I Get Around

I don't mean it like I'm a slut.

I mean I've moved a lot in my life. I was born in Hindsdale, IL. Shortly after I was born, we moved to Springfield, IL. I attended kindergarten at Blessed Sacrament, then we moved from Illinois to Maryland (because of my dad's job- he worked for the Department of Energy).

In MD, we settled down in a house on Natic Court in Silver Spring until I had completed the second grade. Then we moved back to Springfield to live in a townhouse-type thing for my first half of third grade. Coincidentally, I attended Blessed Sacrament again, and had the exact same teacher I had in kindergarten, Mrs. Russell. Freaky.

Halfway through my third grade year, we moved back to MD, where we lived in a high rise apartment somewhere near Silver Spring, just off Georgia Ave. I completed my third grade year there before we moved to Gaithersburg, MD. This was a brand new school, my fourth grade year was the first year it was open. I went there for 4th, 5th and 6th grade before being whisked off to Frederick, MD.

Once in Frederick, my family didn't move again. I completed middle and high school, and graduated from CowTown High in 1996. I stayed at home and went to community college for a year, then moved to Towson so I could attend Towson University. I graduated from Towson in 1999. During my time there, I lived in 2 different apartments- one in Towson and one in Cockeysville.

Just before my last semester in college, I moved in with TB, who lived in a duplex in Hamilton. Then in 2001 we bought our house in Reisterstown.

And now we're trying to move again.

So when I moved into my current house, I was 22 years old (I moved in spring and my birthday is closer to the end of the year) and had lived in 12 homes. Since we're doing the math, by the time I graduated from high school, I had attended 8 schools (if you count preschool - which I did because apparently I started early because I was pottytrained early - and the fact that once in CowTown, I went to CowTown Middle, then CowTown High).

And people wonder why I have such a hard time making and keeping friends...every time I made one I was whisked away to another state!!

Anyway.

So we're trying to make our house super pretty for the appraiser who's coming next week so we can get tons of money for our house and be able to buy one with 3 floors and a garage.

This prettifying involved me cleaning out my closet the other day. This is another post in and of itself, but as I lay in bed that night, admiring the fact that I could actually see the floor in my closet, a memory surfaced that I had completely forgotten.

Which I will now share with you.

In the Natic Court house (1st and 2nd grade), my brother's room and my room were back to back, in such a way that our closets lined up. Somehow, we got the bright idea that it would be cool to carve a tunnel from his closet to mine, I guess so we could visit each other without having to walk out the doors of our rooms. Nevermind that he was two years older than me and we rarely got along, and even more rarely visited each other's bedrooms. I can't even remember now what his bedroom looked like at the time. But that's all beside the point.

We wanted this tunnel. So, armed with- and I might be remembering this wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was- a plastic knife, we each started carving out a large square in our closet walls. If I had to guess now, I'd bet that our holes didn't even line up. But again, beside the point.

I don't remember how far Joe got, but I know I got at least 2 sides of the square carved out. I think. Knowing now what a naked wall looks like, I'm not sure what I did about studs...perhaps I worked around them and ended up with more of a dotted line? Or maybe I just carved through the wall in front of them. I don't know.

I also don't remember ever getting into trouble for it, but I can't imagine that my mom never found out about it. I'm sure when she went around before we moved, or when she was ready to put the house on the market, that she saw the damage either in my closet or Joe's. And had to repair it.

Thank goodness that now that we're preparing to move, I don't have to deal with 2 elementary school aged brats who have no respect for other people's things...or houses!