All twelve tokens from the U.S. Deluxe Edition Monopoly. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I have played Monopoly in the past, I have always reached for the iron as my token. I know for a fact I have never played with another token. I never came across another friend who just had to have the iron too, so I guess that was good because I wouldn’t have played. I guess when you find a right fit you just have to go with that one each time. And the iron and I made our way around to pass Go many, many times. So, imagine the horror when I heard today that Hasbro, the maker of Monopoly, is going to send one of the little steel tokens to jail……and they can’t even pass Go first.
What a great marketing ploy. Hasbro has set up a Facebook page and is letting people vote for which token gets to stay and which one will replace it. I went to the site to see how this was going to unfold. The choices to vote for are the car, thimble, shoe, dog, ship, hat, iron, and wheelbarrow. I wish we could vote for which one gets to go, but alas, we were only allowed to vote for which one we wanted to stay.
It’s funny, but I think baby boomers are going to feel the same way about this that I do. Oh, sure, in the whole scheme of things, I really don’t give a rat’s ass about the impending doom of one of the Monopoly tokens, but yet again, off I went to vote to save my beloved iron.
The options to replace the permanently jailed token are a helicopter, a diamond ring, a cat, a robot, or a guitar. I immediately voted for the diamond ring. It makes sense and goes with the game. What the hell does a robot or a guitar have to do with Monopoly? Ok, I guess an iron doesn’t make much sense either, but you know, whatever.
So, baby boomer friends of mine, what token did you use when you played Monopoly?
As I was watching the students at recess while I was on playground duty Friday, I took notice that none of the kids play actual games. There are swings and seesaws and sliding boards to keep their attention, but if they aren’t on one of those, they are usually running amok. There is screaming and chasing without reason. I don’t hear the words monster, villian, or bad guy mentioned at any time. They would never use the word villian anyway. They are just amok runners.
So, I stood there, trying to think back to when I was little. Did we act goofy like that? I mean, I am sure we did, but at least we were organized with a goal in mind kind -of- goofy. And that goal was to stay away from someone who had cooties or run faster than a fox or wolf who may be chasing us. And that made me think of playing Colored Eggs.
Colored Eggs was a childhood game that we brought to the playground. Well, I tried to bring it to the playground at the Sister Mary Mary Immaculate Academy. I played it at home with all the neighbor kids, and since we really didn’t have much in the way of a playground at this nun academy other than gravel beneath of swings and a leaning sliding board, our recess was a wash. So, I thought that I would mention Colored Eggs to the other kids standing around because they didn’t want to go down the slide ten times in a row because there wasn’t anything else to do.
The object of Colored Eggs was to be quicker than the fox. There was going to be a lot of chasing with this game. First, the kids had to decide who wanted to be the fox first. If no one spoke up, I volunteered, because, well, because I had my reasons. Then we all had to quietly pick a color. We sat in a circle on the grass when we played this game at home, but since the nuns had spread gravel under our feet so it would cushion our fall, gravel was not fun to sit on with your legs crossed.Plus we had to wear stupid uniforms. My skirt went down to my knees, so I could completely hide my legs under it while sitting down if I wanted to. And I wanted to. Back then we called it sitting Indian style. Nowadays I hear the kindergarten aide telling the kids to sit Criss cross apple sauce. What? See, this is one reason I don’t teach the little ones. Who would have thought that the way you sat down would be considered politically incorrect.
So, anyway, after everyone chooses a color and sits down, the fox stands to the back or side and calls out a color. The person that silently has that color needs to stand up, run quickly around the circle and get back in his or her spot before the fox can tag them on the back. We sat in a wide circle. For some reason I always always called yellow. I called yellow because I knew that every time we played Adele Stillman would pick yellow. She never changed her color. I would position myself close to her so that when I called yellow, I would be on top of her. Was that cheating? No, I was a fox, dammit, and foxes are crafty. I was being crafty.
I yelled, Yellow, and Adele took off. Too bad I knew her past behavior and I was on that chick faster than you can say creamed chicken on biscuit. She was now the fox and I had to quietly pick a color. Sometimes kids picked the same color and it was easy for the fox to pick off someone. When it was my turn to sit on the fun gravel, I had to move those ugly gray rocks around and position myself to where there wasn’t a piece of gravel biting me somewhere, like my butt. Once I was comfortable, I wasn’t going to get up and run around. I was done. So, I picked an odd color.
My mom unknowingly helped me master this art of not playing the game.
“Mom, what are some other colors beside yellow, green, blue, red, and white?”
I thought gold or silver would be good enough but the next time we played the damn fox called out silver. I had to jump up and wrinkle my nest of smooth gravel with my shoes as I took off to avoid the fox. And trust me, it is not fun to run from the fox around the circle and then plop yourself down once you made it around safely. It’s a hard landing and I had little sharp gravel points all over my legs and butt. Stupid gravel spreading nuns.
“Can you think of other colors?” Surely my mom didn’t think I was asking because I wanted to broaden my color horizon.
My mom took me downstairs where she kept all of her thread for sewing. It was like a goddamn rainbow. She read the colors off the thread for a good five minutes. “……..and there’s beige, maroon, turquoise, violet, burgundy, lime, pink, lavender, and umber.” I never understood why she had so many colors. I don’t remember her ever making me a top that had lime in it. She came home with a spool of thread every single time we went to Grants Department Store. She was a thread hoarder I am sure.
Anyway, I had an arsenal of color names that were just not used when playing Colored Eggs. After volunteering to be the fox first, I could make my bed and lie on it, never to get marked up by gravel again. Stupid nuns.
I knew that there would be no way anyone would ever call, “Umber!” That sort of made me chuckle. Of course, I had no idea what the hell umber was, but my mom was the one who told me it was brown like, so the rules did not state to use common colors. I was a very smart second grader I thought. But it was all in the name of not getting sharp gravel biting me on the butt.
I also realized that you could lie. I mean, who the hell knows what color you picked? You didn’t have to write it down. I learned that after some smartie said my color, “violet” and I just really didn’t want to run, you know, because of my nest. So, when Winston demanded to know my color, I would say one that hadn’t been called yet. I realized that pretty soon they were all going to be mad at me, so I would oblige once in a while to take sharp gravel on my ass for the team.
All in all, playing Colored Eggs was fun. I taught my own children strange colors like magenta, and ecru, but realized that they had grass to play on. Being a yellow or a red was not so bad…..if you could out run the fox.
It’s really easy to get me addicted to new things. After my divorce, my friends talked me into coming over to Facebook….to farm. I did. Farmville kept me up late at night. Well, someone had to harvest the damn wheat crop. And then Pinterest reeled me in. I have over one hundred boards. Why the hell would I need one hundred boards? Yes, I’m easily addicted. I’m just glad I never started smoking.
Several months ago I started playing Angry Birds. I mean, what the hell is wrong with me? I play one game a day and am in a weekly tournament. And this on top of writing two books this summer. As I look around my living room, I notice that it is neat as a pin. Well, it should be since I have been on this damn computer most of the time. And now SongPop has invaded my life. But, I’m not too happy about this one.
