Nicole's Memories

I remember the summer after my junior year I wanted to stay in Bloomington, so I got an apartment with an aquaintance named Gina. Conveniently enough, Gina was dating a guy that my boyfriend, Jason was going to live with over the summer. The four of us decided to pull a switcheroo and have Jason live with me and Gina with her boyfriend. My mom visited that apartment only one time, and to preserve her image of me, I faked a roomates room. I borrowed some of GIna's pictures and knick-knacks, scattered them around the spare bedroom, and as the clincher, I closed the arm of one of my shirts in the spare bedroom closet door, as if it was bursting at the seams with clothes. I knew my mom wouldn't dig any deeper in a stranger's bedroom, so I just opened the door, said, "This is Gina's room," then closed it and moved on with the tour.

I remember warring with my sister over who could practice their instrument the loudest. I would sit down at the piano and start playing, then Natalie would have to pull out her violin and start sawing away, just to get me riled up. She would especially love to do it whenever someone was on the phone or when she knew someone was coming over. Maybe she thought that if the right person called or dropped by, she would be discovered.

I remember getting hit on by my "boss" at my work-study job in college. I was a freshman, and he was a junior and was in charge of scheduling our work shifts, although it was the Professor in charge of us that did the hiring and firing, so this guy really had little power over my life. So I wasn't really nervous about losing my position when I made it clear that I had no interest in him, but I was very creeped out by the fact that I knew he had a girlfriend who was out of the country for the semester on a student exchange program. And the fact that he kept a comb tucked inside the leg of his athletic sock.

I remember that I wrote a poem in junior high for a school assignment about my grandparents. It was about how I missed them after they moved to Florida. My mom must have sent it to them, because my grandma sent me a copy of her trailer park newsletter that had published my poem in it. I felt a little strange about the whole thing because I had written a bunch of very nice things, but some of them only because they made a good rhyming scheme in the poem. I never would have sent it to my grandparents myself, because half of the poem was just made up. But the fact that I missed them was true, and maybe it didn't matter that some of the details weren't.

I remember at my high school graduation that one of the special ed. kids got a standing ovation as he walked across the stage. I didn't know this kid, I'd barely even seem him in the 4 years I was in high school. But I did know that he was 21 and had been in high school for 7 years. That combined with the fact that every member of our class was on their feet cheering for him made me cry (and I wasn't the only one, I might add!)

I rememebr walking off the stage at my high school graduation and being met by my dad who gave me a boquet of flowers. Now it's not unusual for girls to get flowers from their family after they walk off the stage, but I never though of my dad as a "I'll give my daughter flowers at the school" kind of guy. But I guess I was wrong, and it made me very happy.