The Changelog

It seems that lately my presence seems to remind people of stories of me as a child.

I heard a new one tonight from the person that was my Bible School teacher in 2nd or 3rd grade. Apparently, each day of Bible School, one child would bring in something for show and tell. There were toys, dolls, maybe a pet. When it was my turn, I brought in something I was very proud of: my adding machine.

She asked me if I remembered this. "Nope, but it sounds like something I would have done."

I told Terah this story. She said, "You probably just brought the adding machine because your parents didn't want to have to carry the whole computer to church."

I remind people of other stories too.

My mom likes to mention that, when I was maybe 2 years old, I wanted to sleep with a real light bulb instead of some stuffed animal. She was a bit concerned about the safety of that, and apparently was only able to convince me to stop when she found an eraser in the shape of a light bulb that I accepted as a substitute.

Mom also likes to talk about my birthday or Christmas requests at that age: a "good-quality vacuum cleaner" and 12 ceiling fans.

My uncle tells me of the time I had a conversation with a math professor, when I was maybe preschool or kindergarten age. I had no idea who he was, but apparently was quite proud that my new calculator had a square root key, and told him how important it was to have that on a calculator.

It's not really fair, though -- Terah doesn't call up lots of stories in people's memory. So I have to help out a bit. I mention her underwear rotation system, or this story:

Terah has always been a big fan of deserts, and especially ice cream. Apparently her parents had a lot of trouble when the ice cream truck came around -- Terah always really, really wanted lots of ice cream. They thought that if they started calling it the "yuck truck" that Terah might think it only had nasty food. Nope, didn't work. She just started getting excited about the yuck truck.

I also have no problem hiding gifts from Terah. She knows exactly where I keep them, but she's concerned that maybe that particular room can't keep out mice very well. So, to her, I keep gifts in the "rodent closet". Although she'd really like to snoop, she just can't bring herself to do it. Very handy as far as I'm concerned.