Remember that time in 4th grade when my class had a contest to see who could best sing Bryan Adams’ “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”?

I suppose I haven’t mentioned it yet.

Any willing participant had a chance to stand in front of the class with the Walkman headphones on and sing along with Bryan, to the cheers or jeers of her peers.

This was obviously very awkward.  First of all, whoever was singing was the only one who could hear the track; to the 30 other people in the room, all they were hearing was an unaccompanied, nervous, pre-adolescent warble.  Secondly, we were 10-years old.  The most passionate thing I could think of was footsy.  However, as I remember vividly, this didn’t stop one girl from closing her eyes and feigning Whitney Houston.

Yeaaaah, I’d fight for you… [fist pump]

To me, Bryan Adams remained frozen in memory, frozen in time, in that Pomona Elementary classroom - that is, until last year when my friend Duane reintroduced me.

Oh, friends.  What I had been MISSING OUT ON all those years.

Duane knows me well enough to know that he would need to be sneaky, so he started by sending me a few songs that our guy Bry had written with Gretchen Peters - one of my favorite writers in the history of the universe (remember, I wrote about her here).  From the first tentative listen to those tracks, all doubt was blown away:

Bryan Adams is where it’s at.  His songs are fantastic.

I have a short list of people that I have to see in concert someday - and in addition to Patty Griffin (which will FINALLY happen at the end of this month), Shania Twain, and Phil Collins, Bryan Adams has earned his place.

And I just felt like declaring it to the world.

One time, when I was 5, we lived next door to a girl my age.  Her grandparents gave her a Popple.  I wanted it so badly that I asserted my Alpha Girl status, and she gave it to me.

A few days later when her grandparents found out she gave it away, they sent her to our house to reclaim it.  As she was carrying it home, I ran down the hallway and, with a flying leap, tackled her to the ground.

My family brings up this story frequently.

For as much as I love cheese – which, trust me, my devotion is infinite and everlasting – I rarely eat grilled cheese.  Chalk it up to just another childhood overdose – I never eat peanut butter & jelly, either.  Grilled cheese lost its appeal before Clinton took office.

Which is why it was shocking that yesterday, I had the chance to eat a grilled cheese for lunch – and I jumped at it.  Like, I literally sprung out of my chair and made a beeline for the kitchen.  See, my co-worker Delaney is a dazzling maker-of-all-foods, and she brought a griddle!  To work!  To make grilled cheeses!  And if this woman makes something, it is a guaran-freaking-tee that I will love it.

I’m serious.  Remember how Ritz Cracker Cheese Sandwiches are my secret shame?  Delaney has actually taken these bite-sized wonders and made them into a gourmet snack.  She shakes some sort of herby goodness all over them, and I swear, they could be served to the Queen of England.

After experiencing this woman’s brilliance yesterday, I can positively say that I am back in the saddle when it comes to grilled cheese.  She has renewed my hope, my faith, my confidence in the sandwich.  Thank you, Delaney, for pointing me toward the truth.

Now, to make my own.  I’m looking for grilled cheese tips, if anyone has any…

I grew up in a little town in western Colorado.  Montrose – at least when I lived there, pre-Starbucks and Target and multiple golf courses – was very typical of small town America.  We had a Dairy Queen, gossip at the beauty shop, agriculture, county fairs, rodeos, teenagers cruising Main, old trucks, and one high school.

My high school experience was like all of the stereotypical accounts shown on TV shows. The star of the football team dated the homecoming queen.   The scandalous teacher ran off with the wayward student.  There were fights, pregnancies, cliques.  There were the popular kids and the outcasts.  There were the jocks, the band nerds, the hicks, the brains.

Who was I?  I think that I fell through the cracks, never really fit into one “group,” and stayed peripherally involved with a lot of different social networks.  I played flute in the band, but was friends with the cheerleaders.  I never took calculus, but always got A’s and B’s.  I lived in a subdivision, but drove a pickup.  I wasn’t anywhere near popular, but was somehow voted the prom queen.  I had a lot of friends, but my best friend was homeschooled.  I was fairly straight-laced, but once broke into a factory with a crowbar.  I had a few dates to dances, but never a boyfriend.  I went to parties, but never drank.  I loved country songs and animals and baby-sitting and friends and ballet.

My parents moved away from Montrose in 2003, when I was in college in Seattle, and since then, my visits to my hometown have been few and far between.  The last time I was there was over a year ago, making this the longest stretch in 20 years I have gone without setting my feet on my hometown soil.

But it’s in my blood.

I mean, let’s not turn this into a Montgomery Gentry song or anything, but it’s true.  My upbringing in Montrose shaped me in ways that I cannot even pinpoint, and I feel the absence of it acutely.

After hearing through the grapevine about the class of 1999’s recent celebration, it occurred to me that my 10-year high school reunion is coming up next year.  And here were my next, immediate, successive thoughts:
1)    This is going to be so awkward.
2)    I’m totally going.
3)    I want to be in charge.
4)    I am still single.
5)    At least I’m still single.

Consider this my RSVP.

You know how sometimes, a long-forgotten memory will make its way to the surface for no apparent reason?  All of a sudden, the scene is playing in your mind – like a film projector on an old bed sheet, nostalgic home video remembrances of life before you knew the things you know now.

The other day, that was happening for me.  I was seeing our Dalmatian, Princess, and games on what must have been the original Apple computer, and Otter Pops from the freezer in the garage, and the orange tree in our old backyard, and trips to the Dairy Queen on our bikes, and summer nights in the backyard, and getting beaten up by the deaf girl in 1st grade…

WAIT A SECOND.

It totally threw a wrench in my gears, a hitch in my giddy-up.  I was beaten up?  In 1st grade?  By the deaf girl?

