The First Time...

This week's Monday Listicle is all about memorable FIRSTS. And I swear I felt my first earthquake this morning after returning home from taking the boys to school.  They aren't very common in these parts and although I've heard talk of minor ones a few times in the past, I have somehow always been oblivious to them.  But this morning as I was pouring myself a second cup, the house started vibrating and the windows were rattling and I yelled out to Charlie who had not left for work yet, "WHAT was that?"  

"It must have been an earthquake", he replied.  Well, there wasn't a big truck coming through the neighborhood nor a jet overhead, so what else could it have been?  How appropriate that I should experience my first quake just before making a list of firsts!  

1. First picture... April, 1971

2. First car ...1984 Mazda 626.  I was 18 before I got my driver's license.  After graduating high school in 1989, I spent the summer at my dad's house in Georgia where he helped me get my first ride.  I'm sure there's a picture around here someplace but that would require some serious tearing apart of the house this morning and I just don't have the energy. This is the closest thing I could find to it...

3. First part-time job...Making cold calls for Rainbow Vacuum Cleaners in an office full of chain smokers. My dad sold Rainbows on the side and lined me up my first job for that same summer I spent with them after graduation.  The boss, and everyone else in the office, smoked like a freight train.  (Thank God for the banning of smoking in public places!) Not to mention, he was one of the creepiest people I'd ever had the displeasure of crossing paths with.  I lasted all of two days.  

4. First full-time job...Receptionist for a chiropractor.  The man was off the charts Cu-raaazy! Oh, and he too was a chain smoker.  No wonder I hate smoking so much.  I lasted all of two months. 

5. First time out of the south...I was almost 25 years old when Darin and I took a trip to Las Vegas, where he also proposed.  I'm not a gambler but stuck a couple of quarters in a slot machine and won nearly two hundred dollars.  Only time in my life I've ever had that kind of luck.  

6.  First flight...Atlanta to Charlotte on Piedmont Airlines.  I was 17 years old.  And alone.  I remember feeling so grown up for the first time ever.   

7.  First concert...Def Leppard and Queensryche in 1988.... Pour some sugar on me! Ohh, in the name of love! Pour some sugar on me!  Come on, fire me up!   Excuse the blue haze over my ticket stub but it is taped inside the pages of the senior scrapbook from my 12th grade English class.  Why did I use blue???

8. First time in the ER...I was 14 and broke my collarbone playing Ghost in the Graveyard in the neighborhood one summer night (late bloomer).  I think that was the last time we all 'played' together. School started back and then I moved away to North Carolina at the beginning of the following summer. I will forever remember that night as the official end of my childhood.  

9. First date...I was 15.  We went to the movies to see Crocodile Dundee but I was so nervous, I could not have told you the first thing about the movie I had just supposedly watched.  

10. My first blog post... March 4, 2010: Shh...Listen.

And because I feel like breaking the rules today, I'm adding one more...

11. My first Dachshund...Because once a Dachshund lover, always a Dachshund lover. Just ask a Dachshund lover.