Are there kids from your childhood that you can’t forget? I’m not talking about the kids you were best friends with-or even semi-good friends with. I’m talking about the kids who seemed to be on the periphery of the playground. Maybe they were odd-maybe they were poor-maybe they had annoying or strange habits-maybe they were only at your school for a short time before they were gone-leaving you wondering what happened to them.
I remember kids like that-and sometimes they pop into my mind-and I wonder why? How could knowing them for a short period of time-and not very well at that-make their faces unforgettable? Could it be my brain likes to remind me I could’ve reached out to them or maybe my brain wants some kind of closure-maybe the kids were such enigmas that all these years later my brain is still waiting for the answer to who they were.
Hamilton Skeleton-was that really even his name? And what happened to him and his cookie making Mother-and all the kids their family seemed to have?
Karem and her brother and sister who were from Venezuela-why did they come to Brasstown-and why did they stay for such a short time?
The Castleberry brothers-where did they go? They road my bus for years it seemed and then they were just gone.
Bobby who lived down the road-and once told me I was a witch-was she really murdered or is she still living somewhere on this Earth?
Paul sings a song written by Ron Sexsmith, Strawberry Blond, it fits my thoughts perfectly. Give it a listen and hear about the girl he couldn’t forget.
Did you like the song? Are there any kids you can’t forget?
Tipper
Loved the song!
I wonder…
What happened to Steve? He disappeared and no one knows what happened to him. Not even family.
What became of Stacy, the girl who had a mental breakdown?
How is Rusty? I heard he took it rough after his mom passed away.
And so many others…..
Yes, quite a few kids I can’t forget! Mostly the ones who got in trouble!
Tipper,
Your post immediately brought to mind two books I have read on this subject that I enjoyed and was an enlightenment for me…A fiction..by Mitch Albom, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”, about a maintenence man, 83, who dies after he has worked at an amusement park for years. It tells of the people he meets and why they came into his life. Some he had never thought about that made a difference in his life..I loved this book by the best selling author of “Tuesdays with Morrie”….
A Christmas present this year was the book, “Gods Guest List”, by Debbie Macomber. True stories about people she met along in her life. A best selling author, in one chapter she writes about childhood friends.
The book explains about the positive as well as the negative influences people have in our lives..and how our choices can change who we become. For me it put in perspective, thoughts about the people we encounter for some unknown reason. Meeting these people everyday and how you can change their life, with just a smile or word, as well as how they change you.
Like others there are many people that have passed through my life that I wish I could reach out to..today. I now realize how they made a difference in my life..even though I didn’t realize it at the time..One of my best childhood friends, crippled as a baby with polio..moved..and we kept in contact a while..
The address I have expired. I know both her parents died she lived with, so I guess I have lost her!
Thanks Tipper,
as i read your post i could see in my mind the kids from the playground periphery … wow … been thinking for a couple of weeks about one in particular and even started a post about her which is saved in draft form. i think i might just finish it this week! thanks for the inspiration, tipper.
My childhood was very rootless. Most of our family stuck tight to Coffee County GA…but my folks had a traveling bone. My Daddy worked as a steel setter on bridges throughout the south. When I am asked where I am from, I long ago began to give the stock answer…’Ever trailer park east of the Mississippi.’ It was on one of those treks from one job to another that my parents stopped at the lookout point crossing Chunky Gal Mountain on old HW 64, and looked down into the valley of Shooting Creek, and decided to buy some land down there. (Back in the early 60’s).
I guess I was the little girl that no one knew. But one horrible incident comes to mind.
I was shy. (No social skills at all, and am still awkward in a casual crowd, although I am good at church in arranging potlucks and wakes and getting people to donate stuff.)
