20 things about my childhood

I'm doing 100 things about me in increments. I'm gonna start sort of chronologically. Maybe you'd like to do the same? "Tell me about your childhood."

1. My parents were married in October of 1972 and I was conceived just after their first anniversary when they flushed my mother’s birth control pills down the toilet.
2. My parents are young – they had me when they were just 20/21 years old.
3. My mom got pregnant again when her and my Dad were having problems, but stress caused her to have a miscarriage and they got divorced when I was 5.
4. Mom and I moved a couple of times and I went to three different elementary schools in three different school districts, all within a 20 minute drive of each other.
5. As a result I had to keep changing best friends – as one of my behavior reports indicated something along the lines of “she forms a strong bond with one other child and ignores the others.” I’m ashamed to say that I don’t know what happened to Jessica, Marlene, Erika and Desiree.
6. My first crush was on Jack Schecter. I chased him around the playground threatening to kick him in the balls with my new cowboy boots. If that ain't love, I don't know what is.
7. I got in trouble when I was about six for playing doctor naked with my friend Holly. As a result her mother wouldn't let us play together anymore.
8. My mom worked fulltime but aside from a brief stint at the Wigwam private kindergarten program, I never went to a day care center. I always had a home day care provider.
9. For a brief period in addition to working fulltime for Prudential Insurance, my Mom cleaned the bathrooms of the sweater factory where my Grammy worked. I came along and sat in the large carts they moved the sweaters around in, started a button collection, and unwrapped the Lava soap my mom had to replace in all the bathrooms.
10. I spent every other weekend with my Dad and we went out a lot – to the movies, out to dinner and to the Dairy Queen for ice cream and to feed the ducks.
11. When I was around 9 my Dad moved to Denver Colorado with his girlfriend Mary and her three kids. Watching their packed up car pull away is one of the saddest moments I can remember from my childhood.
12. But Dad kept in touch and I flew out to Denver (by myself) for a month every summer until they moved back after my sister Elisha was born.
13. When I was in fifth grade my mom moved in with my stepfather and when I was in seventh grade they got married in Vegas. I was a tad upset I wasn’t invited.
14. Once in second grade I was fooling around with one of my clogs and accidentally kicked it in the direction of the teacher. I was mortified, especially when the teacher then made me walk around the rest of the day with one shoe on.
15. In fourth grade I got in trouble for passing a note to my friend during a film strip on dairy production. It was a drawing of a cow’s udders with the word “tit” written under it.
16. I briefly played softball, took dance classes and flute lessons. I quit them all because I sucked and didn’t have any patience or stick-to-it-iveness.
17. My childhood pets were Candy, a black lab we had when I was real tiny and who was given away because he got to big, Gunther, a Schnauzer who "ran away" after my parents split up, Pepper, a tabby cat my mom took to a farm, and Casey, an all white cat that died when I went away to college.
18. One of my happy memories is of my mom and I dancing around the apartment to "Oh Mickey" while we cleaned. That may be my only happy cleaning moment.
19. For the most part my parents did a great job of getting along when I was a kid, despite my occasional devious attempts to play them off of one another.
20. I got a lot of love and attention from the adults in my life, but nevertheless growing up as an only child I was pretty lonely.