SongPop is my newest obsession. A friend invited me just last week to play them in this fun Facebook game. I didn’t understand how to play at first, so I was already screwed for the week. A friend sends an invitation to listen to a few tunes and then you can pick the answer from four choices. No one told me there was a time limit. Right now I am playing about nine people. And I’m ready to throw in the towel and I will tell you why.
This game is a great test of reaction times. Most of the people I play are about 20 years younger than me and I can’t press the button fast enough. I know a lot of the answers, but it’s like I mosey on over to the button with my mouse. What the hell? This is a sure way to let me know that I am getting old. It’s actually pissing me off, because I am actually really trying and I just can’t ring in fast enough. I’d suck if I were on Jeopardy.
A Facebook friend wrote that she was done with SongPop due to the fact that she feels that she has a neuropathy problem. She is a sarcastic lass like me, and I hope she doesn’t really think that she has a problem. I’m just pissed off that age has robbed us of our rapid fire response finger. We are getting old and SongPop has just slapped us across the face. We can’t play with the big dogs anymore. Well, I guess I should only speak for myself. I can’t play with the big dogs anymore.
But, that’s not all. I don’t know music like I used to. I still know all the words to Aqualung and Hotel California. I know my Disco and Classic Rock. I don’t know a damn thing about Modern Rap or Latin Radio. My daughter was home this week and she sat on the couch playing SongPop and would send me songs in the Latin Music genre. Thanks, sweetie.
The fastest I have been able to buzz in on a song is Ice Ice Baby. How sad is that?
In the end, I guess the older I get, the worse my response time will be. Pretty soon someone will take my car keys away from me for fear that I will hesitate and then pull in front of a truck or something.
But, then again, I always sucked at Hungry Hungry Hippo. Maybe it’s just me.
I must live under a rock. I have no idea what the hell is going on most days. And then I get laughed at for being such a dingbat. I mean, I’m fifty-five. Is that old? I don’t feel old. Well, I do moan when I bend over to pick things up. Ok, I’m old.
But, I always thought that I was with the times. My mother-in-law used the word “dungarees” for jeans until the day she died. My mom favored, “pocketbook.” I don’t think she ever used the word, “purse.” I thought I understood contemporary slang. Nope. Not at all.
It all started with me overhearing one of my kid’s friends saying something about watching MTV Cribs.
MTV Cribs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I think this was like when it first came out circa 2000. Well, hell, I thought they were talking about singers who had children. Seriously. I really did.
“I didn’t know that Moby had children?” I thought I was really with it because I knew who Moby was. I got laughed at. Then it was explained to me that cribs=homes.
“That’s stupid.”
“You’re stupid.” My daughter laughed at me. Well, I guess I was. It didn’t get any better. I sure as hell had no idea that “hooking up” meant having sex with someone. How casual people are speaking nowadays. I heard this on tv one night:
“So, did you guys hook up last night?” Back in MY day that would have meant “So, did you guys meet somewhere last night and then go to the movies or something?” And yet, my daughter is the one who scoffs at me because I still use the phrase, “Are they going together?” Well, hell, back in the 70′s that meant going steady. What the hell is wrong with that?
So, now I am getting really made fun of at the school where I teach because I didn’t understand “That’s what he said.” WTF are you talking about? Evidently, I often say things that my perverted co-workers laugh at and then insert that comment. I didn’t know why. And that made them laugh harder. I mean, why say that after I talk about the snow fall from the night before. “I only got an inch or two last night.”……that’s what she said. It took me a while.
My biggest misunderstanding came from the History Channel show, American Pickers. Just a few months ago, after talking about heading out to go antiquing, someone asked me if I ever watched American Pickers. I thought that was a pretty random comment, considering we were talking about antiques.
“No, to be honest, I am not a real big fan of Country music.”
Yeah, so they laughed. Hell, I didn’t know it was about guys hunting around barns and whatnot for antiques and collectibles. I thought it was about people playing fiddles and banjos. Seriously.
So, it was no surprise that I didn’t understand my two friends when we were leaving dinner last night and they were laughing and making motions with their arms like a “raise the roof” motion. I drove up to them and rolled down the window.
“Padiddle!” They both yelled and then laughed. “You’re headlight is out, Vickie.” Of course, it doesn’t pay hanging out with girls in their late twenties when I am in my mid-fifties. I realized I have no idea what the hell is going on. So, I just laughed.
So, when they read this blog post, they will laugh again because I am just so clueless about Padiddle. I had to look it up on Wikipedia:
“Padiddle is a night-time travel game with the objective of earning points by spotting vehicles with a burnt-out headlight. You must say “Padiddle” and hit the ceiling of the car as fast as you can, while driving.”
So, Sheena and Erin were laughing because it is a game that is supposed to be played in the car while traveling. I thought they were laughing at me because I just bought this car and it already had its headlight burned out. I guess that makes me feel better…….. No, don’t feel better. I’m still a dingbat.
I don’t remember my kids ever playing “Padiddle.” I sure as hell didn’t teach them. And if they played it and I don’t remember them playing the car game, then I have bigger problems than not knowing what things mean.
I am too old for this shit. Why can’t we just keep playing Slug Bug?
I couldn’t leave things alone when I was little. I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t quit thinking and asking questions. So, yeah, ok, maybe I was a bit hyper. I guess the Cricket moniker was appropriate. I am so not like that anymore. I would be a female Richard Simmons (???) if I had continued on with my hyperness. And yes, “hyperness” is a word because I just made it up.
During the warm to hot summer months, the Mendenhall kids played outside about 98% of the time. It didn’t lightning and thunder in Woodland Estates because my mom forbade it. She also had power over the ice cream truck that drove into our neighborhood every afternoon during our nap time. The nerve. Mom somehow stopped that too. He came later, after we were refreshed after our nap or pretend nap. She pushed us out the door, back outside, money in hand for an ice cream cone.
So, I had plenty of time to take in the sights and the sounds of every neighbor and every child on a three block radius. We lived on the corner of Crystal Lane. My bestest friend, Ramaine, lived on Crystal also, at the end of the street. LeeAnn lived next door to Ramaine. So, since I walked down the street all of the time, I knew everything about the neighbors. One lady scrubbed the street in front of her house almost every day. We called her Bungy. Maybe that was her name. I don’t think a woman would be called Bungy, but who am I to judge. I lived in a family with crazy names, such as Orpha, Elwood, Wilma, and Zella. Bungy was normal.
LeeAnn’s brother, Ralph, was in a league all by himself. Can’t explain him, but I did get a chuckle with the things he did on a daily basis. One day, for no particular reason, he put rocks in everyone’s mailbox. And then put up the flag. That was brilliant.
Fernwood Drive was a long road that ran right the other side of my house. There was an empty lot across the street that my dad once had a big black barn on, but that was later torn down. I think we still owned that property and the creek and woods that ran down the street across from the houses on Crystal Lane, so the world was our playground. And believe me, we went on adventures daily.
