Earliest memory is being in the backseat of a car and hearing Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" on the AM radio.

Next song I remember hearing was "Penny Lane", and it just so happens my mom's best friend at the time was named Elaine, so for years I thought Paul was singing, "And Elaine, is in my heart..."

I was always in the woods. When I was living in NY before I moved to CT, circa 1st to 3rd grade, I was always playing in the woods behind my apartment complex, in what appeared to be the old walls of a building, and there was a single easy chair sitting there, and I used to sit in it and pretend to be Queen of the Woods.

I still swear to this day I saw a rabbit standing in those woods with a vest on. My mother assures me that it's the photo of her standing by Alice's rabbit at Disney or some such place. I'm over 40 and I still don't believe her.

Crossing the big mean 4-lane White Plains Road to get down the hill and under the turnpike so I could get to Penny Bridge and play on the swings there is still a frightening but exhilarating memory.

Spending hours in the woods alone, walking paths I thought were beaten by Native American Indians or animals that no longer walk this earth...priceless.

Not funny looking. Very cute.
I know.

I have the picture.

I, too, grew up most unconventionally. Words (and music) were my escape hatches. For one endless year it seemed Paul Mauriat's "Love is Blue" played endlessly; the next was "American Pie". Then somebody bumped into the record player and "Seasons in the Sun" wouldn't shut up -- and my body was flooded with hormones.

And life got very weird indeed.

Rec'd.

Wonderful.

My childhood was weird, partly good, partly sucky. I grew up at a time when, although we lived in the suburbs of Los Angeles, we had a fair amount of freedom...not so many boogey men back then. There were tons of kids in the neighborhood and a big field at the end of the block. We spent a lot of time down there, building forts, sucking the juice out of wild flowers, playing cowboys and Indians. We jumped from garage roof to garage roof, rode our bikes miles and miles to the market, played jump ropes for hours on end.

At some point in time my mom started locking us out of the house so she could watch her "soaps" in peace and quiet, and we learned to drink water out of the gutter (how did we EVER survive that?) and pee in the bushes.

We were poor, but we didn't know it. We were all in the same boat and I never knew that some people were rich until we went to a Christmas party given by my dad's boss. They had a huge Christmas tree w/ beautiful lights that bubbled and we got to stay up late and eat store bought cookies from another country and drink hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows...I looked forward to that more than anything else in my world...

I can't say I was ever sad to grow up...

I was a little nerdy guy back then. Small, unathletic, very interested in all kinds of science things (thank you, space program!) and kind of awkward.

Lived on the west side of Chicago back when the Prudential Building was the tallest building not only in the city, but west of the Mississippi.

And grew up in the era when Motown and San Francisco shared the airwaves with the British Invasion and what an era that was.

as I grew, I did discover a taste for basketball. To this day the only sport I could ever participate in without embarrassing myself.

Music aside, I was a happy little blond kid with pony-tails above each ear, for the most part. I loved reading, playing outside, rain puddles, mysteries...

It wasn't until I reached my early teen years and got acne and needed braces and glasses and grew five inches taller than all my friends that I realized I no longer fit in....

Takes years for the self-esteem to come back from that sort of trip, doesn't it? Kids can be so harsh.

Only lately have I started to feel as good as I did once the braces were off and I got contacts.

Wonderful recollections, M -- surely one of your best ever and that's saying something.
I know that I was very, very lucky as a child. I rotated in and out of three worlds of varying emotional tone -- parents, grandparents and aunt/uncle/cousin -- in very different physical and cultural environments -- north and south; urban, suburban and country; and summers always spent by, in or on the water -- whether lake or beach. And I benefitted from all of them.

What all of these worlds had in common was that they were experienced in a time that still permitted real autonomy for children . So that even in the city my friends and I could walk, or take public transportation without having to be tended by an adult. And in the mountains or at the beach, it was glorious. The only requirement was that we show up for dinner, and then we could go out and about again until bedtime.

