My First Easter Egg Hunt

It might not have been my first Easter egg hunt, but it's the first one that I can remember. 

It was Up Puunui at my grandparents' house, and I remember being told to wait in the house while the eggs were being hidden. I was excited with anticipation.  I was determined to get a lot of eggs.

Finally, the hunt began. I saw my first egg. But just as I reached to grab it one of my older boy cousins snatched it up.


The same thing happened to the second egg that I saw. And the next. Soon I was the only one with an empty basket, and I wanted to cry.


Finally, my mom came and took my hand and helped me find some eggs. But, by then I was all sad. Egg hunting was not the experience that I thought it would be. 


Here's me with some of my cousins from that day. In front sitting is Dennis, one of the cousins who got to the eggs before me. 

OMG

I don't own a wallet. Instead I use a zippered section in my cross-body purse (more like a pouch) to store my money.

The other day I was straightening out a $10 bill while checking out at Whole Foods, and I tore it completely in half. 

I told the cashier, "OMG, I can't believe I just did that."

She said, "What happened?"

I showed her. 

She calmly took out a tape dispenser and while taping the two pieces together said, "To tell you the truth, it's a first for me too."

Who DOES stuff like that? Me.

Kid-Time Fun

Kid time we would sometimes spend our day doing this. I wonder how many other kids did it too.



If it doesn't look familiar to you, this is what was at the end of the string. 

We would stun the bee with either cotton and alcohol (Geri's method) or just soak the bee with water (Cy's method), and while the bee was incapacitated, we would tie a string around it. 

After awhile the bee would revive and try to fly away, and we would hang on to the other end of the string. I feel kinda bad now for the poor bee, but back then it was good fun.

The One That Got Away

I remember a long time ago when I overheard my dad telling my mom about what happened on a fishing outing. 

He had tossed out a line and was dunking some bait on a pier at Pearl Harbor.



There was a huge strike, and he rushed to the pole. 


In his excitement his top front partial dentures fell into the water. He dove into the water to try to retrieve them but wasn't able to find them.


I've kept that story in my memory banks for over 50 years. 

When I called my mom a little while ago to confirm that he did dive in after the teeth, she said, "Yes he did dive in to look for them. They fell out after he bit into an apple."

Whaaaaaaat??!!  After he bit into an apple??

I like my story better.

Memories of Hiram Lane - 2

One day a long time ago me and my mom were hanging out . . . she was ironing and I was just playing. I think I was maybe 2 years old or so . . . because there were no other kids around yet.  

It was lunchtime so my mom went into the kitchen to prepare our lunch . . . corned beef hash patty sandwiches. Before leaving she told me to not touch the iron because it was hot. I nodded.



While my mom was in the kitchen, I kept looking at the iron. I wondered how it could be hot when there were no flames. 

She returned with my sandwich and went back into the kitchen to make hers.

I decided to touch the iron. 


That's when I found out just how hot irons are.

I started bawling. My mom rushed back into the room. I showed her my finger. She said, "Awwwww . . . I'm sorry . . . is the sandwich too hot?"  I said, "Yes."


She put some ointment and a bandaid on my finger, and I was relieved that I didn't get busted.

The Black Guppy

I'm not real sure how old I was when my dad decided to buy an aquarium . . . maybe intermediate-school age . . .  maybe younger. We stocked it with guppies from Palolo Stream. It was a fun project.

But eventually my dad got deployed off to Vietnam, and the care of the fish and the fish tank was left to us kids . . . which means nobody took care of them. 

After awhile the aquarium got put outside on the back porch. 


The water slowly evaporated until only scattered small pools remained. One day I noticed some movement in one of the pools. It was a black guppy. And it was still alive. I didn't think there were any fish left in the tank. I couldn't believe it.


I put some water in a jar, and I put the fish in it. The fish was so happy. He did loops and circles and probably woulda done a dolphin flip if he could've. For real.

Aunty Sally's Blanket

My mom's sister, Aunty Sally, loved to sew patchwork blankets.

My siblings and I were the lucky recipients of quite a few of them.