Anyway, my first year in High School, some gigantic girl walked up and spoke to me. I don’t know how I’d missed her before, but I kept my eyes to myself always, so I guess I didn’t see her. But she appeared before me and said, ‘Some one said you called me a B*tch.’ She planted a wallop on the side of my cheek, and she was wearing a high school ring with the initial D on it. It was branded into my cheek for most of two weeks. She’d come check it ever once in a while. She said her boyfriend David would be proud of it. I never told an authority figure. I don’t know that Momma and Daddy ever noticed..or cared. But I looked up my high school website once, and somebody mentioned that girl’s name. Pat somebody. I forget the last name now. The woman who mentioned her said that she was a terror when she was against you and a loyal friend when she was for you. Well, I told that girl the story, and as a grown up woman she was shocked at hearing what it was like when this Amazon was ‘against you’. That made me feel a lot better, better enough that I find that I have forgotten her last name after all these years, and no longer wonder what happened.
It is odd how these memories hold such strong places in our memories, isn;t it? I really like this song.
Haunting song. Yes, I’ve known people like that. I’ve even known adults who seemed to live on the periphery of life.
Rod’s story about Shannon is quite a story. I guess there really is love at first sight. Look how long he has held her tenderly in his heart.
Now you’ve made me put my thinking cap on! I have wondered what happened to some of the kids I went to school with. I have found a few through FB.
I did enjoy the song very much!
It’s like the Elvis song “You Were Always On My Mind”.I recently reunited with one of my middle school girlfriend after 42 years she is still the same and I never forgot her. It is the same with the ones I never seen again and the ones who passed away. Now that I’m grown I wonder were they blessed as I have been and did I make a difference in their lives?
Yes!! I am looking for one right now! To tell her I am sorry that I wasn’t a better friend to her, I am sorry I didn’t stick up for her and I am sorry that when she reached out to me I didn’t know how to respond. Of course I was only nine but Chris wherever you are I am sorry!
Tipper,
I thought Debbie Brown’s comment
was very touching and similar to
the kids that passed through my
life as a kid. One time my mama
had three neighborhood brothers
to eat supper with us. And the
thing I remember most is two of
the younger ones had a biscuit in
each hand, pushing one down with
the other. Mama had cleaned and
fried two pullets to go with
the meal and that evening the bowls were so cleaned up, a fly
would have starved…Ken
I did enjoy the song. The kid I always think about was named Neil. In first grade his teacher brought him into my room and had him read a book to us. He was an incredible reader. This was notable because he had a really rough life. His dad killed his mother while he was in the house. Once later in elementary school he came to school wearing only a winter coat with no shirt under it. He was still around in high school, kind of a tough leather jacket kind of guy. My heart has always ached for him though, that day when he wasn’t even fully dressed.
When I was about eight years of age there was a little girl that lived in our neighborhood. Her mother had died a few years before and her dad married a very poor excuse for a woman. Sarah was the only step child because her dad and “personality plus” had two children of their own. Sarah was beaten very often for little or nothing. You could hear her scream.
Way back then we didn’t have the laws we have now so this was never corrected. Well, years passed, they moved away and I know both parents are passed on now. I have lost track of that little blonde headed blue eyed (blue eyed as a Siamese cat) girl. I don’t know what happened to her or where she is at now. However, I still think about her a lot.
By the way, my daughter profited from my memory of Sarah because everytime my daughter needed to be punished for what ever, I would think of Sarah and I never could spank my little girl and now she is too big. LOL….besides she was a blonde headed little girl with large blue eyes. I guess that is why I was never much of disciplanarian.
Like I said, I don’t know what happened to that little girl but, wherever she is I hope she is FILTHY RICH. I know she is probably beautiful.
Bradley
Yes I sometimes think of kids from my school days and wonder what has happened to them. Thru facebook I have found a few that were childhood friends. Sure takes a person back to think on those days.
Before the Internet I used to wonder about kids I went to school with. Then I started looking for them on Google and Facebook. I have found quite a few. Some have come for visits, others just hellos. One girl was surprised I found her. She said she would think of me sometimes and wonder what had happened to me. Funny.