Wherever I was it was a sensory paradise. Sights, sounds, scents, and always family and friends to share them with. Which was better?
Was it the mountains? Over Christmas -- skiing or skating all day long, and evenings spent playing board games or reading by the fire. Or, in the summer -- heading for a swaying bridge over a waterfall via a pine needle, boulder-strewn path under the dense canopy of still virgin forest ? Or diving into cold, crystal clear lake water, swimming furiously to warm up and then lazily out to a floating dock for a snooze in the sun?
Or was it the country? In the north, bicycling for miles up and down farm lanes bracketed by lush banks of Queen Annes Lace, black-eyed susans and day lilies? Or, in the south, walking across endless fields that were punctuated along the river by live oak trees, dripping with Spanish moss, and which were populated by birds and furry creatures of all kinds.
Or was it the beach? Walking around in a bathing suit and shorts, barefooted, or bicycling in a bathing suit and flipflops down hard sand/tabby lanes, stopping to say Hey to big old dogs who lumbered off porches to get a rub or just to lay in the road, sure of their right of way? Ending up in a john boat on the marsh, or a sailboat at the marina, wiling away the afternoon in sun and salt and fresh breezes?
Thank you for reminding me of these particular blessings. What you write always manages to do that, whether the blessing is past or present.

Wendy, your words are always like a work of art to me. Striking, haunting, taking the brush and sweeping the canvas with a vision only you can convey. If it is at all possible that I help bring about such majestry I am humbled, indeed.

And miguel? Your interpretation of one of her points is so perfect. I could not have lived my childhood stifled as most children must be today. Freedom lost for the sake of security? A very loaded question.

Sadly, not just for the children.

Thanks, barefooted. Wonderful... just wonderful.

I grew up over a neighborhood tavern. Laid in bed at night and would learn the base line of every song on the jukebox. Somehow, Ray Price singing "For the Good Times" and Patsy Cline singing "Crazy" are the ones that particularly come to mind.

Knew I was cool the day I finally bought my own radio - all plastic with big analog knobs on it. I could then go to sleep listening to KAAY Little Rock on AM (Beeker Street, as I recall the name of the show.)

At 15, I attended a Jefferson Airplane concert on campus in my small midwestern town, and later that night got invited to a party where Grace Slick and Jorma Kaukonen showed up. God, she was beautiful!

My earliest recollections are myself at about two or maybe three years old. My mother would graciously remove from the console stereo the classical music album she had been listening to, replacing it with a 45 that was my favorite. I would then climb aboard my spring-loaded rocking horse and sing as loudly as I rocked while the player would repeat the song time after time: "Down by the seashore Maryann..."

And as I write, it occurs to me that I don't seem to have any memories that aren't all stuck together with music.

I recently found a couple of old school pictures of myself. The first one was from 3rd grade. I had on a fuzzy white top with an embossed image of a poodle standing up smoking a cigarette in a cigarette holder and holding a martini glass in the other hand(!)

Ah, yes, Richmond, Virginia in the 50's: tobacco was a vice that parents told their children would stunt their growth (as they smoked in the car with the window rolled up and kids in the back seat. When I look at that cigarette-smoking, martini-drinking poodle on my sweater, it seems hard to believe, but oddly the things that grab me today about the picture are these:

- My hair is pulled back in a sloppy pony-tail, and I remember that when the picture came back from the school photographer the only thing I saw was those stray hairs sticking out all askew. All I saw were the flaws in this picture even as a very young child.

- My smile. It is so natural; so unforced; so innocent. Not the frozen, self-conscious, and joyless face that gets frozen into the digital images whenever a camera is aimed at me now. Why do I do that? Why can't I just relax and smile naturally like I did back then?

The second school picture just showed up last week when I was cleaning out a drawer. I was about 13 (not certain about that), and my hair is really funny. Anyone here remember "Spoolies?" Well, it is obvious that I had slept in them the night before that pic -- collar-length and tightly curled at the bottom; still a genuine smile, but more self-conscious; more of an effort.

Lastly, I remember playing quite a bit as a child -- I was Juanita, the Indian princess. Tag, kickball, hide and seek; and then in summer we would visit my uncle who had a small cabin on the Piancatank River where we would crab all day and sometimes fish. We swam some, but the stinging nettles got so bad we did it rarely by the time I was headed into adolescence.

Oh, one other sharp memory: We had two large Weeping Willow trees in our front yard. I dreamed one night that one fell over and it was very traumatic in my dream. Our family went to the river and when we got back that tree was down, just like in my dream. It scared me and I was worried for months that I had some kind of power that I couldn't handle. Although I have had dream images happen since then, they aren't consistent enough to be useful, and I am so so so glad that most of my dreams don't end up as reality.

As a child I was confused and curious.
As a teen I was confused, curious and awkward.
As an adult I am curiously comfortable in being confused.

Since our TPM playtime of 24 hours is almost over, I just wanted to thank you all.

We've been kids together, shared our memories and discovered that we have much more in common than perhaps we thought. I am honored to have been a part of the journey.

See you in the woods.