Memory Lane Monday
Natalia takes you on a stroll down Memory Lane in this nostalgic feature.
memory lane monday
June 22, 2009
For as long as I can remember, hair has always been a really big deal for me. I remember being about this age and wrapping towels around my head to pretend I had long, blond hair.
My life pretty much changed when I was about this age. I was at Movies 8 with a couple of friends, and I needed to go to the restroom. As with most restrooms at movie theaters, this one was packed right before the movie began. There was a lady walking out of the restroom with her young daughter as I was walking in. The lady, thinking she was being kind, told her daughter in a really sweet, soft spoken tone., “Sweetie, move over so the boy can walk past.” Boy?! BOY?!? I am NOT a boy!!! I think I have been traumatized ever since. I walked back into the movie theater and tried my hardest to hold back the tears forming in my eyes. I have no idea what movie I watched, or even who I was with that day, but that memory of being called a boy has seared in my memory ever since.
After that, I was convinced I needed to buy the shampoos I saw on TV, you know, the ones that made hair “silky.” My mom sometimes bought the ones I wanted and I was always disappointed after showering that my hair didn’t look like the white actresses on TV. When I was a little older, we started trying out relaxers (they’re kind of like perms but they make your hair straight instead of curly). Unfortunately we never had great results. Eventually I got my first flat iron (back in 6th grade before anyone else even knew what a flat iron was). But they weren’t all that powerful back then and this is about as good as my hair ever got. (I sometimes even slept with a baseball cap on so that in the morning my hair wouldn’t be as poofy).
When I was in junior high, my first trip to TLC Elegante in Salt Lake changed my life. For the first time ever, my hair was really straight. I finally had the silky beautiful hair I always wanted. The silky effect only lasted until the next time I washed my hair, but who cared? I had pretty white girl hair. Not too long afterwards my family moved to Idaho and then to Hawaii and I was never able to find another salon owned and run by black people.
When I moved back to Utah 3 years ago to go to law school, it had been so long since I had gone anywhere to get my hair done professionally (I had since gotten pretty good at making my own hair look ok), that I didn’t even think about looking up TLC again. But there was another lone black girl going to law school with me and one day I happened to ask her where she got her hair done. She told me none other than TLC Elegante (which is really the only place I know of in Utah that does black hair). So once again, I made the 45 minute drive back up to the place that brought me so much happiness a decade earlier. Since it is kind of pricey, I only go there once or twice a year. But it is still worth every penny.
memory lane monday
June 15, 2009
Last night it was brought to my attention that there are a couple of people who think that I’m one the most annoying people in the WORLD. Apparently I’m too opinionated, I constantly have to be a part of whatever conversation is going on, and I laugh too much. I don’t deny any of this. I do have opinions, but where I come from, girls are encouraged to have opinions. I love being an active participant in conversations (but, in my defense, for the last 3 years I have gone to school with 350 people who talk just as much, if not more, than I do). I do laugh a lot, but when did it become a crime to enjoy life?
I find it ironic that I happened to hear these news last night. Yesterday, the lesson I taught in primary was about how Joseph Smith was persecuted and yet he always forgave those who persecuted him. We had been having some problems with a couple of the girls in the class who apparently were not getting along very well. One was being mean to the other and neither one felt she was in the wrong. So I told them a story about me when I was in 6th grade.
At that time there was this girl that sat by me, and I absolutely could not stand her. She was soooo annoying. But our teacher would not move us apart from one another. The teacher insisted that we learn how to get along. One day, after a particularly difficult morning, our teacher made the two of us go out into the hall to talk until we could figure out our differences. So we went out and just stared at each other for a while. Eventually the girl opened up and said that she thought I was being mean to her, that my friends and I were always making fun of her, and that she was having a hard time because her mom didn’t want to be a mother anymore so she was living with her grandmother. I was shocked. I had no idea what she was going through and that I had done anything to bother this girl, but I had. I realized that I was the one that needed to apologize to her. We never became super good friends, but from that day on whenever she started to annoy me, it was easier to deal with.
I then told the class that we shouldn’t be mean to the people that are mean to us. Instead, we should try to be as kind as we can. We never know what that person is going through, or why they are behaving they way that they are. So when Luis told me what these guys had said about me, the first thing that came into my head was, “This is exactly what I had been talking to the kids about this morning.” Although I really wasn’t mad at these guys for thinking this way, it did make me stop to think about how many other people may be thinking this about me. I’m sure that there are probably a lot of people out there who don’t like me, but this is who I am. I can’t really change that. And fortunately, I think that most of the people that I come into contact with don’t hate me (I do have 509 Facebook friends, after all).
memory lane monday
June 8, 2009
When I was in junior high, I saw one of my friends cheating on an art test. Although I’ve been known to fib a little when it comes to board games, I would never ever ever cheat on anything in real life, and people who cheat make me angry. This friend had no idea that I saw what she did. I’m not sure why I did not confront her about it, but I was at my locker later that day and she came up to ask me a question. I simply ignored her and slammed my locker door shut. I simply refused to talk to her for several months after that, and the only reason I started talking to her again was because my mom made me. My parents had invited this girl’s family over for dinner, and she didn’t come with the rest of her family. So my mom told me to go talk to her. I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t say no to my mom. She never asked why I had stopped talking to her, and I never apologized for treating her that way. But we picked right back up where we had left off and began being friends again.
memory lane monday
June 1, 2009
I have always been a fighter. As a child I was quite a bit smaller than my older brother. Since he was always a big kid, he often got teased. I hated hearing people tease him, and I was not just going to stand by quietly and let it happen. So I would raise my finger and tell them, “You can’t tease him, he is my brother!” I don’t remember what would happen after I said that, but I remember always standing up for him. I didn’t care how much older the other kids were, if something was happening that wasn’t right, I had to speak up. I’m still like that. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to not be argumentative, I can’t just listen to a conversation and stay quiet when someone is saying something that I don’t agree with.
memory lane monday
May 17, 2009
As a child I always LOVED eating cake batter. In fact, I think I loved the batter much more than the actual cake. My mom would always tell us that the raw eggs in the batter would make us sick so she would get most of the batter out of the bowl before she handed it to us (she obviously wasn’t too worried about it though since she would always eventually hand over the goods). I never once got sick from it. Although most adults outgrow their childish taste palate, cake batter is one thing that I have not outgrown. I still LOVE it. I’m not sure why. But instead of just eating the little tiny remnants my mom left for me as a child, I now eat it by the spoonful whenever I bake cakes from scratch. I’m not kidding, the spoonful. And no one can stop me.
So this past week, I saw a Strawberry Shortcake Cake online (dubbed “Strawberry Delight” by my brother-in-law). I just HAD to make it, and I HAD to do it soon. I never make labor-intensive desserts for just Luis and me, but since we were having his brother and sister-in-law over for dinner one last time before their big move, it was the perfect opportunity to try it out (and the perfect opportunity for me to eat cake batter). And it was delish :)
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