by Jennifer Watson

Created on: July 13, 2010   Last Updated: December 18, 2011

When you grow up being considered "poor white trash" by other people, your childhood should be made up of memories that you don't want to think about. Shouldn't it? Well when you have a wonderful mother and a lot of siblings to protect you, that is not always the case. Other people could not take away the simple joys and happiness that I knew as a child.

Growing up as the sixth of nine siblings, I never had a lot of time to get bored. If anything, finding a little privacy and quite time was quite a challenge. Always having someone to talk to or play with certainly had it's advantages too. Having very little in the way of financial resources, we had to rely on the abundance of nature around us in the mountains we grew up in.

Animals, plants and lots of good old muddy clay were always readily available for nine vivid imaginations. One of my absolute favorite memories from my childhood involved a "playhouse" that we built. We took some twine (for those of you who don't know what this is, it is a thick type of string) and several sticks about a foot tall and built the walls to our playhouse. Logs and large rocks were our beds, couches and other furniture. Empty mayo jars and lids were all the dishes we needed to stock our pretend kitchen. The neatest thing of all was the thick green moss that we put on the ground to use as carpet. I will never forget just how soft and cool it felt on our bare toes in the summer.Even though I now have a beautiful two story home with wall to wall carpet it will never compare to the pure joy that the moss carpet brought to nine sets of toes back in my childhood days.

Another favorite memory involves myself and my only younger brother. Somehow, he was always willing to go along with my wild plans and ideas. I was always scheming and planning ways to get rich. This particular day I convinced my brother that we could get rich by catching tadpoles and selling them for bait. We spent most of an afternoon catching them in our jars and at the end of the day we sat them on the back porch and in the way young children often do, we promptly forgot all about them. A few days later my mom commented about the extraordinary number of frogs that seemed to be invading her flower beds. She just couldn't understand where they were all coming from until my dad discovered the culprit was the now empty jars that contained only creek water. All the tadpoles had turned into frogs and escaped from their glass prisons by simply jumping out. I will never forget how much our older siblings teased us about our bait business.

My life has truly been blessed to have contained such an amazing childhood!

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