I’ve noticed that my answers to the Friday Five are rather lopsided; I typically write short answers to four of the questions, but ramble on at great length in response to the other one. This week’s answers are no different.
1. Do you live in a house, an apartment or a condo? House. (Answers don’t get much shorter than that, folks.)
2. Do you rent or own? After being renters for many years, Marie and I finally bought a house four years ago.
3. Does anyone else live with you? Marie and our two children.
4. How many times have you moved in your life? I would have to ask my parents to be sure about the moves I experienced before the age of five. I was born in Thibodaux, Louisiana, but I know that we moved to Texas before my sister was born. I think we lived in at least two places in Texas (my parents have mentioned Bryan and College Station), and I suppose it’s possible we lived in more than one place in Louisiana prior to that.
My coherent memories begin after we moved back to Louisiana, this time to the town of Monroe in the northern part of the state. At first we lived in a rental house on College Avenue, but that was only for a year or two while our new house was being built on Lionel Street. We lived there for about five years before moving to Rock Hill, South Carolina, where my parents bought the house on Guilford Road in which they are still living today.
In college, I changed dorm rooms several time, but I don’t count those transitions as moves because no furniture or other big stuff was involved, just my clothes and books. So the first real move after that was when Marie and I got married and moved into our first home in Carolina Gardens, one of the Family Housing sites for students at the University of South Carolina. We lived there for two years and then moved off campus to a smaller place at Westbridge Apartments, across the river in West Columbia. No sooner did we move into a smaller place than Marie got pregnant, so we moved again a year later to a larger apartment at a complex called Forestbrook (even farther west, in Springdale). It was from there that we moved to North Carolina a year later.
In North Carolina, we actually lived in Raleigh for a year, renting an apartment just inside the Beltline at Sumter Square on Jones Franklin Road. After that we rented a house on Glen Bonnie Lane in Cary, but the owner sold it after one year, forcing us to move. We found another rental house on Wyatt’s Pond Lane and ended up living there for nine years, until finally buying our current house in Holly Springs.
I believe that adds up to twelve moves for me. (I suppose I could have made this my shortest answer answer ever by just writing “12” and skipping all the details, but what fun is that?)
5. What are your plans for this weekend? At the moment, I have none.