We decided to make a cabin in the woods one summer. Oh, it wasn’t really built with wood. Girls don’t need a real live cabin. We just pulled weeds around the little locust trees and made “rooms.” The trees were the walls that separated the rooms. Girls have such a great imagination. So, we would then give ourselves new names, like Mabel and Ethel, and begin living in our cabin. Until some little shit neighbors came upon us.
I don’t even know who these little rugrats were. They had to be visiting grandparents who wouldn’t play with them or something. OR, they were not from the two block radius. Which would be unacceptable. And these strangers wanted to play with us. It was like the story, The Little Red Hen, all over again.
Who will help me gather the wheat? Not I, said the pig. Not I, said the duck….etc. etc.
Who will help me play in the cabin? Oh, we will, said the little urchins from outside the neighborhood perimeter.
Yeah, I may have only been about eight or nine, but I knew a sham when I saw one. They waited until all of the work was done, and then strolled on in to play. Not going to happen.
Now, you have to understand that in order to build a cabin, you needed to cut stuff and dig. So, most of my mom’s butter knives and spoons were at the cabin. I did try to remember to sneak them back into the house right before dinner, but my mom somehow noticed the utensils in the sink. And believe me, there were always dishes and stuff in the sink to be washed.
“Vickie, why is there dirt on these spoons?” Damn. I only had half of a brain.
“I dropped them on the floor.”
“Vickie, my floors are not dirty. You took my good silverware outside to dig with again, didn’t you? I know you did it, so don’t lie.”
I don’t know why I was always the one that got in trouble.
But, let’s get back to the strangers. We were getting ready to play restaurant when they came upon us.
“Can we play?” they asked. We all looked at them. And then we looked at each other. It’s like they read my mind.
“Sure!” we all exclaimed.
I explained to them that they would be the customers. They sat on tree roots that came out of the ground and gave a great seating area in the cabin. I can’t remember who was going to be the waitress this particular day, so I will just say it was my sister, Cheryl. Ramaine, LeeAnn and I would be the cooks. Yes. The cooks.
Here, eat this tent caterpillar.
Since I can’t keep my hands off of anything, I was always smooshing or taking apart plants and weeds when I was playing outside. I’m still pissed that I can not whistle through a blade of grass. Damn thing gave me a paper cut on my lip one time, however. Never did that again. I knew where the berries were and wild pears, if there is such a thing. And I knew where the pepper was.
But, the dandelions were my favorite. Dandelions morphed, and I liked that about these flowery weeds.
Now, there are parts of a dandelion that can be picked apart and they look like great pretend food. So, a dandelion would be great for our cabin in the woods restaurant. Of course, how would we know that most of the dandelion can be eaten nowadays.
Ok, so, the menu was limited at our restaurant. We had creek water, pears with pepper sprinkled on top, dandelion and several types of berries and mushrooms. Thank God we really didn’t feed them the mushrooms as I would probably be behind bars today. Hell, we didn’t know some mushrooms were poisonous.
Everyone should have this book if you plan to have a restaurant in the woods.
So, in the end, the kids ordered dandelions and pears with pepper sprinkled lightly on them. And this is the part I really remember, because Ramaine and I were laughing so hard when we watched that one little girl bite into a wild pear with pepper. Now, you have to understand that in the past we ate everything we played with. I tried a wild pear. I tasted the white milky crap that came out of a dandelion, and although I cursed the briar bushes as they raked the shit out of my legs as we macheted our way through them, I tasted the berries too. And we still lived.
So, what the hell is the problem with having a kid eat a wild pear with some dirt sprinkled on it?
I mean pepper.
I never got in trouble for that one because I told the kids my name was Ethel. And I was Ethel when we were in the cabin. Or Mabel. Can’t remember. They didn’t ask where we lived because we told them we just moved into the cabin.
The moral of the story is to never leave your two block radius unless you are prepared to eat dandelions and pears with pepper lightly sprinkled on top.
It’s just our way to welcome you to the neighborhood.
Once upon a time a family drove to a little amusement park in their home state and joined all of the other families and people wanting a day of smiles and laughter. They rode rides and ate hot dogs and cotton candy. What a great memory in the making. Years went by. Families grew and found something else to do. Bigger and better amusement parks opened. Families now saved their money to take the once in a lifetime trip to Disney, Six Flags, or Sea World.
Soon, most of the little amusement parks had to close their doors for various reasons. Some of these lesser known parks had thrilled people for more than a century. Some mom and pop operations were sitting on valuable pieces of real estate. An offer far more than the small profit made yearly with admission tickets made their operations come to a close. For others, a lack of visitors forced some small amusement parks to sadly shut their gates and turn off the lights. And, sadly, the laughter.
photo via wikipedia
I can think of two parks that were close to where I live that are no longer in operation. Both closed to make way for a new road. One was Rock Springs Park in Chester, West Virginia. The other one was a more contemporary park called White Swan. White Swan closed to make way for the new road to the enlarged Pittsburgh Airport. Defunct.
1. Rock Springs Park- Chester, West Virginia. This park opened in 1897 and closed after its final owner died in 1970. It sat vacant for several years until the state of West Virginia bought the property for its re-routing of a main road. My grandmother used to talk about this park and we visited it often when I was quite young. And now it is just a memory. It was a beautiful park.
2. White Swan Park-Near the Pittsburgh airport- Operated between 1955-1989. It was a small roadside kiddie amusement park that had a roller coaster that jerked at each turn. I do remember that.
But, although dismantling and tearing down buildings and erasing its past is sad, the abandoned and neglected amusement parks are creepy and dismal. Vines and trees are reclaiming the space once used to bring joy to all those who entered its gates. Now, rust and rotten wood are all that is visable. The echoes of laughter are gone. The only thing that remains is an eery, ominous sight, creepy really. And quite sad.
Chippewa Lake Amusement Park-Ohio
Rocky Point-Rhode Island
There are many amusement parks that have been left to decay with time. Bulldozers have left these grounds alone for one reason or another. And none of them compare to the Six Flags Amusement Park in New Orleans.
We all witnessed the horror of what hurricane Katrina did to the Gulf area. It wasn’t until some time later that I saw pictures of Six Flags. I thought maybe, just maybe, as the water receded, the park would be able to re-open. I was wrong. I have read several trip reports from people who have sneaked inside the locked gates to take photos of its untimely demise. How sad.
Flooded after Katrina
photos via lovethesepics.com
2011
Six Flags New Orleans is currently owned by the city of New Orleans. Plans were announced this past March to build an outlet mall in its place.
Another ill-fated amusement park was Heritage USA. You remember that cry-baby evangelist Jim Bakker and his mascara infused wife, Tammy, right? Well, Jim opened a water park and theme park where you would be closer to God and spend money on rides. Problem was, old Jim sold more partnerships than there were rooms in one of the towers. Oh, he had other problems as well. And Heritage USA closed.
