Friday Fives - childhood recollections

Here's today's fiver from the LJ Friday Five Page.

1. What were some of the smells and tastes of your childhood?
Smells: My Grandmother’s perfume; grits cooking; summertime in the Rockies – the air just smells different up there.
Tastes: Orange muffins made by my great-grandmother; coke floats; southern fried chicken; microwave instant breakfasts; milk and sugar with coffee in it.

2. What did you have as a child that you do not think children today have?
I had discipline in the form of spanking! How many parents still do that? (It worked for my brother and I, and we turned out pretty well, hahaha) Also: longer attention spans and the ability to be…happy/content without high-tech gadgets. Case in point - the other day I saw my friend’s two-year old niece watching cartoons on her father’s iPhone. It completely blew my mind.

3. What elementary grade was your favorite?
Hmmm…I remember a lot about 4th grade. I had to memorize times tables, I got to read as much as I wanted and at my own pace, and I also spent a lot of time writing. My chef d’oeuvre was something like a 30-page murder-mystery. And then in 5th grade, my Language Arts teacher was horrible and told me I was a crap writer and I hated writing from that point on until I got to college. My mom is STILL mad at that teacher!

4. What summer do you remember the best as a child?
I don’t have just one *favorite*. I always loved the summertime! To my recollection, all of my childhood summers were filled with swim team, tennis lessons, spending a ton of time up in the mountains, visiting all our extended family in Louisiana, and my brother chasing me around the backyard with fresh earthworms my mom would dig up whilst gardening. A year-specific memory was my 8th birthday party. It was a swim party and one of my friends from school – a boy – gave me a necklace. It was a row of 8 little silver hearts on a red, satin cord (clearly picked out by his mother). I loved it and wore it a lot…and I think I still have that somewhere back at my folks’ house.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self, and at what age?
I took ballet lessons from about the age of 4 through 10. And then I quit. I only have vague memories (maybe I blocked them?) about the whole thing, but my quitting had something to do with my teacher being mean to me, and the fact that my arch-less feet got too big too quickly (ha!) to safely learn the next level of ballet (en pointe). So I just stopped dancing all together. I would go back and tell myself to not give up and to change teachers or learn other types of dancing, because it was something I loved and at which I excelled. I still love dancing of all kinds!
I would also tell myself – at all ages through high school – to do the music theory homework my piano teacher gave me. Boy, would THAT have saved me a lot of time/effort in college!