Two Things That Brought Me A Lot of Joy

A little over a month until the release of FAMILY LAW on May 4th! We’re getting so close…and in celebration, here are a few more 1980’s memories.

16)I used to climb the magnolia trees in my friend Elizabeth’s yard. We’d climb as far as we could up through the branches, and we spun stories as we climbed. Maybe we lived in the tree, having run away from our parents, or maybe we were creatures not quite human, and sometimes we were being chased by villains. When this happened we would scoop up the fallen magnolia seed pods from the ground, only they were not seed pods, they were grenades. We tucked the grenades into pockets and waistbands and under our chins, and we climbed up as high as we could, and we tossed grenades at invisible pursuers, and now it still makes me happy to shove my face into a magnolia and breathe in the lemon-honey smell of warfare.

This is not actually the magnolia in Elizabeth’s yard. But it’s a really nice magnolia.

17)Every little girl I knew practiced gathering up her T-shirt of nightgown so that a tail of fabric hung down over her bellybutton, and then she’d twist the tail tightly and flip it up through the neckline of the shirt, looping it through. When you pulled it tight, you had approximated the look of Daisy Duke on the Dukes of Hazzard. I don’t remember anyone making a big deal about her shorts at that stage, and, anyway no mom would have let us wear our shorts that short, but we second graders coveted the tied-up shirts with the sexy—a whispered word—show of belly.