What's this?

4. Elementary School/Middle School

The summer after fifth grade, our family took a trip out west to visit some national parks. On the flight out to Albuquerque, I was reading a Star Trek: The Next Generation paperback (I remember the books I packed about as well as the trip itself) about Tasha Yar that included a lot of unofficial backstory. There was a scene close to the beginning where young Tasha was kidnapped by a group of hooligans on her home planet and raped, or nearly raped. I remember reading that scene—not explicit at all, this was a YA book, but it hinted at enough—and blushing bright red, as though the people in the airplane seats around me could tell what I was reading.



5. Elementary School

The fields at our elementary school where we would have recess after lunch on fair-weather days was lined with trees and shrubs, some of which bloomed small white or yellow flowers. The girls called it honeysuckle. It may have been. Some days, we would walk out to the edge of the field and pick the flowers, squeeze them and drink the tiny drops inside.

What I liked better than those were these weeds that grew on the field and in the sidewalks. I don't know what kind they were, but they had these spongy, conical, goldenrod … blooms, I guess, about the size of a pinky fingernail, that smelled strong and sweet when I punctured it, and that always remind me of pineapple even though they don't exactly smell like it. They'd stain my fingernails yellow if I picked at too many of them, and my fingers would smell of them for the rest of the day. I remember one particular time when we were walking from our school up the road to another school to practice for a "marathon," and pulling one of the weeds from a sidewalk crack and sniffing it the whole way there.

ETA: OMG! In searching for pictures of honeysuckle, I found these: http://www.wildflowersofontario.ca/pineappleweed.html And look: "When crushed this plant produces a pineapple odour, hence the name." Ha! Mystery solved.



6. Elementary School (hm, I seem to be stuck in an era here)

I remember several sleepover parties from elementary school and middle school. At one of them, at my friend K.'s house, what I remember is sharing around a few bowls of Pop Secret popcorn—back in the days when they came in different colors, and you never knew what color each bag would be (hence, "Secret")—in big plastic bowls, while watching a movie—Uncle Buck with John Candy, maybe—that had a scene in a bar/strip club and a topless woman with stars stuck over her nipples.