13, I mean 2, childhood memories.

13 Childhood Memories

I couldn't make it to 13 so here's 2! :-) Maybe I'll add to the list as I go along.

1. BBQ and lots of it Dad was in a different cookoff every weekend. As much as we might have complained about being lugged around, sleeping in campers, and permanently smelling like mesquite smoke, as kids we really did love it. My mom might say differently, but I think just as much of her that hated it loved it. She too would compete in the fajita or beans cookoff and placed several times. Man, Dad makes some damn good bbq. It'd be one thing if he wasn't winning, but he was a constant threat to the other wannabe's. The name of his team was "Whodathunkit BBQ". Clever, who woulda ever thunk that they could make such awesome grub. Other than food there was all sorts of festivities - for example, the ugliest feet contest, the male hula contest, and the white water raft race (sans the white water) where Dad was trampled and a chunk of his nose was gouged out. I'm sure we whined a lot about these weekends, but it was definitely a fond memory, and an early education on how to have a rockin good time after 30.

2. Mom singing in the car Nowadays you’d never catch my mom singing in the car – its rare if the radio is even on, or if it is on it’s the jazz station or talk radio. But I have a vivid memory from my childhood of my mom singing in our little 79’ Honda civic hatchback. It was probably a warm Saturday afternoon, running errands around town. The radio was always on a country station - songs that nowadays are considered “country classics”. I like to recall these fond memories when we go to karaoke. Usually if the crowd is younger in age on that particular evening, they’ll just kind of nod along, clueless to what they’re hearing. But I love singing these songs on the nights when I'm feeling a little homesick.