(Let it be known that these days, I would absolutely, 100% use the term “hearing impaired.”  But remember, I am being transported back to 1989, when I didn’t know anything about being politically correct.  I also didn’t know that you shouldn’t swallow toothpaste - but I digress.)

The last time I checked, I do not have multiple personalities… yet… and so I’m not quite sure how this memory got repressed for all these years only to surface two decades later.  But just like that, in the middle of my work-day, I was transported back to recess in 1st grade, on the playground at Oster Elementary, scared every single day that the deaf girl from 2nd grade was going to beat me up again.

She had pigtails.  She had hearing aids.  And she had it out for me.

I never got up the nerve to tell anyone.  I just went on being afraid every day.  And I don’t know that I’ve ever been so relieved as the day when a playground aid caught the little shrew in the act, and made sure she never touched me again.

Hey, if I was forced to re-live this story, then you can be sure that I would subject you to it, too.  What else is a blog audience for?

And two more nubbins:
-    I fly to Seattle tonight.
-    My East Nasty of the Week column will be resurrected next week.

I come from a family of nomads, with someone always moving and roaming and starting over. For the past 5 ½ years, my parents have been planted in Kansas City, and eventually, all of my siblings followed. My older brother and his family are there. My two younger sisters are there. I’ve been the one rogue for quite some time, living on my own in Seattle, and now, in Nashville.

But my parents are shifting again – this time, to Colorado Springs in May. Sister Becca is moving to Ft. Collins in a few weeks. And once again, the Parsons will be scattered across the country like a constellation.

I’m back in Kansas City this week to help my family sift through the junk items in their house, thin out their possessions, rip off wallpaper, and throw away anything ugly or useless. All I will say about this process is that I’m glad that it’s happening now – because if we waited another 30 years until my parents are gone, I’m pretty sure that the pile of detritus would be so large, the only solution would be to strike a match and burn it down.

I am also here to become the sole bearer of my possessions, and take them back to Nashville with me. Ever since early childhood, I’ve put any important mementos in the sacred “Blue Bin” – basically the Ark of the Covenant, in Rubbermaid form. Last night, I opened up the bursting box to see what was inside… and this is what I found.

What I Found in the Blue Bin from Annie Parsons on Vimeo.

I kept the good things - and there were definitely treasures - but needless to say, MUCH was trashed. I have no need for old high school band programs, or ticket stubs from Colorado Rockies games, or sketches of CareBears, or pink “participant” ribbons from art fairs, or homemade ceramic pots with dolphins painted on the side.

Or my old teeth or hair, as it were.

-    “When You Wish Upon a Star”
-    Geppetto’s wish that a puppet would become a real boy.  What?
-    Creepy Blue Fairy
-    Cricket as conscience
-    “Give a Little Whistle”
-    Honest John (wicked fox).  MISLEADING.
-    Figaro (pet cat, unclothed, walks on all-4’s), and Gideon (mute cat, clothed, walks like a human).  INCONSISTENCY.
-    Cleo (flirtatious goldfish with long eyelashes).  AWKWARD.
-    “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee”
-    Pavarotti… I mean, Stromboli
-    “I’ve Got No Strings”
-    Puppet locked in a bird cage
-    A nose that grows with every lie.  A NOSE THAT GROWS WITH EVERY LIE.
-    Pleasure Island
-    Boys turned into donkeys for “behaving like jackasses”
-    Subsequent braying
-    Puppet swallowed by gigantic whale
-    Puppet sneezed out by gigantic whale
-    Puppet dies
-    Puppet brought back to life by the Blue Fairy as a reward for bravery
-    “When You Wish Upon a Star” reprise… because we didn’t get enough the first time around.

When I was a little girl, there were a couple of movies that I watched over and over again. All of them were taped straight off TV – back when Sunday nights meant family movies on ABC, back when VCR’s had the pop-up compartment for the videotape, back when we lived in San Jose, CA.

I knew – and still know – every word (dialogue and lyric), every dance, and every nuance to “The Sound of Music.” I watched some portion of it every single day from age 4-6. I also obsessed over “Annie”; how could I not? I thought the idea of being an orphan was romantic (sorry, Mom and Dad), and the opening song, “Maybe,” remains one of my favorite melodies to this day.

And then there was a 1985 Disney film called “The Journey of Natty Gann.” I have not watched it since probably 1989, and had totally forgotten about it until about a month ago. As soon as I thought of it, I added it to my Netflix queue, and finally re-watched it last night.

I never realized how formative this movie was for me.

Here’s the plot summary, taken from IMDB:

Natty Gann is a twelve-year old Depression era girl whose single-parent father leaves her behind in Chicago while he goes to Washington State to look for work in the timber industry. Natty runs away from the guardian she was left with to follow Dad. She befriends and is befriended by a wolf that has been abused in dog fights, hops a freight train west, and is presumed dead when her wallet is found after the train crashes. Dad gets bitter and endangers himself in his new job. Meanwhile Natty has a series of adventures and mis-adventures in various farmhouses, police stations, hobo camps, reform schools, and boxcars.

Natty Gann’s sense of adventure, fear, courage, longing for home, and love for dogs convinces me that I absorbed so much from this movie. I only wish that John Cusack had been my first kiss.

A couple of things that struck me, this time around:

1. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed the words “damn” and “shit.”
2. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed kids being hit in the face.
3. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed dog fights and blood.
4. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed sexual predators and dangerous men.

See – now you HAVE to watch it. It’s so exciting!

Go back and watch a movie that you haven’t seen since early childhood. I’m convinced that you’ll be struck with something – something deep inside of you, something formative, something that you never realized had a source.

I mean, honestly. Why else would I have a secret-yet-unsquelchable desire to name my firstborn “Fievel”?