The day that I'm thinking of happened almost 12 years ago, when I was in eighth grade at Pine Knot Middle. It was some time in the evening — I remember it being dark — but that's all.
My cousin Josh was in ninth grade and we were hanging out with our friends, Erica and Steven. The four of us grew up together on Bethel Road, and for a long time, we did everything together.
We were really bored, like middle school and high school kids get when they are on a break from school and spending a lot of time at home. For most of Christmas break, the weather had been really warm, too warm for December, and too warm for it to feel much like Christmas.
That day, though, it started to turn colder and it was raining. Then, at some point, one of us, maybe Steven, I'm not really sure, noticed that the rain had turned to snow, and all four of us got really excited. Even though we were already off from school, and we weren't going to get a snow day, even though we were teenagers and maybe a little too old to be that excited over snow, and even though Christmas was already over and it wasn't going to be a picturesque white Christmas in the eastern Kentucky hills.
The snow was coming down really heavy and really fast, and before we knew it there were several inches on the ground. Since we didn't have anything better to do, we all bundled up and went outside for a snowball fight. We plugged in a CD player on the back porch and listened to music while we were playing, something super cool and oh-so-late-90s, like the Backstreet Boys.
Turns out, I am not very good at snowball fights and I got really wet, and really cold, but I didn't mind.
That night, Erica decided she had a crush on Steven, and we spent a good portion of our middle school career figuring out ways to make him notice her.
The two of us had a sleepover at my house and we watched "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" at least 30 times and plotted and schemed and ate bags and bags and bags of loaded baked potato chips, which I'm pretty sure do not exist anymore.
I love that memory because Erica and I are still friends, because three years later my cousin Josh died in a car wreck, because Erica and Steven still talk to each other, and because she and I still talk about her first Real Official Crush.
And now I'm curious about the kind of days that other people would want to re-live. Are the best days the wedding days, the graduations, the days that children are born? Or are the best days the seemingly insignificant ones, the ordinary days that, for whatever reason, turned into memories? I have a hunch that, for most people, the top five is some kind of mixture of both.
Most likely, if Lisa were to ask me that same question in another 12 years, my answer would be completely different, maybe even 12 days from now.
But for today, my answer is kind of silly and a little anti-climactic, but I'm pretty content with it.
Contact Rachel Parsons at rparsons@winchestersun.com.
