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It’s 13 April 1990. I go to an airport with my mother*. I’m excited to fly alone because just two years earlier, I made the same trip with Aunt Joanne and all her kids – my first cousins Skate, Penny, Rashad, and Little Bit. Airplanes are dope. Today, I’m flying Hartford, CT to Birmingham, AL.
My carry-on is a small red Wilson duffle-style bag full of toys: some ninja turtles (likely Michelangelo and Donatello), some Garfield figures from McDonald’s Happy Meal collections, a mix of lego sets, and maybe some coins. I have one other piece of luggage, a brown rolling bag with a pattern of tan designs that look like horseshoes but also like keys.
Naturally, I don’t recall any of the clothes.
On the plane, I’m sat in a center aisle between two people. The person I remember is the one who interacted with me – an older woman with gray hair and pink skin. She offers me gum when my ears do the weird thing ears do when an airplane is climbing into the sky. I would travel with gum years later until on one plane ride, I yawned and discovered a new way to cope with the air pressure effect.
I would land and be escorted until I see my dad’s seemingly face that always felt hidden in a full beard and glasses (something to note: I wouldn’t realize how much I looked like my dad until he started shaving. Years would pass, YEARS). With my dad was my sister, Niel, whose light skin face was mostly cheeks – still after two years had passed since I’d last saw her. With my sister and dad were two of my younger first cousins, Punkin and Whitney, who throughout our childhood would never be caught without a solid hairdo.
In my dad’s green car named The Goose, I’d offer my sister and cousins small packs of peanuts I accumulated on the plane.
Gardendale Elementary School
I would have about 4 more weeks of my 4th grade school year. Those weeks of school would be full of open and demonstrated defiance to faculty members. My report would note a fine mix of D’s and F’s as well as an Unsatisfactory in Conduct.
I would go on to the 5th grade based on what I assumed at the time was my persistent declarations that “I learned this in 3rd grade!”. The fact is that I would continue to the 5th grade because of my previous schools’ records.
In later years, I would miss Connecticut but ultimately acknowledge that the south is far better. In the south…
- people had gigantic yards
- you can smell the rain coming
- railroads were close enough to homes that you could hit a train car with a rock and get banned from throwing rocks because you little sister had a snitching habit
- you can ride on the back of a pickup truck
- people drove pickup trucks
- there were more dogs without collars than dogs with
- everybody went to church
- you got to pop your own fireworks
- you and your cousins had bikes
- there were lightning bugs(fireflies), june bugs, and cicadas
- you might walk, run, or go to a grocery store barefoot
It worked out. I missed a of my Connecticut family for a long time especially my mother, but it all worked out.
*I actually don’t remember who brought me to the Hartford airport nor do I remember being inside the airport. These things definitely happened.