I attended a one room school that had six grades, one grade in each of the six rows and a big potbelly coal burning stove right in the middle. In the winter if you sat in grade three or four you burned up but if you were in grades one or six you froze. Well, when I was in second grade there was the cutest little Irish girl who’s first name I do not recall but her last name was Shannon. The moment I laid eyes on her I was immediately enamored. She had long silky black hair, the largest, greenest eyes I have ever seen and a peaches and cream complection. She was exceedingly shy and so was I. We’d just look at each other and maybe say a word or two but I knew she liked me just as I liked her. She attended school only for a month or so then one afternoon her father showed up at the school drunk and took her. That was the last time I saw her and it’s been over fifty years. I have never forgotten her and even named one of my daughters Shannon. Maybe it’s silly but in the back of my mind I’m still looking for her.
Kids from the past, wow I just spent the last few minutes thinking of when I was young and the kids I knew.
Wow what a way to work the memory parts of the thing on my shoulders.
Oh, yes! There are several I can think of. Like the girl in my first grade class who would sit with me, talk to me and try to get me to quit crying. I think I cried every day. It was awful. I dont’ know why I cried. Then the boy on my bus who punched a girl in the tummy cause she was making faces at him. She was being cruel, he was a poor little fella. I’m glad he did it. There are many others. And like you I wonder where they are now? Do you think someone thinks of us like this? hmmm.
Patty H.
I was the kid on the edges and found myself drawn to others that were the same way. only one sticks out in my memory, she had seizures, and would just fall face forward at any given time. because i was friends with her, the high school assigned us to the same classes and i walk from class to class with her in case she had a fall. because we were different, she with the seizures and me a hillbilly kid dropped down in the city, we because friends. since i went through all that in school, i am now drawn to people who are unwanted.
I suspect that there are many who read your blog that relate to this, Tipper.
I’d not want to name any names in my own personal past, but in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the boy Walter Cunningham, Jr is such a character.
And of course it’s not just children…think Boo Radley.
There was a family that moved into a rental house at the end of the next street. We hardly ever saw the parents as they both worked at a diner up the road. There were 4 of them and they went around looking like their hair never got brushed. They started coming down to our house.. but then it was ALL the time. We could not have ice cream anymore because they were always there and we didn’t have enough to go around between the 5 of us and then 4 more. They took to coming when they woke up and not leaving till after dark when their parents got home. We started taking some days, just to leave the lights out and stay inside real quiet. It got to the point that even when their parents were home, they would stand at our windows with their hands cupped around their eyes trying to look in to see us. I guess they were lonely. I suppose they should have been reported, but back then, unless someone was being physically hurt, that rarely happened. Finally one night the whole family just disappeared and the police came and ask my mama if she knew what went with them, that they had left owing everyone in town. They also said they had found out that this family did this whereever they went. I sometimes wonder what happened to those 4 poor little children? They always seemed happy, though they had nothing. Sadly their nothing was not much less than our nothing. The big difference being we had a family that was always there. I hope they were better off in the next town. But yes, I remember those 4 faces peering into our windows, like kittens wanting to be let in at night.
Yes, I can definitely remember some of those kids “on the periphery.” Along with my friends and the “popular kids,” they are the ones I remember best. I do wonder what became of them.
i was the kid most wondered what happened to.. there my whole life and one day i was just gone.. unfortunately a couple years later i returned and most of the time really wished i had not for the rumors of small town are very hard to set straight..
When I was in the first grade, I was friends with a little girl named Paula. By the end of the school year, Paula announced that her family was moving. I remember looking at her and saying, “We’ll never see each other again.” It was a pretty grown-up realization for a little girl. I never remembered her last named so there is no way to try to find her.
In the fifth grade it was determined (they must have tested us), that two students (Bruce and Eva) were so good that our little school did not do them justice and they should go elsewhere. Eva was my idol and I always tried to be like her. I read more advance books because that’s what Eva was doing. After the fifth grade, they disappearred.
Just in the past year, I caught up with Eva’s sister-in-law and got a brief report (of course, she had done well). I never knew what happened to Bruce (but I would love to know if he took advantage of his opportunities).