the fun kid

-me sticking my head out the door to talk to mom- "mom...oh..darn, i was gonna say something but i can't remember"
-mom- "uh. ok"
-me- "if you remember what it was can you tell me?" summer of 2001(i think).

8 or 9yrs old

my mum has always told me i'm the fun kid, thats why my middle name is joy, or so she tells me;)
i don't ever remember people not liking me, unless it was selfish bullies, they didn't like me because as a kid, i was always the one everyone liked and wanted to play with. i must have been a blast to play with as a kid, or i could have been really bossy and annoying. who knows, i just know that i love/loved to play, and kids liked that about me.  its just the way God made me.
i don't know what i was like when i was really small, like 2 or 4,  probably cos i was a baby. ha.
mom says that in mexico its not a cultural thing for a woman to say hi to a man she might pass on the street, or nod heads or anything like it is acceptable in the US. or for a man to do it to a woman, but my mother tells me (and no, she's not being biased) that whenever she would be pushing me down the street (or carrying) that random men, just passing by, would stop and kinda go gaga over my eyes.
personally i think thats pretty silly, but i guess i do have big eyes, and they were even bigger looking when i was a baby.

hehe, i think i look so silly. look at my nose, its so stinking small! thats where i get the "nonii no nose" name from.. oh, and do you see how my toes are all streched out?? i can still do that.

i asked my mom if people would actually dote and pet on me when i was little, she said not really, because i was so reserved, now my extroverted brother, ezra was petted all the time, just look at him. he was a ladies man.

he's got the eyelashes AND the eyes! and he's our family comedian..

when i was small i guess i was goofy, just like i am now, i don't remember being goofy, but i don't remember being much different from now. i assume i still ran around the house or yard like a wild woman and got overly excited for no reason and said funny things.
its fun to think about what you were like when you were little and to realize that your sometimes not much different..
i can't imagine not having my mom to ask all sorts of questions about me and my siblings and what we were like.
i don't remember much of what we were like because i was always playing, i spent my childhood blissfully playing anything my imagination could muster up.
i don't remember thinking about life, the bad or the good, about people or situations, i just remember my worlds i made up, the outfits i dressed up in and the mud on my feet.

i remember playing narnia with friends, or peter pan with my cousins. i remember building forts, splashing in the creek, running up the dirt lane [barefoot] as fast as i could just to see how tough my feet where.
i remember swinging and looking at my feet as they were outlined against the sky and wishing i could fly, i remember talking to my favorite tree as if it were a person, and i remember begin ever so sad when that tree was cut down. i remember strangers smiling fondly at me because i was wearing my indian outfit in the grocery store. i remember enuring the pain of barb scratches because indians didn't cry, i remember stepping an an assortment of things, like cow poop, and not caring one bit. i remember really dirty little sun tanned hands never being washed, because peter pan never washed his hands. i remember reading and reading and then playing out the stories i read, and if there was never a girl in the story, i became one of the boys. i remember getting to hot and sweaty while running after kittens in neighbors barns, and laying in they hay once we caught our prizes. those poor cats.

i was always the kid in the overalls, bare foot and tom boy all the way. but i was also the kid dressed up like laura ingles wilder, or a princess.
i went through almost all the natural kid stages, i loved dolls, indians, doll houses, pirates, barbies, cowboys, soldiers, and fairys.

i am the ornery kid. the kid with the bruises from falling, the one with scabs from climbing trees.
i'm the compassionate and adventurous kid with bright eyes.
i'm the fun kid.