Aunty Sally would usually give them to my mom to pass on, and my mom always sealed them in ziplock bags before giving them to us.

One day years ago, Landon asked if he could take a blanket with him on an overnight fishing trip because it was expected to be a very chilly night.  He grabbed one that was still sealed up. 


It did turn out to be a cold evening, and unfortunately the blanket turned out to be not a blanket but placemats instead.  

Memories of Hiram Lane - 1

Wendell and I were talking the other day about all the flooding that's been happening with the heavy rains, and he mentioned that long ago the houses were built higher so that the plumbing pipes could go under the house instead of underground like how they are now. 

I remembered our house on Hiram Lane in Liliha. It was built so high that I could play underneath it.


Then I remembered the time that I heard a strange noise coming from outside of the house just after I had taken a bath. I was about 7 years old.

I lowered the lid of the toilet and stood on it so that I could see outside of the window.

I looked and looked, but it was evening and so dark that I couldn't see anything.


Then, all of a sudden the top of a head appeared right in front of me. 


Then the face of Jason T., our neighbor appeared. I screamed. Then he screamed. Then his face was gone. And I heard a thud.


I don't remember seeing him again after that. Maybe he would dig whenever he saw me.  

We moved to Palolo shortly thereafter.  I don't know whatever became of Jason T., but once in awhile I think about that time long ago.

Upside-Down House

When I was really, really young, my Aunty Bernice invited us over to her house but warned that her house was all upside down. 

I was so excited because I had never seen an upside-down house before. Unfortunately, my mom declined the invitation so I never got to see Aunty Bernice's house. 

Mattress Tag Police

I was taking off the bedsheets one laundry day when I was a kid, and I accidentally tore off one of those Do Not Remove tags. 

I didn't wanna tell my mom because I knew that being the honest person that she was, she would turn me in to the Mattress Tag Police.  So I taped the tag back onto the mattress, and I didn't tell a soul. 

Every so often I would check on the tag to make sure that it was still being securely held on by the tape, and if any of the tape needed to be replaced, I would do that.

I think it was years before I felt safe from being hauled off to jail by the MTP. 

The Kite

One of my first real boyfriends was named . . . ummmm . . . let's call him . . . Scooter.  He was mostly a happy-go-lucky kind of guy and fun to be with.

One day I had an idea to go kite flying. I thought it would be fun. Scooter agreed, so off we went to Walmart to buy the kite.

We got one of those cheap diamond-shaped kites with the two wooden sticks that you form into a cross. 

Just assembling the kite was fun to me, and when it was done I was all excited to go try fly it. 


Unfortunately, we were sitting on the floor when we put the kite together, and when I stood up I accidentally stepped right on the kite and cracked the sticks. 


I was  . . . 


Scooter was  . . . 


He was soooooo mad. I couldn't believe it. We ended up having a fight, and we never, ever went kite flying together.

The Fishing Pole

These were supposed to be preliminary test sketches, but I got too lazy to redraw them so here they are. The first picture is a dog . . . in case you can't tell.

When I was around 18 years old or so I asked my dad if I could borrow one of his fishing poles. Unfortunately, before I could return it to him my dog, Ashes, broke it . . . in two.  Actually his leash got tangled around the pole, but it was easier to draw it in his mouth.



Being the resourceful person that I am, and because I didn't wanna get busted I decided to try and repair the pole. I used wire, string and glue, and HOLY MOLY, I did such a good job that you couldn't even tell that it was once broken. In fact, since it was now even better than good as new, I didn't tell my dad anything. 


Only thing . . . the next time my dad took the pole out, he said that on his first cast, the top half went sailing out into the ocean. He said that he was so shame. 

But . . . he was laughing the whole time he was telling me the story. Love you Daddy.

Oama Fishing

Wendell caught these two papio this past weekend. He and his friend caught around 10 oama  and then used them for bait to catch the papio.

Oama fishing involves standing in a circle around the school of fish with shrimp, aku belly, etc. for bait while using some mysterious use-the-force technique to sense the nibble.


I've only gone oama fishing twice in my life because being as weak-forced as I am, I usually only succeed in getting majorly annoyed at hooking nothing while everyone else around me brings up fish after fish.

