In 1989 I moved to a small town north of Indianapolis called Shelbyville. We had a little white house with a full front porch and a porch swing. My dad took on a recruiting job in the small town when I was just starting school. My mother was pregnant with my baby sister and I was oblivious to everything but myself.
My most vivid childhood memories are always of Christmas, injuries, and getting in trouble. Shelbyville marked the most epic of Christmas’s and my most notable injuries and childhood groundings.
The Christmas of 1989 was the Nintendo Christmas. Mom was in her last miserable weeks of pregnancy with the demon spawn. James and I still shared a room at that point in which time was common place. Our little house had an addition in the back where the previous inhabitant ran a salon. This would later be converted into my brother’s room and then began the long cohabitation of my baby sister, Kyria (Pronounced Keer-uh) and me in a single bedroom.
My older brother went to school down the street, but because they did not have a kindergarten at the school, I had to be driven elsewhere. These morning drives introduced me to the Bob and Tom morning show on the radio, which has been on the air longer than I have been alive.
Kindergarten was interesting. I only remember a couple of things, but most notable would be when I was student of the week. My favorite foods were pizza and mac and cheese (still true to this day) and my favorite color was yellow which is a fluid subject as my moods and interests change all the time. For example today, I would say my favorite color is Toyota Barcelona Red, but out of the context of visualizing my new 4Runner, my favorite color is green.
My mother taught me super young, so when I got to school I was graded on my current level of knowledge. Since my mother had already taught me everything I would come to learn in kinder, at the end of the year I had made no major improvements. So, the school tried to hold me back from first grade. On the first day of school, I went to the same first grade class as my peers but was pulled out and taken back to the kindergarten class. More discussion took place amongst adults and I was allowed to attend first grade.
Oooh first grade. I walked to school with James who promptly dumped me when we got to the playground of the school. I learned what sex ones from one of the girls before school. I also had a cat sweater that matched a girl in third grade and I would get so excited to see her walk down the hallway. Milk came in clear bags and my first go at bagged milk ended in a chocolate on my white shirt. On the way to school was a corner store and we had to cross a busy street to get to it. There was no stop sign or light so on school days there was always a crossing guard with a vest and a sign. One day James and I went to the store for some candy or something. Little bitty seven year old Dacia stretched out both arms and braved the treacherous intersection with the magnificent power of a crossing guard. Remember when I said I was oblivious to the rest of the world? Well, a police officer slammed on their breaks to keep from hitting and killing me. He pulled alongside us as we walked home and asked where we lived. Using our best elementary school judgment, we refused to tell him because 1. Stranger danger applied to everyone and 2. We were probably in trouble. James was always the mastermind when either of us got in trouble. To this day I don’t know why, but he took the blame for a lot of things I did or we did together. He dished it out too, but he saved me quite a bit. This time though, the policeman had us trumped. Outside of earshot, I’m not sure the conversation between my mom and that cop but I was grounded for at least two weeks. Like bedroom grounded.
The first Christmas with my sister was bean bag and bicycle Christmas. Kyria was nearly one year old and James and I were a handful, I am sure. Mom stayed home with us which must have been a very trying time in her young adult life.
I remember a lot of family visiting us while we lived in Shelbyville. My mom’s sister and my cousins came one thanks giving. This must have been before Kyria was born because we were playing hide and seek and I was hiding behind the curtain. Instead of just going to the bathroom I peed a little in my pants and got in trouble. My youngest aunt on my dad’s side and a cousin who was close in age with her came one summer, but I think it was because both were super jerks as kids and we were like Uncle Jim’s summer boot camp. Mom lined up a ton of crafts for us like paper machete and corn husking which she dyed and made into dolls and other things.
Mom was always super crafty. She did all the painting in the house which included stenciling hearts and such on the walls of the kitchen. She sold her things at art fairs and the renaissance festivals. Staying home with three kids while your husband worked ridiculous hours recruiting kids into the Army requires hobbies. This also included mama’s “shows”. Mom did a great job at teaching us how to do things. I was washing and rinsing dishes at that age. I would stand on a chair because I was so short. One night I was outside playing in the backyard and mom had told me multiple times to do the dishes. I honestly did not mean to ignore her, I genuinely forgot she told me to do them. She came out with a wooden spoon, the kind with the hole in the middle to measure noodle portions, and broke that thing over my butt. I don’t remember the pain of the spanking but the fact that it broke resonated through the years.