Another abandoned amusement park is located in Wichita, Kansas. Joyland closed and was abandoned in 2006. It would be sad to have to drive by this every day.
In the end, I would say it is better to bulldoze a closed amusement park to make way for a road or another commercial venture than watching it decay year after year. To watch the grass grow high, and graffiti overtake a once brightly painted building would be painful, especially if youth was spent at these parks.
The thrill is gone.
The eery echoes of laughter remain, however, and memories do linger on. So, the next time you visit your favorite amusement park, make sure you take a lot of pictures of your family enjoying themselves. Because, you just never know. You may arrive one summer to find this-
I bought a magazine the other day. As I turned each page, I came across a page that had one of those perfume inserts. I really don’t like when they do this. It’s like seeing the proverbial “wet paint” sign. You know you are going to open it up and smell whatever the hell smell they want to put in there. I could be smelling dog poop for all I know. Why are we so easy? Well, I realize, of course, that the perfume people want to give us a little tease so that we will run right out and buy their product, but I didn’t ask for smelly stuff inside my magazine. But, such is life! Estee Lauder wanted me to take a whiff of Beautiful.
It made me think of freebies.
When I was little, I really only ate Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes. And that was fine, because Kelloggs loved putting stuff in the cereal box as an added incentive to buy their cereal. Kellogg was like the P.T. Barnum of cereals.
There’s something inside. Buy me and see!
Product inserts were really big when I was little during the late 1950′s and 1960′s. People in the industry call the little enticements, ”premiums.”
Kelloggs was the first to introduce prizes in box’s of cereal. Betty Crocker put coupons in bags of flour as far back as 1929. So, this has been going on for a very long time.
Here are a few of the companies that enticed us with their freebies:
1. Bazooka Gum- You may not think of it this way, but gum is gum, and they didn’t have to give us a comic to read along with the gum. But, every time we opened a piece of Bazooka chewing gum, there is was, waiting for us. I didn’t know that Bazooka gum was owned by Topps. They had a thing about including things with things. I always wondered why the kid was wearing a patch. It bothered me. Did someone stick him in the eye with a stick? Bazooka Joe had some buddies in his comic strip. The one I remember the most was Mort, the skinny friend who always wore a red turtleneck pulled up over his mouth. See? I paid attention to the comics as I popped the gum in my mouth.
2. Cracker Jacks- I was never a fan of the carameled popcorn. It just didn’t taste good to me. So, I would buy a box just for the prize inside and sit and peel the wrapper off.
Cracker Jacks was first sold at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. At first, it was a mixture of popcorn, peanuts, and molassses, and was called “Candied Popcorn and Peanuts.” It was named Cracker Jacks after an employee remarked after biting into it, “That’s cracker jack!” Back then, that meant, “awesome.” The remarkable thing about Cracker Jacks is how a songwriter but it in the song, “Take me Out to the Ballpark.”……
Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks
I don’t care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root, for the home team
If they don’t win it’s a shame
For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out
at the old ball game.
Talk about free publicity.
3. Topps- I bet my brother is not happy nowadays that he used his Roberto Clemente baseball card in the spokes of his bicycle. But, that’s not all that came with baseball cards. Topps wanted you to have a piece of gum. It was wider that the usual gum, which made it pretty darn cool. But, which came first? From what I have read, Topps wanted you to taste their gum. Why not put a piece with the baseball card to entice you to their other product. Pretty smart marketing.
Ok, yeah, sure, mine gum usually looked like this when I opened up the pack, but I still chewed it.
Here are some of the other ”premiums” that I was able to remember:
4. Coke- circa 1991-They inserted Olympic cards into their 12 pack of cans. I should still have all of these somewhere. I posted the one of Mary Lou Retton because she is from Fairmont and is living here now with her family.
There are so many companies that gave away toys and trinkets inside their packaging. Cereals seemed to be the main culprit. I remember fighting with my brother and sister over some of them. I’d let my brother have all of the “boy” stuff, so I usually only had to fight my sister most of the time. And that just meant getting up earlier to open the new box of cereal.
Which got me sent to my room once in a blue moon for having too many boxes of cereal opened at the same time. I only ate Rice Krispies and Corn Flakes. So, having more than one of those opened was not good.
I do remember cutting things off of the back of the box. Sometimes it was a mask. Other times it was a coloring page. But, it made breakfast educational because afterall, we were reading the box. :ere are some other items found with their products to entice us to use or eat their product.
Circus train animals- animal crackers..wheels to make it look like a real circus train
Sugar Daddies-free wildlife card insert
Wonder Bread-Star Wars Card
Reese cup mallo card add them up and get something free..like a mallo cup
Butternut bread- Snoopy for President
Big one- McDonald’s Happy Meals- I could write a lot on just McDonald’s. Their Happy Meal was a way to get a toy in a box that also had neat stuff for the kids. You can’t purchase the toy separately. I still have a lot of the kids Happy Meal toys. Some are still in the plastic, so you know it’s going to be worth a lot of money one of these days.
Lucky charms-Harlem Globetrotter whistle
Trix-atomic submarine..What? a sub? Inside? I hated Trix. But a sub? In a box of cereal. MOM!!
You can get a Creeping monster inside if you buy this box of Honeycombs. I mean, who wouldn’t want one? Added bonus-It glows in the dark, people.
Or three “groovy” balloons. Balloons aren’t special unless they are groovy.
Yes, the late fifties and early sixties were a great time to be a kid. Cereal inserts were commonplace. Kids ate their cereal. Some ate their cereal as a snack before bed. Oh, my, the cereal companies were doing well. Even the cereals with the word “sugar” in the title did well. We had Sugar Smacks and one of my favorite, Sugar Pops. Life was good.
So, the next time you open a wrapper on a piece of Bazooka Joe gum, take a second to read the comic.
It is, after all, their way of thanking you for buying their product.
I got back last night from visiting my daughter in New York City. She moved there last August when she started grad school at NYU. Before helping her find an apartment twice last summer, I had never been to the big city. The last time I went up there, I had to leave her and her roommate to continue on, hunting for that elusive inexpensive apartment. So I had no seen it yet.
Some people think that getting from JFK airport into the city is a nightmare. I found an easy way. Last time I took the AirTrain into Penn Station. That’s not so bad, but just getting to the AirTrain was a mini pain. This past week I decided to take the bus. Doesn’t hurt to try.
I flew on Delta for the first time and really enjoyed it. I know every airline has a horror story, but I didn’t have one. The flight took an hour, which is much shorter than the almost eleven hour trip I took there by Amtrak. I love trains, but a one hour round trip flight for $175 is pretty good.
As soon as I got off my flight at JFK, I immediately found the Ground Transportation sign and went outside, where I knew there would be people in bright green jackets. You pay them $12.50 and just wait for the bus to Manhattan. That simple. The bus was very clean and comfortable and the ride only seemed about thirty five minutes to Grand Central Station on 42nd Street. Sure, you could take a taxi, but it would have been $45 for the same ride, only with more people. I would have an extra $32.50 and that sounded better for me.
