The Time of My Life...

Last night during my usual end-of-the-day cool down of channel flipping and paper grading, I took a minute to check my Facebook page and MSN homepage.

The headline on MSN stuck out like a sore thumb...

Patrick Swayze Dies at Age 57.

I wasn't expecting to feel sad. It sounds silly, but in many ways, Patrick Swayze was a significant part of my childhood...

Here is an excerpt from a memoir I wrote this summer titled, Preserving Neverland.

If I were asked to share a single word that seemed to represent a reoccurring theme in my childhood, I would choose imagination. Imagination. While financial security, job mobility, and social status were hard to come by inside my family's hand-crafted small-town home, imagination was always in abundance. My older brother and I were blessed to have a full-time mom, which allowed us to explore our own surroundings day after day instead of the confined walls of a day-care center. Perhaps this is the reason I was content in my own little world and actually preferred to play by myself opposed to my many peers. As I look back now, I wonder what the neighbors thought as little Ashley, barefoot with dirt-stained knees, twirled like a clumsy ballerina in the middle of our dead-end street, a pink baby's receiving blanket secured tightly around her tiny waist with a safety pin, singing to every word of "I've Had the Time of My Life," from the 'Dirty Dancing' soundtrack. I especially wonder what our home-schooled, strict religious neighbors thought as Ashley proceeded to lug her Fischer Price cassette player to the neighbor's house to promote and share her taste of music with the neighbor girls!

When I wasn't attempting to imitate the flamboyant, oftentimes, objectionable moves of the actors in the movie (by myself, remember), I was standing on the couch, waiting in anticipation for the famous 'lift' at the culmination of the film. With arms outstretched to an invisible Patrick Swayze (my brother refused to be part of this), I would jump off the couch and land in a Neverland world of fantasy and fairytale.

I'm not sure why I was so drawn to 'Dirty Dancing' as a child (or why my mom allowed me to view, let alone memorize it), but it did not stand alone in my personal favorite category. Sandy in Grease, Whitney Houston's damsel in distress role in The Bodyguard, and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman were frequently portrayed in the living room or backyard. Although I did not have a clue about the plot or seemingly reoccurring themes in these films at the innocent age of eight, I wonder if it eventually shaped my draw to the 'bad boy' persona in high school. Now, decades later, I've often wasted afternoons stuck on one of these films while aimlessly flipping through the channels. For some reason, they never get old to me. No matter what I have on my plate at the time, a stack of papers to grade, a stack of dishes to wash, or a stack of bills to pay, I can't help but find myself drifting off to Neverland.

It's funny the things that will evoke such strong surges of memory and importance in our lives. It's reflecting on the small moments that truly make the ordinary extraordinary...