Memoir Vocabulary List 1

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On the drive, I tried to calm myself with memories of

park activities: the rainbow potato-sack slide or the Viking ship.

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The train threaded into the station. We climbed out, laughing dizzily, and I felt something

to love: I had survived the monster, and all I wanted was to go back and be tossed around again.

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And every summer I was spared the horror of the world’s longest wooden roller coaster by being too short to clear Scooby-Doo’s outstretched paw in the park’s

measuring system of emotional and physical maturity.

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I remember the snacks Mom told me she ate when she was a kid and how I tried to imagine her at my age. I wanted to like all the things she did, to

her completely.

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In South Africa back then, it wasn't common to find a white person or a colored person who spoke African languages; during apartheid white people were always taught that those languages were beneath them. So the fact that I did speak African languages immediately

me to the black kids.

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Last, there’s my personal favorite: Korean-Chinese

, which serves tangsuyuk — a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork — seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and jajangmyeon.

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Even before I saw the roller coaster, its infamy was scored in my mind by way of the Beast’s

logo: two manacled claws straddling a railroad track that disappeared into a fiery hellhole.

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But by the summer of 1984, my body had failed my

survival instincts by growing beyond the 48-inch ride requirement.

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There will usually be a

-French bakery with weak coffee, bubble tea, and an array of glowing pastries that always look much better than they taste.

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Even before I saw the roller coaster, its

was scored in my mind by way of the Beast’s ubiquitous logo: two manacled claws straddling a railroad track that disappeared into a fiery hellhole.