On this route, I was able to see new things. I saw where the old world’s fair took place. I assumed that’s what it was. I saw a huge globe and a tall structure with two flying saucer-like disks on the top. I plan to google that in a bit. I also passed several cemeteries, which I plan to write a blog about. They were amazing.
As soon as you get off in front of Grand Central Station, there is a door that says, “Subway.” I was amazed at how easy this was. I went downstairs, bought a Metro ticket for $2.50, and hopped on the Local 6 train uptown to Alex’s apartment.
“Mom, take the local 6 uptown train. It will be a green 6 with a circle around it. “
How easy. I asked a guy standing on the platform just to confirm my selection. I did make one error on my way. I was supposed to call Alex before I got on the subway so she could walk and meet me at the subway where I was to get off. When I walked to the platform to tell her that her fantastic mom was on her way, I had no bars on my cell phone. Uh oh, my bad. I didn’t think about that. So, if you go to New York, you won’t have cell phone service while underground. Well, my AT&T didn’t.
Maybe I’m the only one, but I just love riding the subway. It’s a little grimy walking down the stairs to the subway, but I love it. It’s like an adventure for me. And I love to watch people as they enter the car. One woman was sleeping. Another one was coughing up a lung. Some of the men were wearing nice suits. I always go to the shoes to see if they match the expensive suits. They did. I was having so much fun.
I called my daughter after I climbed the steps leading from the subway.
“No…You don’t have to meet me. Let me try to find your apartment. It will be like an adventure.” I laughed.
I am all about trying to do things on my own. So, off I went to find her apartment. I had already “walked” on her street with google maps, which is a fantastic tool. Just take the little man over to the map, plop him down, and you can travel on the street, veering left and right. I google walk all the time, especially vacation areas. So, I sort of knew how to get to her apartment from the subway station, but this is still New York, and it is huge.
There is a lot of construction work going on near her apartment. They are putting in a new subway line. They start at exactly 7a.m. and end at exactly 4pm. Noisy jack hammer work and the walkways are diverted through a temporary maze. And from the sign posted, it looks like this will be going on until the end of 2013. Sucks for people who don’t wake up until 8am. Well, they won’t wake up that late anymore. It’s very noisy. The walk was nice.
Fruit stands, like this one, are all over the city.
So, I had to go down, take a right, take a left, and voila, I am standing right in front of her apartment building. I am good. I walked in and had to punch a button so she can unlock the door. I have never done this before. I have watched people do it on Seinfeld and other tv shows, but I have never ever buzzed. I was excited. I walked up the one flight of stairs and she was at her opened door, welcoming me with a big smile.
She lucked out. Her apartment was small, as most New York apartments are, but hers is not teeny tiny. It has two bedrooms, a living area and eating area combined. Her kitchen is small, but hell, it has a dishwasher, so life is good. The bathroom is a nice size for NYC also. Hardwood floors. I immediately liked it. And not bad for $800 a month. I did research before we started looking at apartments and thought that she would be paying around $1,200 for her share for an upper East side apartment. She did great.
I took the 6:30am flight as we had plans to go to the Bronx Zoo. It was cold though, and thoughts of walking from cold exhibit to cold exhibit did not sound appealing. Where the hell did the promise of warm weather go? So, I told her I wanted to see her neighborhood. So, we took a walk. We went to eat lunch at Ray’s pizza, which was next to her Rite Aid and laundromat. As a mom, I liked being able to now place where these things are.
“I’m heading to the laundromat.”
I now know where that is in relation to her apartment. I have places down dark secluded back alleys, so it is nice to know I have an active imagination.
We then walked all the way up to Fifth Avenue to see the Jackie Onassis Reservoir. She runs to Central Park and then jogs around the reservoir. It’s beautiful.
Jackie Onassis Reservoir
After taking pictures of this area of Central Park, we decided to push stuff over because that’s how we roll.
Ok, just kidding. I thought the leaning lightpost made a good photo opportunity.
After walking around, petting dogs that people were walking, we ventured into the Museum of the City of New York. I don’t know. I was a bit confused. I thought I would get to see the history of New York. I wanted to follow along from the time the Dutch started the place through prohibition to the tragedy of 9/11. Instead, there was a huge exhibition of the grid system of Manhattan. And it was set up in neighborhoods, not dates. I wanted to see the history of New York. A permanent exhibit. I thought it was a waste of $16.00. But, I like going to museums. Next time, I will try another.
For dinner, she talked me into going to a Thai restaurant down the street from her apartment. I immediately balked because I am picky. But, I thought I should be more open minded. She took me to an Indian restaurant and now I like Indian food. So, we went to the Andaman Thai Bistro on 1st Avenue in Yorkville. Oh, glorious food! The shrimp/chicken dumpling was to die for! Curry puffs don’t sound so good to this picky person, but they were delicious. If you are in upper East Side and looking for a good restaurant, check it out.
We were beat by the end of the night. We went to bed early and got up to go to the Bronx zoo. She made me breakfast and off we went. We took the BxM11 express bus from 99th Street. It goes directly to the zoo. A zoo bus. It was a comfortable ride for $5.50 a person. I haven’t been to a zoo in years. I usually ended up feeling sorry for the little animal in its cage, but things have changed over the years. I was looking forward to going to this zoo, as it is the largest metropolitan zoo in the world.
It didn’t disappoint. I will be writing a blog post just on the zoo, but I will just say for now that my new camera loves the zoo.
We were at the Bronx zoo all day. It is large and most of the animals are in their natural habitat. So, we walked a lot.
We got home and went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I wasn’t impressed, so I won’t mention where it was. We needed to be at her neighborhood bar for Trivia night. Oh, how I wish we had something like that in West Virginia. I would surely drink more. Her friends compete against other bar patrons, the winners receiving shots and drinks after the contest is over. I contributed, as I was pretty good with the “presidential hometown” category. I sucked at current events. And I knew that the Soprano’s won an emmy in 2008 for Best Drama. I didn’t even feel old or out of place and managed to sing “Hey Jude” at the top of my lungs with everyone in the bar at the end of the night. Fun times at Biddy’s Pub on 91st. It is considered an “Irish pub” because, well, it is owned by Irish people. It is itty bitty, only one room, but was packed for Trivia night. So, again, if you are looking for a pub in the upper east side, try either Biddy’s Pub or Off the Rails.
We were going to go to the “Top of the Rock” before my flight left, but my daughter found out at the last minute that she had a summer job interview, so I took off early to take pictures of Grand Central Station. I got on the bus, got on the plane, landed in Pittsburgh, and drove the 1 1/2 hours on an empty gas tank. Well, anything less than a quarter tank makes me hyperventilate. I made it back to Fairmont and went right to bed.
I am so excited that my daughter is living in New York City while attending grad school. Will she remain there after graduation? It is too early to tell. I think she would like to head elsewhere.
I can’t wait to go back after school is out in June.
