Aqua Velva, Baby Lotion, and Sunday Morning

Aqua Velva, Baby Lotion, and Sunday Morning — Where It All Started

Sunday morning smelled like Aqua Velva and Johnson's Baby Lotion.

Baths taken, breakfast done quick. Me and Michelle would steal a few tender minutes on her back porch before church — just us, holding hands, thinking we invented love.

After church, the whole neighborhood came alive. That big field beside the house — all the kids, everywhere — and that huge beach ball. Hours of yelling, laughing, bouncing it to the sky. And me, watching everybody — "Don't touch my girl!" Not even the other girls could touch her. I didn't know nothing about nothing back then, I was only about 3 years old, I just knew she was my Michelle, my bell.

Then one kid yells it: "ED SULLIVAN'S ON!"

You never saw a yard clear so fast. One second full, next second — empty. Like magic.

Inside, we were all glued to that little black and white TV, shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same air, watching whatever miracle Ed had that night. I was too young to have too many details, but I always remember the Chinese people spinning plates on sticks and all the different groups. That kept us glued.

And the shows we watched on that little box — my favorite redhead, I Love Lucy! We had a black and white TV, but I learned she was a redhead sometime after I grew up and we got our first color TV. And the Dick Van Dyke Show, beautiful Mary Tyler Moore, mavalas!

Outside our house, there was a smoke house band close by where I lived and they sung this song all the time: "Jeremiah was a bullfrog." One of my favorites. I didn't venture out too much, being 3, but I could hear them.

And then there was the Wonderful World of Disney. That is my roots in creative writing and my desire to be an inventor!

That came later in life. I didn't start thinking of inventions until I got in high school and started studying electronics, but my memory of Disney had already planted the seeds. Knowledge of electricity ignited my imagination! Just learning about it made everything make sense. It's so fascinating. My study of the Bible started about the same time and I can understand why the Amish thought that technology was from the devil, because the things I was starting to learn seemed magical. But I can tell it was just people learning about God's creation and learning how to make inspirational things!

And outside? Just that big beach ball. Alone. Still bouncing in the empty field, like it didn't get the memo.

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Everybody digs a cool cat.