Day 3,703—Summer Stories VI: SE4CH—

Today, I was thinking about twenty years ago and what I would write about next when I started this run. It took me a while to figure out what this license plate meant. I am guessing it is an implied “I,” so the car owner wanted to suggest “I see the future,” based on their plate number “SE4CH.”

        It is so odd to think about how time works. And because I have lived in St. Louis my entire life, I remember certain parts of the city as if they were entwined with my life. The Judo club I started going to when I was 8 was in old Webster off Lockwood, the road I ran down today. That whole area has been demolished, and a new building has replaced it. I am not even sure exactly what part of the original building is still standing, if it is, but for a while, it was great. We lived in Glendale, between Kirkwood and Webster Groves. We rented half of what I thought was a mansion as a kid and we had a rope swing in the backyard.

Yesterday, I went to a trampoline place over in Shrewsbury. My daughter wanted to do something fun with her friend from daycare, who stopped going this past year. They both wore their “spidey” jumper and they had a lot of fun. I was nervous thinking about every way a kid might get hurt in a place like this, but I was the opposite as a kid. I used to love climbing. I would climb trees everywhere I went and I fell out of more than a few. It got so bad that my parents made me wear a helmet.  

24 years ago, I went to Mexico with my church group. It was only for a week but the way I remember it, you would think I was there for a month. My older brother had gone the year before and stayed for a month and they all seemed to have had the best time. I remember my friend Timothy had an appendicitis and we collected money and bought him a PlayStation. Also, I made a video, and it was the first time I took pictures. I don’t know what happened to all the footage, but it was a lot of fun. I also learned how to play the card game Mao, which is a game where you say things like “point of order,” and you get cards when you ask questions (the goal of the game is to get rid of all your cards) about how to play the game. In the game you have to say things like “when Irish eyes are smiling.”