You just have to love technology. But, then again, it did wipe out imaginative play as we know it. Childhood was so simple in the early sixties. We had no choice. My parents and their parents had even a simpler time. We didn’t have cell phones that interrupted our play with a text from your mother that simply read, “Dinner.” No, they had to stand out on the porch and yell for us. On the third yell, we would go home.
We had jump rope, a kick ball, and indoor board games. Can’t forget about pogo sticks. We weren’t indoors much. The neighborhood was filled with children playing, people hand washing their cars, and neighbors sitting outside on their porches in the hot summer evenings. Many didn’t have central air conditioning. We knew our neighbors. We also knew when Mr. Softie was coming around in his ice cream truck. We could hear the music. Because we were outside.
As the sixties moved closer to the seventies, it was still like that. We now had eight track stereos to occupy our time, but not much more. We would sit out on our front porches, but this time, waiting for boys to drive around and around the block, finally to stop and talk to all the neighborhood girls my age who hung out on my front porch. But, in and around 1975, that all changed. We started staying indoors more. Things were changing, for sure. And we can point our fingers to one new gadget.
Pong.
Yes, Pong. Not to be confused with Beer Pong. This was played without alcohol. Well, unless you really enjoyed drunk ping pong.
I know what you young people are thinking. Are you kidding me? But, yes, this was exciting stuff. I mean, we could turn on the tv and use this game console and play ping pong. There were no pictures or bombs going off or bullets flying. This was ping pong and nothing else. And we were thrilled.
Now, we did have pinballl machines. I was quite good at the one at The Pub, a local dive where we all congregated in college. My mom even bought a pin ball machine for our basement rec room. We were the coolest family on the block. But, Pong was different, because it was on tv.
In the end, Pong was fun, and it was just a matter of time before we were hearing names such as Sega and then Playstation.
One of the best games of my youth, Hopscotch, involved just rocks and a piece of chalk. The first time I ever played the game, I scoured the neighborhood for the best rock to use. Nobody had told me the first time that I played that it was important to have a flat rock. I showed up with a piece of gravel. Well, hell, I didn’t know. Most kids nowadays have it easy. A lot of playgrounds have the hopscotch board painted on the surface. Children use little bean bags or coins for the markers.
Well, when I was young (I’ve always wanted to say that), we didn’t use chalk half of the time. We used the edge of a sandstone rock to draw our pattern. We would then use a flat rock as a marker. To be honest, we never thought about using coins. It just never crossed our minds.We were tickled half to death if someone just happened to have a piece of chalk with them. Chalk was a luxury. I would have stolen a piece of chalk from school, but the nuns would have hammered my knuckles with a ruler and then let me know that chalk stealers always go to hell.
For those of you who have never played the game, Hopscotch is played on a flat surface, such as asphalt or a sidewalk. We used to play on my driveway. We had a great double driveway. You have to draw a pattern with a piece of chalk. There are many patterns to draw, and I think the one we used looked a little like this:
The object of the game is to win. How bout that? The rules are hard to explain, but I shall try my best. We will use my bff Ramaine as player1 and I will be player 2.
Ramaine would stand behind the starting line to toss her marker in square 1. She would then hop over square 1 and land with one foot in square 2 and one foot in square 3. She then continues hopping to the home square, which is like a safe place to stand and turn around, and then she would hop back again. Ramaine would pause in squares 2 and 3 to pick up the marker, hop in square 1, and then out. Then she continues by tossing the stone in square 2 and so on and so on. All hopping is done on one foot unless the hopscotch design is such that two squares are side-by-side. You must always hop over any square where a maker has been placed.
Tossing your rock into the first square was always quite easy, but I basically sucked after that. For example. if it was my turn to throw it in square #7, and it landed in #8, my turn would be over. And again, since I sucked at Hopscotch, I spent a lot of time sitting on the sidelines, looking at my rock.
So, while writing this post, I took a wrong turn and kept thinking about how much time I spent watching my friends play while I, Hopscotch loser, sat and waited for my next turn. I would most certainly toss my rock right on a line (which is a no-no),and once again, be sitting on the sidelines. So,I was wondering if this is what people sitting on a curb are waiting for.
Waiting their turn to play Hopscotch
Hopscotch losers at a Hopscotch parade of winners
Some mother brought these hopscotch losers cupcakes.
So, then I really got to think that perhaps, perhaps Hopscotch is actually a drinking game that somehow evolved into a children’s game over the years. So, I set out to do some research. What I found was startling.
Hopscotch was actually invented during Easter in Scotland in 1799. Drunk party-goers, bored with playing croquet, drew numbers on a tennis court surface and tossed rocks to see if they could land on the numbers. If they hit the numbers, they didn’t have to drink their scotch. If they missed, they had to take a drink, and hop like a rabbit, (you know, because it was Easter). Someone decided that there should be a border around the numbers, and Voila! Hopscotch was born.
Drunks invented Hop Scotch
Ok, so I lied. But, it could have happened that way.
All in all, Hopscotch was a great childhood game. I may not have been a great rock tosser, but I had fun, and isn’t that what really counts? I hope to play it again one day.
This time I will be drunk….and old. But young at heart.
Put down your purse, Vickie. No one is going to steal it.
I probably wasn’t much fun to play with when I was little. As soon as someone mentioned a game that had any kind of spinning involved, I was out. I had puked enough for all the kids in the neighborhood. I was already called “Bluey” in the winter because my lips would turn a bright bluish purple and “Picky Vickie” throughout the year because I wouldn’t try to eat anything that had “stuff” in it, like potato salad, or mixed together, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Pukey” was next on the agenda, I was sure, and I wanted no part of it.
I don’t know what the hell it is with kids and spinning. Are we all gluttons for punishment?
Blind Man’s Bluff
I think the first game I played with other kids in the neighborhood that had anything to do with spinning was Blind Man’s Bluff. The rules sounded easy enough. According to Wikipedia:
“Blind man’s bluff is played in a spacious area, such as outdoors or in a large room, in which one player, designated as “It”, is blindfolded and gropes around attempting to touch the other players without being able to see them, while the other players scatter and try to avoid the person who is “it”, hiding in plain sight and sometimes teasing them to make them change direction.”
Ok, that sounded easy enough. Two things were missing from the instructions, however. One, was that Blind Man’s Bluff should be played in an area free of dangerous obstructions, or like, um, stairs, so that the “It” player will not die or obtain a serious head injury. Secondly, who the hell said the “It” player had to be spun around before they went off groping at people? I immediately knew that I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the first one to run into the fireplace hearth or be the one puking because of the spinning. But, sometimes life just isn’t fair for the spin challenged. The first person found me huddled in a corner, cowering and trying to remain oh so quiet. Dammit. I cried foul, as I am sure the person could see below the scarf. I figured out that if you had a big nose, you could cheat. People with big noses always have advantages in this world.
