Here Kid, Play With This

Since I was hyperactive when I was little, my mother thought of ways to simmer me down. She taught me how to play chess when I was in third grade. We played Crazy 8′s, Yahtzee, 500 Rummy, and Gin (for nickels). Yes, she tried to get me to be able to stay on task. So, I thought. Hell, she just liked to play games.

I was pretty good at Chinese Checkers at a very early age.  I was able to concentrate for long periods of time with this game. Isn’t wasn’t until my 30′s, that my mom told me something that just pissed me off. We were playing a game of Yahtzee while my two children took a nap. She plucked this comment right out of the sky. There wasn’t even a good segway.

“You know that little green pill you had to take every day for your car sickness?” (I had extreme motion sickness) I nodded. It was such a tiny green thing. It really helped ride the bus without puking every afternoon on the way home.

“Well….” and she sort of snort chuckled, “it was really a mild tranquilizer.” She continued rolling her dice.

I just stared at her.

“Well, you couldn’t concentrate on anything. You were always moving from one thing to another and asking a million questions.”

I just stared at her.

“At church I gave you a sliding puzzle and you worked on it through the whole church service, so that’s why you had so many of those. But, at school you just couldn’t concentrate, so we gave you a mild tranquilizer.”

I wanted to wring her neck. She gave me a mild tranquilizer because I jumped from one thing to another? What a loon ! And then I thought, “I wonder if I have any of those sliding puzzles. Those were cool and I did have a lot of them.”

Ok, I guess things never change. After my mom left, I hunted for those sliding puzzles. I don’t know why. I just felt the need to look at them. And I hate it when I can’t find anything. For those of you who aren’t familiar with sliding puzzles, here is an example:

photo by ebay seller

They are like a Rubic’s Cube ala slide. The photo is all screwed up, and it is up to you to slide the little tile squares left and right or up and down until the picture is complete. Some were pretty easy. Some just pissed me off. I wish I had the religious one that I worked on for weeks.

The sliding puzzle has been around since 1880. It’s introduction created a puzzle craze during that time period. The fifteen block was the oldest type of sliding puzzle.

 Like the picture slider above, this popular slider had fifteen tile blocks.

Ha!!! Found it. This is the one I played with for hours at a time. I thought that it had some religious picture in the middle, but I guess I thought that because I played with it in church. This one just made me smile.

You have no idea. I am going to have to hunt this down on ebay or at an antique shop. This just brought back so many memories.

 Having fun now.

 I just found my next collection.

I could see why I would sit for hours when I was little, working on these. It  did keep me from making my mind jump from one thought to another.

Wait a minute………………

My mom gave me a tranquilizer?

Human Jewelry Tree

I have enough moles on my body that you could consider me a chocolate chip cookie. And I have no one to blame but myself. Well, sure, I abused my body by lying out in the sun for years. But, that is not why I have moles. I have moles because of Betty Edwards.

Betty Edwards and her husband used to come visit my mom and dad all of the time. They would sit in the family room for hours. I sat with them for only one reason: she had the largest moles that I had ever seen. I was fascinated with her face. I mean, I would stare at her the whole time. I was little, mind you, so she probably thought I just really liked her. But, it was those moles. They were all over her face and neck. They were huge. I remember thinking that you could hang jewelry on them.

I didn’t know what they were called at the time, but she had skinny moles that stuck straight out. They covered her neck. I couldn’t stand it anymore. After staring at her for an abnormal amount of time, I had to ask her some questions. All at the same time.

“Does that big mole by your eye hurt?………”Why doesn’t it fall off?”………………”Did you have them when you were a baby?”…………..”Why don’t you cut them off?”……………………..”I hope I never look like that.”

That’s about the time I got sent to my room. I didn’t mean anything. I could hear my mom apologizing for my behavior.

“I am so sorry, Betty. I don’t know about that child sometimes. She…..” and her words became fainter as I made my way down the hall to my room. My dog, Susie, was lying on my bed. She somehow knew that I would be sent there. I sat on the edge of my bed, crying. I felt terrible. I didn’t mean that Betty Edwards was ugly. I meant that Betty Edwards had ugly moles. There’s a difference.

So, fast forward many years. Betty Edwards is long gone and the gods have sent me her moles.  I am sure of it. They say that What goes around comes around.  I still don’t think I was making fun of her. But, I felt like I was being punished and I now have her moles. Now, I don’t have the big, monsterous ones that littered her face. I have the damn skin tags. You know, the long and skinny ones. They wrap around my neck. I fondled my neck and just counted fifteen skin tags…around my neck. They are small, but they are there, and they piss me off.

When I was in college, I had a huge mole on the back of my neck. If I wore a necklace, and if it got hung up on my skin tag, it would  make my necklace shorter. I was like a jewelry tree. My boyfriend (then husband, then ex-husband) took a magnifying glass and took a good look at it one time. He said it was gross. Upon closer inspection, he commented that it looked like an apartment building complex. What???

When I had my son, he would crawl up in my lap and ask me a multitude of questions. I have no idea where it got that from.

“Mommy, what’s that?”  He pointed to the large (not as large as Betty Edward’s, mind you) mole on my neck.  See, what goes around, comes around.

“It’s a mole, sweetie. They grow on your body when you make fun of other people who have moles.”

Ok, I didn’t really say that. But, I mean, karma is a bitch.

So, I promptly made an appointment and had that mole taken off. I would go about every 2 years to get moles taken off my body. My present dermatologist assures me they are all non-cancerous.

I once got fed up with a skin tag under my arm and shaved it off with a razor. That hurt like hell. I also found a chin hair a few weeks ago and lost my mind.

I guess things grow on your body as you age.

Betty Edwards must have been 90, I’m thinking.

Ok, that was not nice.

I’m going to send myself to my room now.