Hey there, Delilah: i want my crayons back

(i wanted to write a disclaimer for this, but then i realized i didn't need to apologize for the lack of beautiful words)

watch this if you'd like

and listen to this. (for some reason, this song makes me nostalgic)

when i was a kid ...

i dressed up as la-la from teletubbies because la-la was my favorite

and my dog was my best friend because my brother wasn't born yet

when my brother had just learned to crawl, i colored all over him in black and orange so he'd look like a tiger.

my mom wasn't very happy but i sure was.

my parents bought a playset for my backyard and it was so big.

it felt like there were so many different rooms.

it wasn't a castle, it was a fort and the small blow-up pool in my backyard might as well have been big enough for olympians.

i remember playing in the hose -putting it next to the slide and laughing as i slid down it.

it was awesome.

i flooded my basement with that hose.

i remember the fire trucks and the neighbors that came to help

the water-filled window wells or whatever they're called

i fell down one of those once

i had a crush on the boy next door who i thought liked spiders

because he was always covered in spider bites

i'd bring my blankie everywhere and my favorite thing to do with it was put it above a vent and watch it inhale air, expanding like a circus tent. that kept me busy for hours.

i'd sit on my parents bed and watch tv with them early in the morning

i slept in their bed 90% of the time

and i wouldn't drink gross regular milk - only strawberry milk. (strawberry milk tasted just like the strawberry shakes from taco amigo. if you've ever had one before, you probably have a pretty good idea why that was the only thing i'd drink)

my cousins and i would get together and eat macaroni and cheese and mini blueberry muffins and watch maggie and the ferocious beast

at one of the family gatherings, they were going to take a picture of the three of us and we fought over who had the sesame streets book.

i still have that picture

my aunt was babysitting me once and wouldn't give me a doughnut or a cookie, i forget which

so i hid in my mom's closet.

she couldn't find me

but the policeman she called did

i had a cousin named april and we watched the lion king together

(i haven't seen her since i was seven)

and i had a babysitter named melissa who might as well have been family

and my uncle had a girlfriend named katie who had ten or twenty chinchillas and would let me play the sims pets on her computer when she came over, even though i wasn't allowed

(is it weird that looking through old photo albums makes me cry?

maybe i should add that to my intro-

*looking through old photos makes me really sad

or something like that)

and i liked colored pencils best because they looked prettier.

but now things are different

my babysitter died of pneumonia

and my uncle married someone else (they just had a baby)

and my dog died when i was eleven

my cousin and i don't ride the hogwarts express

the boy who liked spiders moved away

and my blanket is a small piece of fabric