So, Lori, the neighborhood Nazi girl, put the scarf around my eyes. We were playing in her basement, so we had to let her be in charge like she always was. She tied it tight to make sure I couldn’t cheat. She knew I would cheat in a heart beat, given the chance. I remember the scarf being slightly damp. So, I was ready to puke because I knew that meant sweat. Lori lived across the street and she knew all about my spinning “problems.” So, the little bitch spun me hard. Her hands were firm and her method determined. Determined to make the little skinny girl with blue lips puke. After she got done spinning me, I just sat down and threw up on on an area rug. Ta-da. End of Blind Man’s Bluff for Vickie. I staggered home. I think I took the blind fold off first.
I’m thinking that Blind Man’s Bluff led to orgies when played by the older crowd.
The Playground Merry-Go-Round-and Round-and Round
I hate playground equipment. I really do. As an elementary teacher, I watch kids when I am on playground duty. First of all, yes, I do stand outside with fifty-five year old blue lips. That’s with me for life. I am not fond of the cold. But, I watch these sweet children turn into brainless zombies on speed, running amok to and fro each piece of equipment. They climb up slides instead of sliding down them. They run behind people swinging, like chipmunks playing “Suicide” on our country roads. Chipmunks decide in the middle of the road which way they want to zig. Too late, Theodore. Anyways, school children also try to kill their peers on the see-saws. Side note: How the hell do children know what “cherry bumps” even are?
“Ms. Mendenhall, Ralph jumped off of the see saw on purpose and gave me a cherry bump.” I just stared at her. Really? I chuckled at the thought of perhaps sending her to the principal to tell the story of Ralphie, the cherry bumper.
Luckily, our playground doesn’t have the Merry-Go-Round aka The Ride of Misery like we had when we were little. I’m not even sure if it was at our neighborhood playground, but I avoided it somewhere. It was the worst playground apparatus known to man…and pukey little girls.
You know there is vomit on there somewhere
So, the kids would hop on and the strongest child would run on the outside, pushing around and around and then jump on himself. Once in a while some older jack ass would stand there, spinning and spinning despite the pleas of the younger, sickened children. Hahahhahaha, laughed the older kid. Those bully kids back then are the probably the same ones wearing black and white stripes today. Or they are car salesmen. But,I would never go near that damn ride after the first time I was stuck on it….. And puked on it. Ew. I just left, hoping that one day it would rain.
You know this didn’t last long. Dear God, here come the flying wires. Oh, look, one has impaled you.
The Rotor- Kennywood Park
The Rotor was a crazy ride at Kennywood Park, outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We used to go to Kennywood about once a year when I was little. It’s hard to describe the Rotor, but I shall try. Picture a barrel. Or the inside of a washing machine. Or something like that. People would enter the Rotor and stand against the wall, with the heels of their feet against the wall. I think we had to take our shoes off as we entered the ride. Did I say, “we?” I crack myself up. The Rotor had an observation deck around the top, so those like myself, could watch.
The ride would start rotating uprights at 33 revoulutions per minute. Faster, faster, faster. (This is where I would puke just from watching the people spinning.) The rotation would create a centripetal force and then when it was at full speed, the floor would drop down. Like drop down. Everyone was stuck like Velcro to the sides of the spinning barrel. Sick.
I had to finally try it when I was with my boyfriend. Oh, the things you do for love. I was so scared, because those who puke on the ride get to share it, as the splatter would smack up against the wall. I can only imagine the puke on the back of peoples’ shirts. You know those carnival people probably didn’t clean the walls too well. So, I made sure I hadn’t eaten, and went in and although I was sick for the rest of the Kennywood day, I did not throw up. What what one does for love.
There were several Rotors around the country, probably called other names. All American rotors had to be dismantled or modified after the “incident.” Yikes. In 2000, two tweens were injured when their feet were caught between the moving wall and the floor.One suffered broken bones and they were both hospitalized.
Ugh..I feel sick after watching that.
The Basement Swivel Chair
I wonder if my bff Ramaine remembers this. We used to hang out in my basement. It was a long room with a bar on one end, and a ping pong table on the other end. In the middle was furniture, including two snazzy swivel chairs just like the one in this picture:
This chair looks innocent enough, but is a vehicle of death
Let’s just say that it is not a good idea to put a bunch of neighborhood kids in the basement unsupervised. My mom would stay upstairs, smoking her Salem cigarettes and reading the National Enquirer. Meanwhile, we had a carnival going on downstairs. Ramaine sat in one of the swivel chairs, sitting cross legged on the chair. Sometimes we would pretend we were going into outer space. Oh, we were imaginative. We would then spin the occupant in the chair around and around and around. It would go pretty damn fast.But, alas, there is nothing imaginative about a possible concussion.The swivel chair tipped over and so did Ramaine. She hit her head on the floor, which I think was painted concrete. She immediately said that her head hurt, so we ran upstairs to get my mom.
She checked on Ramaine, and then ran to call her mom. On the way out of the rec room she told us-
“What ever you do, don’t let her go to sleep. She may never wake up again.”
Really? You said that to a child. Of course she was now going to be sleepy. That’s what kids do.
What an idiot. But, at the time, I thought my bff was going to drift off to sleep and never be able to spin in the chair ever again. I was scared for my partner in crime.
“ Don’t go to sleep, Ramaine”…I wanted to cry.
Well, she was ok, and I don’t remember if she had a concussion or not, but we went back to spinning that chair. I never sat in the chair, of course, as I knew my limitations and my friends accepted me for the puking freak that I was.
Sit’n Spin
Fast forward many years. When my children were young, they informed me that they wanted a Sit’n Spin. Great. So, they are manufacturing a personal use piece of playground apparatus. Just what I need. So, being the great mother that I was, I bought them this nauseating toy.
My least favorite purchase, other than maybe Kotex
Go ahead and puke. You’re not my kid.
Recycling the Sit’n Spin into a turn table. Good job, Pinterest lady.
In the end, there are thousands of things that spin. I will name them all:
yo yo, tops, pinwheel, a fan, hula hoop, frisbee, anything with wheels, including a ferris wheel, whirlygigs
silver maple tree helicopter whirlygigs, a basketball can spin, a record on a record player, a tornado, propellers, pottery thingy,and clothes in a washing machine. I have volunteers come up in my fourth grade class and act out the sun, moon, and earth and have them spin around while they are revolving around the sun. Sure, they get dizzy. They want to get dizzy. Goofy kids.
There was one particular spinning “toy” that did not make me dizzy:
Spin the Bottle
Spin the Bottle, the Older Crowd. Um, ok....ew
After all these years, they still love to get dizzy.
I feel sorry for the children of today. Really, I do. They have missed out on some many great things that we baby boomers experienced in the late fifties and sixties. Like poking people in the eyes ala The Three Stooges. Like counting how many times the Coyote SHOULD have died in those wonderful Road Runner cartoons. And then there are Colorforms.
Photos via ebay seller
Oh, I’m very aware that Colorforms are still around. They will celebrate their 61st birthday this summer. They were re-releasing their Michael Jackson Dress Up set for their big 60 celebration. Um, okay…..
