youth...

 "Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional." - Chili Davis


When I was in high school I shared a room with my sister, one year younger than me, who was also my best friend.  We had the coolest room imaginable. When we moved into that house the room we were to share had a pretty, small scaled flower-y wallpaper on the walls that didn't sit too well with us hippie chicks.  We tried to talk our mother into letting us paint the room black, but she wouldn't go for it (surprise, right?).  We finally talked her into a dark blue.  Very dark blue. My sister and I painted the room ourselves and we painted right over the "old lady" wallpaper. Somehow, over time we, and our friends, found out that if you wrote on the wall it would scrape away some of the paint and the markings would come out white, the color of the wallpaper background.  So before too long, one entire wall, floor to ceiling, was "written" on by all our friends.  There were quotes and drawings all over.  It looked like a giant blackboard which had been well used.  We had our mattresses on the floor with lots of pillows, and flowing curtains and bedspreads that we made ourselves out of those cotton tapestries from India (oh, how I wish I had some of those now!), and Neil Young (me) or Rod Stewart (my sister) on the stereo - loud. Needless to say, we were envied by all of our friends and our room was a popular hangout.  Thanks Mom, for letting us do that.  Not every mother would have been that encouraging of our budding "style"! (And probably not surprisingly, my sister and I are both still into styling our homes!)  Sadly, as far as I know, there aren't any pictures of that room.

But I saw this on the blog "A Perfect Gray" this morning (via this pretty space) and the memories came flooding back:

ohhh...the memories!