The first time I could recall ever hearing of God involved one of the times James tried to cover for me. I had a Kermit the frog stuffed animal with plastic eyes and a rigid mouth to keep the shape of his weird face. Any who, for whatever reason I was throwing this thing as high as I could in my room and it hit the light fixture which broke and came crashing to the floor. I cannot remember exactly if James was already there or just came in to see what happened. We concocted some false and highly unlikely story to tell my mother but she was not buying it. In a fit of anger she yelled at me? Us? For lying and said “I won’t be the one to judge you for lying. God will.” I had no idea what this woman was talking about and I slept much of the evening trying to figure out who God was. Little did I know this moment would spark a life long journey.
Remember those bikes we got that year? James was around ten and riding his bike around the neighborhood. Oblivious—to this day—me got in the way of him and caused him to fall off his bike. Now I ONLY let this blame ride on into history because James normally took the blame for things and because he was older and has a better memory. He ended up breaking his arm whilst having a solid hockey mullet. There is a picture or else I would have completely forgotten about the mullet. Casey Jones and Wayne Gretsky were all the rage then.
The Nintendo was a family item we all played, though it was kept in James’ room. We had a few games but I remember playing Maniac Mansion and Goonies. Back then, there was no saving games. You had to play the game all the way through and win or start over and try from the beginning again. So often Dad sat in his whicker rocking chair, playing a game, pause it and turn the TV off but keep the game running for days on end trying to reach the end. I never got this luxury so I maybe won an entire game less than five times. Well, the bunk beds we used to share were moved into James’ room as well. One night, it must have been a Saturday because it was pretty dark outside and we were still awake, I was getting down from the top bunk onto the wicker rocking chair. I remember thinking I could pull this off but I had to be fast. I had to let go of the bed and sit down as fast as I could so I would not get rocked out of the chair. I failed. I went face first into the corner of the Nintendo and suffered an inch long gash on my left eye brow. Mom and Dad took me to the ER but I did not need stitches. One more injury I remember in Shelbyville happened in the bath. I sat on my mom’s razor and my butt took a long time to stop bleeding. I did not go to the hospital for that one.
Mom had a small garden in the back yard of that house. If you went through the gate on the right side of the house our neighbors grew blue bells which grew on the fence that separated our yards. They smelled so good. My mother kept her small garden on the other side of the yard in a rectangular patch of dirt that was not blocked off or differentiated other than there not being grass in that area. I don’t know exactly what she grew in there, but one day I was playing outside by myself and decided to help Mom “weed” the garden. There were really tall plants that had a reddish tinge to them that did not have flowers on them, so I assumed these were those pesky weeds mom always tried to get out, so I pulled up every single one by the root. I got about 2/3s through the whole patch of garden before Mom came outside to flip out. I think she might have cried a little, but she did not yell at me or punish me. As a mother, I can imagine my teeny baby girl ruining something I worked very hard on and depending on my level of defeat that day, reacting the way my mom did. It was not often my mom gave major reactions to things, so when it happened these moments burned into my brain.
The last memory I will mention is one remembered differently by all involved parties. I remember it very well and it makes my stomach sick to this day. Kyria and I never got along. Maybe it was the age difference, maybe it was becoming a middle child and left flailing in the ocean of life trying to get my parents attention. Either way. My sister must have been around 2 and I was about seven. She chased me through the house, which was a giant circle. We got to my parents room and she followed me up on the bed. I must have hit her on purpose or accident but the little shit started screaming. I did not want my mom to hear because I would get in trouble. So I put my hand over my sister’s mouth, but noise was still coming from her nose. So I covered her nose too. I think I remembered this because of my mother’s horrified reaction when she did come in. I’m sure she saw little psycho Lizzie with her hand over Judith’s nose in the woods hiding from walkers. In fact, my mother even passed on this story to my sister as a teenager and told her I was trying to kill her. I am so disgusted by this entire subject. I did not understand at seven how to kill anybody, much less want to kill anyone or anything. So for my adult mother to tell my impressionable sister in her teen years (which we will get to later were not pleasant) that I tried to kill her as a baby is pretty messed up. I get very defensive on this even when my sister brings it up jokingly. Because this was not cleared up until well into adulthood, this fact shaped much of my sister’s view of me for most of her life. Can you tell I am a bit angry? This is not even easy for me to write about. There were far happier times in that house like playing Hot Potato, our first pet, Barbies Ninja Turtles, and Ghost Busters. The baby sitter who lived behind our house and other things, but this sickens me to this day.