Today’s memory challenge is inspired by the fact that I am still waiting to finish the day job and get on with the rest of my life. My actual last day of work is 10/31. I only work 4 days a week so that means 15 working days left. (I get depressed if I count actual days.) And because my term date is a Friday and normally I don’t work Fridays, I will instead take that last Monday off having a 4 day weekend before the last week.

What all this means is I am very impatient for one phase of my life to end and the next phase to begin. I suppose I am impatient for the old to be done and excited for the new to begin,

I think many of the sleep problems I have now as an adult stem partly from my impatience/excitability as a child. I would be so excited before an event, any event, that I couldn’t go to sleep. I would get up out of bed at least a dozen times and go find my mom and ask if I could get up yet.

Birthdays were the worst. I would be so excited that I would actually make myself sick. My mom worked during the day so my birthday was never celebrated until she came home from work. That made for a very long day that built up and up and up until usually I was too sick to enjoy my birthday. One year my mom decided to let me open one present when I got up in the morning. Just one. She told me that the night before but when I got up in the morning there was no present in my room and she was gone to work. My grandmother told me to call her and ask her about it so I did. That’s when she gave me the first clue. I spent the day following clues, some of them time-based (and my grandmother was the guard) that led me around the house and the yard to find a variety of little gifts. Barrettes for my hair. Socks. A clear vinyl tote bag that had pink polka dots on it. An umbrella that matched the bag. And so on. When my mom came home we had dinner and the birthday cake but by then there were no more presents to open. Knowing me, I probably threw a selfish temper tantrum at the time but I remember it as one of the few birthdays where I wasn’t constantly in the bathroom being sick from the anticipation and excitement for the day.

Your turn. Tell about a time in your childhood that you impatient or excited.