When I was a kid, I had a baseball glove. A Mickey Mantle baseball glove. When it was new, I wrapped it around two baseballs, tied it up and soaked it in a bucket of water to create a pocket. After it dried, I rubbed it with oil to soften it up.
Then I did what most kids my age did: I slid it on the handlebars of my bike and headed to the local baseball field where I proceeded to drag it through the dirt in pursuit of ground balls, fling it in disgust when I couldn’t run down a fly ball and kicked it to the side when it was my turn to bat.
I loved that glove. It was just one of the many favorite things of my youth. Favorites can be fleeting. They often appear, make their mark then extinguish themselves. But some favorites endure. For example, Bob Dylan’s music of the early 1960s, a favorite of mine, is just as meaningful to me today as it was over 40 years ago when I first heard it. Today we’ll take note of the favorites of our lives.
I’m including a list here to get you started, but it’s by no means comprehensive. Explore your own life to come up with other categories that are meaningful to you. After you’ve made your list of favorites, go back and write about the reasons why they are your favorites. Add them to your timeline. List your favorite:
• Holiday
• Outdoor activity
• Indoor activity
• Food
• Drink
• Ice cream
• Candy
• Color
• Room in the house
• Animal
• Season
• Author
• Actor
• Actress
• Movie
• Television show
• Flower
• Vegetable
• Fruit
• Number
• Vehicle
• Vacation
Tomorrow: Your hopes and dreams
This is Lesson No. 18 of a mini-course on how to write a personal history. The course will continue throughout May, which is Personal History Month. To get future lessons delivered to you, you may subscribe to our RSS feed or get e-mail delivery to your inbox. It’s easy. Details can be found in the column to the left of this post.
Flickr photo courtesy of Monday Morning Photography.
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