It was long. It was eye opening. It was a mini-vacation.  Going on a trip to Indianapolis, Indiana, brought back memories that I didn’t even know I had.  After living in Indianapolis for the first three years of my life, my family and I moved to Defiance, Ohio.  I didn’t think I had many memories from when I was that young, but this trip proved me wrong, extremely wrong.

My family and I were on the way to the hotel we would be staying in when I spotted a white sign with a symbol I recognized:  a face made up of different shapes of black, red, yellow, and gray. Curious about what it resembled, I asked my father, “What is that symbol on the sign?”

He explained, “It is the mascot of their baseball team, the Indians, and we used to go to their games all the time.” Hearing him say that, I recalled owning a fuzzy, warm blanket with that exact symbol on it.  After that, I knew this trip would be filled with moments like these.

The next day, we went to an Indian museum with different artifacts and a place where kids and families could pan for fake gold and gems in cold water.  My dad acted like a miner that just hit gold because he always talked about wanting to actually pan for real gold when he retired.  It honestly wasn’t interesting to me, but something seemed familiar about the desk when I first wandered in.  After asking my mother about it, she told me, “Your father and I used to take you and your sister here all of the time.  Children under a certain age used to be able to get in for free, and when you were little, you seemed to enjoy it.”  I then looked up, and for some reason, an image flashed back to when I was little.  A tiny version of myself sat on my father’s shoulders; I looked up to the ceiling, taking in the sight of the aged rafters.  Feeling a tap on my shoulder, I flashed back to reality, and we ventured on.

On the way home, we went to the Circle Center Mall and took a break from shopping to eat at a restaurant called Johnny Rockets.  Sitting on one of the red, leathery clouds, I ordered an Oreo milkshake, and when they brought it to our table, the sparkling glass looked oddly familiar.  It was in an old-fashioned glass, setting on a shiny, metal stand.  Tasting the cold, cream-colored milkshake, it too tasted familiar.  My mother and father were asked me, “Do you remember anything about this restaurant?”

I answered, “The only thing I recognize is the shaken sugary shake,” and they laughed at me louder than a crowd after a comedian tells a good joke.  They also explained to me that the waitresses used to sing randomly, but none of them did while we were there. 

I’ve heard people talk about and read articles and books about people gathering memories from their childhood, but I never imagined that I would have that same experience.  I was glad that I had my family with me to experience a pretty big part of our past together.  If I had never gone on this trip, I may have never resurfaced these early childhood memories, like pulling up lost treasure from under the sea.  This trip intrigued me more than any other, and the regained childhood memories made it the best trip I’d ever gone on.