14 down...

Not much to say about it... just noting the day! Can I say less than a year now?

I spent way too long looking for clip art for this page. I realize that 14 really isn't a number that is used a lot. One through ten are popular because the make up all the other numbers. Twelve is of course a dozen. Thirteen is unlucky or superstitious and a bakers dozen. Twenty, thirty, forty etc. are big decade milestones, but 14 is just kind of overlooked. Two weeks is 14 days but most everyone just says two weeks.

So I started to think of what 14 meant to me, and thought about the year I was 14. Sweet memories.

Since I am born smack dab in the middle of the year. I was 14 for the last half of 1979 and the first half of 1980! Ninth Grade, Freshman in High School.

"My Shorona", by the Knack was #1 on the charts and Disco was on it's way out!

I began that year seeing Ricky Schroder in "The Champ" and cried literally from the beginning of the movie to the end. I ended the year seeing "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back". At the time I would never know that, twenty some odd years later, I would still be watching Ricky on TV and "That Star Wars Movie" was really the 5th not the 2nd?

On TV I was watching "Three's Company", "Happy Days", "Taxi", and "Eight is Enough". But what I didn't watch was Eddie Murphy debuting on SNL, my mom wouldn't let me!

I went to my first school dance that year and was hooked. I don't believe I missed a dance, date or not, for the next four years. I remember the atmostphere of emotional tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. I loved the physical freedom of dancing to something fast and loud, but anticipated the slow songs with butterflies. I still get those butterflies when I hear, "Stairway to Heaven" or "Hotel California".

I went to my first football game and realized how much fun sports were, when there were people to talk to and walk around with. I don't think I ever watched a sporting event until my son was playing, but I rarely missed going to one in High School.

I sang in the girls choir and learned all the words to "Rainbow Connection", "Sound of Silence" and "Simple Gifts". These songs creep up on me to this day and torture my family!

I took cooking class, and learned to make a roux. I still use this from time to time. Just call me Martha. I also learned that sitting on the kitchen counter is poor manners and unsanitary, my son is disappointed I learned this.

But the most significant 14 is my husband Jim's birthday. He was born on the 14th. It is also the number of roses Jim bought me on our 14th valentines day together, however I think he stopped that year and went back to a dozen. That's okay, I'm just glad he brings me roses, that when he asked me to marry him, he wasn't being funny and he has never broken my heart...