I was cooler when I was 3 than I am now.

growing up sucks.

and I don't want to do it anymore. (excuse the sad angst about to occur in this post)

my uncle and aunt came in town... no special reason, just a routine visit. but my parents started talking about that period when we lived in an apartment in downtown St. Louis. I was alive, maybe 2 years old, but still in the infant state of oblivion. when I search through the deepest memories I can find, all I can remember is the black kitchen floor. It probably wasn't even black.

But this was during that time that people say you existed but before the existence of your present human memory. I remember the kitchen floor of this apartment, unlike the condo we lived in before. for about 5 months we lived downtown, in a loft-style apartment before there was such thing as a loft-style. we were just too broke for walls. this building was attached to the building my father worked in (making toys). naturally, sister and I rode our squeaky tricycles around the office, pressed our noses on the window at dad from across the alley, sold lemonade to helpless toy makers, and played with prototypes... so I'm told.

anyway, my mom and dad were going on about this apartment: about how she managed to cook without a stove oven or toaster, about how we ate out a lot, about how he made us sell our own girl scout cookies in the office, about how they managed to keep two small children quiet in a building of hungover neighbors, about how we walked to the baseball stadium whenever, walked to the city library for story time multiple times a week, and walked to the store while the guys from work snuck over to grease the tricycle wheels.

Basically, my coolness has been quickly digressing since I was about 3.

It scares me when I think of our parents as normal people. People with a past probably more colorful than mine. It scares me because I don't want someone looking at me like that someday. I don't want someone who cannot understand that my life was an entire entity before her existence. that she is but a small pet that sits in my life, as the point that holds me down. I don't want to grow up.

but I like this photograph.