Holding Back the Laughter

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to laugh really badly but doing so would've been extremely rude? And holding back your laughter caused you to have severe stomach cramps and tears to roll down your face?

Well, it happened to my sisters on July 22, 40 years ago. It was at my wedding.


And it happened when Wendell and I kneeled down at the alter. In case you can't tell, it's the bottom of my shoes. 

The Bad Thing and The Good Thing

We had a gathering of cousins this past weekend and conversation kinda seemed to focus on us getting old. I mentioned about how clumsy I'm getting and told a story about what happened to me on my recent Japan trip.

We were in a restaurant that served buffet Japanese food. There was a darkly lit corridor in the restaurant where there was a step-up that I totally didn't see, and I tripped.


The Bad Thing was that when I tripped I was carrying a tray full of separate dishes of food. It seemed like it was a good two minutes that I stomped around on the wooden floor, swaying this way and that, trying to keep the food and myself from falling to the ground.


The Good Thing was that I DIDN'T FALL DOWN! It was a miracle! I don't even know how that happened, but me AND THE FOOD didn't fall down. 

My food ended up spread out all over my tray, but main thing . . .  I DIDN'T FALL DOWN! 

Adventures in Spearfishing - 4

Several dive outings had gone by, and I had yet to prove myself as a spearfisher-woman when things were about to change. 

On a fine summer day, in the not-too-deep waters off the shore of south Oahu, I noticed a flash of red in a puka in the rocks. All excited, I cocked my spear and swam toward it. 



It was an aweoweo. A small one. It looked at me with scared, innocent eyes as it backed up further into the hole.

In an instant I realized what I actually must've known all along . . . that there was no way I was gonna spear that fish or any other fish for that matter. 


I decided to hang up my spear after that, and I never took it out again.  I still went diving with Wendell 'cause . . . you know . . . it wasn't fish that I was trying to catch anyway.

Adventures in Spearfishing - 3

Wendell's favorite place to go spearfishing was in the waters near the Aina Haina area. The prime area to catch the fish was in about 8 to 10 feet of nice, clear water which was, unfortunately, more than 200 yards from shore. 

The depth of the water for most of the way getting out there was only about 1 to 2 feet. You could actually walk to the spot, but it was just easier swimming it even though, depending on the tide, you might be barely skimming the surface of the floor.



Peripheral vision through a diving mask is severely hampered (at least for me it is), and you can see only what's right in front of you until you move your head left or right and up or down.  

This is pretty much all I saw on our way out to the reef drop-off point and deeper water . . . just rocks, sand, seaweed. 


That is until the day a tako suddenly appeared in my view and scared the bejeeezus outta me and caused me to scream and swallow about a gallon of gross seaweed/ocean water.

Adventures in Spearfishing - 2

Once when me and Wendell went to our favorite diving spot I noticed that the tide was especially low. Stepping into the water felt particularly weird because it was warm and not cool like usual. 

After just a few steps a felt a tiny sting on my ankle, much like an ant bite. Then, I felt another sting. I looked down at the water and saw tiny, little ripples swimming toward my feet. Maybe they were sand fleas. Not sure. Until today, I still don't really know what they were. 

I was still trying to show Wendell what an outdoorsy kind of girl I was and thus not adverse to such things, and so I just continued walking into deeper, colder water to try to escape the bugs. 

I remained outwardly calm the whole time, but inside what I really wanted to do was . . . 




THIS!!


I used Photoshop this time to color the drawings and am just amazed at its versatility.

Adventures in Spearfishing - 1

I was dabbling with the idea of drawing comics. I think it would be fun to use as an aid to telling stories. One small problem. It's hard. 

I did this one page yesterday. It's supposed to be me and Wendell back in the day when we were still dating. Wendell used to love to go spearfishing. I used to go with him and pretend to enjoy it too because I wanted him to like me. 

In reality, I hate being in ocean water, especially if the floor is rock and seaweed filled. Ewwwwww.  So gross.

Anyway, there's supposed to be more to this story . . . but my skills . . . still lacking . . . not sure if I can do it.