Ray LaMontagne

During my childhood, holiday time was always crazy. I mean, we are Italian....so there's always an enormous amount of food, and relatives, and Christmas cheer in the air.

This particular Christmas I remember being very sick. Just one of those miserable colds that you can't breathe out of your nose, you wake up and stay in your pajamas, that thick purple Dimetapp every couple of hours or so...miserable. Absolutely miserable for a youngster.

The house that I grew up in was small: 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a living room, kitchen, unfinished basement, and 6 people living there, 1 dog, 90 rabbits, some chickens and a rooster.

My family members filed into our house. What seemed like so many of them. I was in charge of the jackets. I would take everyone's warm winter outwear and place them on my parent's bed in their bedroom. Now I was sick, so of course every one thought I was in bed...but, alas, this mischievous youngster was not.

I snuck into my parent's bedroom and began going through each of the coat pockets, curious as to what these family members of mine may hold inside of them. Dirty tissues for runny cold weather noses, keys, and one pocket in particular: a box of tic tacs.

Not just any tic tacs, the white ones. I took one out of the package, and ate it...ahh delicious mint. I tapped a second one out onto my hand, and for whatever reason, I wanted to smell it. More than anything. I lifted it up to my nose and of course couldn't smell, not only because I was sick, but seriously, who can smell a tic tac? So this 5 or 6 year old decided to do the only thing  I knew to do: stick that tic tac up my nose as far as I could, because by golly, I was going to smell that damn minty goodness.

As the candy coating wore off in my nose and I couldn't dislodge the small candy, it began to burn. I remember said burning like it was yesterday. I ran into the kitchen found my mother, in the middle of about a million other things and said "mommy, mommy, it burns it burns!" To which she responded, "of course it does, you have a cold, and you aren't feeling well!" I repeated "no!" as I pointed at my nose and explained what I did, the burning getting hotter and hotter. We tried blowing my nose...nothing. Again and again. Finally, my mother slowly walked to the bathroom to get the tweezers. Little did I know she didn't plan on tweezing anything out, she walked so slowly so that the tic tac would begin to dissolve and finally just finally I would be able to get it out with a tissue.

I remember this moment in my life like it was yesterday. The burning, the scurrying, the crying, the sitting on the counter as I told my mom the story of what had happened...

Just a girl, very early in her life, with a love of going through the guests pockets, looking for hidden treasures, or a piece of candy to smell while overcoming a damn miserable cold.