Guest Column: Letters to myself

A friend who took a writing course had an assignment to write a letter to her younger self, offering words of wisdom from her “older” self.

I recently celebrated a milestone birthday, and I have plenty of advice to offer the kid I used to be. An early memory is of a smashed finger. So, I would tell 4-year-old me that when my nursery school teacher, Mrs. Block, demonstrates how a mousetrap works and says, “Do not touch it,” do not touch it.

If nursery school me was a disobedient child, kindergarten me was a drama queen. Five-year-old me bawled because I forgot my Halloween mask. “Knock it off!” I would tell myself.

I sobbed until Sister Bridget told me to knock it off, then had me get under the back of the long veil of her nun’s habit. During recess, we circled the playground, with me holding tight to her rosary bead belt. At one point during the costume parade I hollered to Sister Bridget, “What are we?”

After a moment’s thought she hollered back, “We are a camel.”

“What kind of camel?” I asked. “A Catholic camel,” she answered. All these years later, when I am asked “What are you?” in any context, I answer properly. But that 5-year-old who still lives in my head knows the truth. “I am a camel. A Catholic camel.”

That was in the carefree early ’50s. Later that decade, everyone worried about “the Bomb!” If “the Bomb!” happened to drop on a school day, we were instructed to dive under our desks when the air-raid siren sounded. Given the opportunity, I’d advise 10-year-old me to spend my duckand- cover time praying for peace instead of poking a finger into the wrought-iron scrollwork that decorated our desks. There little me goes, sticking my finger where it doesn’t belong, again.

After the all-clear, I would remain crouched under my desk until a janitor was summoned to dismantle the desk and set me free.

I would also tell my 10-year-old self not to stand on the doorsill of my friend’s house with the storm door shut behind me. When she wasn’t allowed outside to play, she angrily slammed the big door shut, sandwiching me in the narrow space between the two doors. I couldn’t turn my head or move my arms to open either door. It was a long time before her mom heard my muffled cries for help.

I’d tell teenage me not to lose sleep over getting sucked into quicksand and worry more about rubbing baby oil on my entire body and sitting in the sun holding aluminum foil under my chin to double the burn. I’d also assure teenage me that afternoons glued to “American Bandstand” weren’t wasted. At my advanced age, I can never remember my car’s plate number, but I’m able to sing every word of “Purple People Eater,” “It’s My Party” and “Wake Up, Little Susie.” When I got older, I wasn’t interested in taking advice from anyone. But I’d like to go back and high-five that 20-yearold for turning down a date with a Canadian hockey player to go horseback riding with a young Navy lieutenant. The hockey player would have taken me to live in Canada; the lieutenant took me to live on an island.

I remain fairly confident that the 20-year-old me made the right choice, except on those occasions when I wake up in the night scratching and wonder, “Is that itch from a tick?” But since ticks are a thing in Canada, too, I’m scoring that choice as a full-on win.

Twenty-one-year-old me had seldom been out of Cleveland or visited an island, so I’d have a few suggestions before going there. Especially because that girl who was me grew up believing there was one kind of seafood and it was called “fish sticks.”

I can still see me standing in my future-mother-in-law’s Shelter Island kitchen, wondering why the clam she handed me was raw. And even weirder, not breaded. I wouldn’t tell that unsuspecting girl to refuse the clam, not while surrounded by future family members who demonstrated the proper way to slurp em down. However, I would suggest standing closer to the sink, because what happened next was kind of messy.

The in-laws exchanged side-eye glances, but they still approved of me. Or pretended to.

Jumping from the summer of ’67 to a few weeks ago, right before I hit that milestone birthday, the only advice I’d offer the slightly younger me are the words from a favorite birthday card.

They said: “Congratulations! You’re at the best age ever!”

“Not dead.”

Joanne Sherman is a Shelter Island resident and longtime contributor to Times Review Media Group.