New York, 1997

When I was eight years old, my family took a trip to visit my great-grandma in New York. In this post, I am going to remember what we did on that trip.

This was the first time I was old enough to remember going on a plane. Before we left, I had wanted to put some of my keychains on my backpack. My family told me not to, but I did anyway, and my Silly Putty keychain was one of them. When we were standing in line at the airport, a lady came up to us because she had found half of the Silly Putty egg and figured out it belonged to me. My family reprimanded me for putting keychains on my backpack even though they told me not to.

I think we had a layover in Atlanta, GA, and I remember standing on one of the subways in the airport. Back then, we still had meals on our flights, and they had a screen in front of all the seats on which they showed movies, instead of the screens on each individual seat. I know that one of the movies was Vegas Vacation and some other movie about a cat and a dog, but I can't remember if I watched them.

We flew into the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, which was abbreviated BWI. In my mind, I pronounced that as "Bwee," and for some reason I kept thinking "BWI Circus" instead of "BWI Airport."

We went to Washington, DC. We took an elevator to the top of the Washington Monument; the tour guide explained why people couldn't climb up to the top, and my mom said she thought it was because people had heart attacks. At the top, there was a little bookstore, and in it I saw a book about Washington's mother. The bookstore was closed, however. At one point, my mom and sister were saying they wanted a book about the presidents' wives, and I mentioned that I had seen one about Washington's mother.

We visited the Smithsonian. At one point, the boys in the family were going to go to a war exhibit while the girls were visiting an exhibit about the dresses of the first ladies. But since I had seen the war exhibit two years earlier, I wanted to go to the dress exhibit. But I felt really embarrassed in there, because it was all women visiting the exhibit. Afterward, David told me something cool they had seen in the war exhibit, and I regretted not going there.

We went to the museum with biological things, and when we saw a monkey skeleton, we recorded it with our video camera and said, "There's Jesse!" I wanted to visit an exhibit about amber, but it cost extra. I remember lots of homeless people, and someone was selling profane shirts outside the Smithsonian. One was a parody of the Budweiser frogs saying profanities.

Once we went to a little stand that sold ice cream novelties. I wanted one kind, but when my mom asked for it, the lady said they were out of them. That really annoyed my mom.

My souvenirs from DC were a little tiny dictionary, a little bag of shredded up money, and a keychain that was a word game. David got some posters about crazy laws and the Preamble in license plates, and an old newspaper. Susanne got a Rosie the Riveter poster.

We had rented a car in Baltimore. One evening, we went to a little grocery store called Save-A-Lot, which had a lot of off-brand groceries. We bought some little bags of chips.

The morning we left Baltimore, we stopped in a gas station. I wanted to get a Fruit Punch Gatorade, but my family made me get Lemon-Lime, because that wouldn't be as bad if it spilled in the rental car. I was annoyed that they thought I would spill it. My mom used the gas station's restroom, but it was not good at all, she said; it had a glass door. While drinking my Gatorade, I noticed little floaties, and that was the first time I heard the term backwash.

Then we went to New York to visit Grandma King, where my grandparents were also visiting. At that time, I was into going outside and playing by moving my body in weird fashions that my mom calls dancing, but I didn't consider it dancing. I was imagining how I would act in imaginary situations--usually fantasy, impossible situations.

I remember going to a restaurant called the Wigwam. David pointed out to me on the menu where it said "No Whining." On our way back from the restaurant, we were coming up Ebbert Drive, the lane to Grandma King's house, and my great aunt Mary Lou remarked that one of the bushes looked like a dog. I was glad that I wasn't the only one who thought that, because I had often been afraid there was a dog loose.

One night, Grandma King and Susanne were sitting watching Touched by an Angel. I remarked about a non-LDS person (Grandma King) watching an LDS show. That probably wasn't an appropriate thing to say. I thought Touched by an Angel was a Mormon show because we believe in angels; I'm not sure whether I knew it was filmed in Utah.

I think on our flight back, on one of our planes I had to sit by a man who just read his book the entire time with headphones in. The flight attendant had to tell him to put his table up.

When we got back, we stepped off the plane and could feel how hot it was in Utah. Walking down the tunnel from the plane, David met someone he knew from high school.

Strangely, I think I remember more about the trip I took when I was six than I remember this one.