my forehead from the after affects of chicken pox. I had little spindly legs and arms and a distended stomach. My eyelids had almost no fold in them and I was asked several times by neighborhood children if I was an albino Japanese or Chinese. There are many beautiful Japanese and Chinese people but suffices to say, I was not one of them.

My siblings, especially my sister, constantly teased me and told me I was adopted so when my parents sometimes left for short periods of time I would desperately search for my birth certificate in order to identify my true heritage and birthright. I suspected the parents in the TV show The Adams Family were my true parents and I feared they may come to get me and make me live in their spooky house.

Imagine my shock and surprise when my parents returned from a shopping trip to sears with a full size wood rickshaw. I realized that they were beginning to lay the foundation for telling me about the adoption and I worried and awaited the dreadful day when I would surely be told. Meanwhile, I gave the neighborhood children constant rickshaw rides in an effort to get them to play with me. Time passed and soon the rickshaw was broken beyond repair, then discarded.

As I grew and matured physically I began to resemble my maternal grandmother quite distinctly. It was then I finally realized it had all been much ado about nothing. I did develop into a beauty with no end of offers for dates. My sister was soooo jealous as the tables had completely turned in my favor. Since there was nothing she could do about the situation she tried several times to sabotage and embarrass me. Often she just tried to beat the stuffing out of me.

As I have aged, many strange things have begun to happen with my physical appearance but I will always have the memory of how I was once an ugly duckling that did change into a beautiful swan.