I remember when my mom bought my very first colorform set. I am sure it was hard to find something a hyperactive chichuahua of a child would play with for more than 30 seconds. I am pretty sure it just had geometric shapes to move around. I remember smelling the thin vinyl. Could one actually get high sniffing Colorforms? I don’t think so, but they did have a smell to them. But, I took to them like a floundering flopping fish takes to water. I liked them. I remember the following Colorforms. I loved this one.
Of course, who would have known that a hyperactive child would also be a bit OCD? After playing with Colorforms, it took me forever to put the pieces back where they belonged.
“Vickie, it’s bath time….put that away now……………………………………….Come on, Vickie…………………………..Vickie…………………..”
Well, I just couldn’t put the pieces in a pile and just walk away. They had a place for each piece, dammit. And I had to put them back where I found them. Afterall, that’s what my mom always preached.
“Is that where you found it, Vickie? Put them back where you found them.”
So, it’s my mother’s fault that I was OCD with the Colorform pieces. I would freak out if I opened up a Colorform box and saw pieces lying around like the first picture that I posted. Let’s take a look at that one again. I would have slapped someone. Dear God, what the hell is wrong with you? The only other person in my house who could have done such a thing would have been my sister, Cheryl.
This makes me uneasy even today. My palms are getting sweaty. The pieces need to go right on the line. I mean, right on the line. Anything else was just wrong. I would sit there, taking about three or four turns to get it just right.
“Vickie, your bath water is getting cold…………”
Pretty bad that a mom has to run the bath water for a twenty-two year old.
Ok, just kidding.
So, my sister had to be the nonconformist colorformist. She was putting the pieces back like a drunken groundhog. I refer to that because there used to be a drunk groundhog on our property after I got married. I called her Mrs. Daegle after the drunk woman in The Bad Seed. Or maybe it had rabies. But, it couldn’t walk straight. Just like my sister couldn’t put the colorforms back straight. Dammit.
So, I did the only thing one could do in my position. I hid the Colorforms. Not the box or the little setting you got to decorate. Just the Colorforms. Which I guess were important.
“Vickie, where are the Colorforms?”
“Right there.”
“There are no Colorforms in the box.”
“You bought Colorforms without the colorforms?” I was a smart ass at a very smart ass age.
“Vickie…………….where are the Colorforms?”
“ Susie ate one and got sick, so I threw them away.” Susie the dog would never have eaten a Colorform. Although a brilliant answer coming from a hyperactive obsessive compulsive compulsive liar, my mom would never buy this one.
“I will count to three, Vickie, and you better bring them all back………………………1……………………………..2…………………………………….2 1/2………….”
She always used a “2 1/2″ before she asked my brother David to go get the belt. That was David’s job. He was the belt getter. Why couldn’t he just once say, “You want the god damn belt? Go get it yourself.” He was too nice. I on, the other hand, pushed her buttons way too much.
“Vickie, go to your room.”
Susie the dog would follow me to my room. I would wave at my dad on my way past his room. She must have sent him to his room, as he was usually lying on his side, watching the little red tv that was sitting on a tv dinner tray or whatever they are called. So, there I was, in my room, with the Colorforms hidden in my scuffy slippers in my closet.
All in all, Colorforms were a great thing for me. I was able to sit and play with something for more than five minutes before moving on to something else that caught my eye. I never walked away from Colorforms.
Well, not until I put the pieces back where I found them.
You know, it’s really hard for a hyperactive kid to win a staring contest. It just can’t happen. Through the years, I have been asked if I wanted to have a staring contest, and my answer has never changed.
“Oh, hell no.”
Of course, I don’t really think I said that when I was ten or eleven the first time I was asked to participate in a staring contest. I am sure I obliged, ready to stare down my opponent. But, it never happened. It couldn’t happen. I did try.
The object of a staring contest is an easy one. Stare at someone without taking your eyes off of them. The first one who breaks the stare is a loser. A big time loser. So, of course, everyone wanted to play Hyper Girl. I didn’t know I was hyper at the time. My mom never told me. She just gave me a little green tranquilizer every day and called it my “car sick pill.” You’d think that with a tranquilizer digesting and spreading calm and coolness throughout my tiny body that I would be able to sit still long enough to win a staring contest.
“Vickie…you already lost…..Yes, you did. You just looked away!!……….Yes, you did………………..Yes, you did…….Wanna play again?………………..You did it again…………..Yes, you did. I win…….Vickie, you looked in my eyes for like ten seconds and then looked away………..Yes you did.”
So, this hyperactive child learned to hate staring contests. As I grew older, I was a side-line watcher….for a few minutes. They just bored me to death. I remember one time watching a neighborhood staring contest with some older kids outside at dusk, until I saw a spider spinning a web. I was mesmerized. What staring contest? And really, in the end, what is the big deal? It’s not like it’s an arm wrestling contest. At least that’s a physical challenge. A staring contest is just an eye control contest. Unless you had a lazy eye, drifting toward the middle, or you were hyperactive or you had pink eye and your eye was leaking, anyone could be in a staring contest. Most people can look straight ahead without moving their eyes. Big whoop. Picture the Hulk Hogan winning a staring contest, and then ripping off his shirt after the kill.
“I am so tough. I just beat someone in a freakin staring contest. YES! ….. Take that, Grandma!”
Staring contests have been around for a very long time. I think boxers have the best stares. They march up to their opponent in the middle of the ring, getting right in their face, and just stare. Pretty intimidating. Did you know Rocky Balboa was in a staring contest?
So, to me, staring contests were stupid. I stayed away from being in one or even watching one. Until many years later, when the chance arose once again. I was a mother, probably about forty-four. My daughter was a spectator that day, and I believe she may have been fourteen or so. I am probably wrong, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I almost died that day……because of a staring contest.
The day started like any ordinary day. It was a beautiful summer evening. My daughter and I were outside, standing on the brick patio right beside our house. I loved that property. We had wildlife visiting our place every day. I kept binoculars on my kitchen counter so I could quickly check out a new bird, or the fighting neighbors. Never a dull moment.
This one particular summer evening was one for the memory book. I spotted a deer, standing down in front of our house, taking more than his share of the fallen apples. He had his back to us. Hmmmm.
“I bet I can sneak down real close to that deer.” I said to my daughter. She stayed at the top of the hill by the house. I realize the picture was taken in winter, but just humor me for a minute. The deer was beside the tree that I have noted with the red circle. I began my trek down the hill, moving slowly and quietly. The deer did not hear me. I looked back at my daughter, smirking at my agile stalking.
I got pretty close to the deer. He turned and was shocked to see this strange creature so close to him. I froze. He stared. I stayed frozen. He stared.
He then snorted and stomped his foot on the ground. I knew what he was doing. He had no plans to leave the plentiful bounty that was lying on the ground in front of him. Them apples were for him. I stared back, and then snorted and stomped my foot. I was wearing tennis shoes, so my stomp sounded intimidating. He snorted again, raised his hoof and kept it in the air, lingering for a few seconds, and then stomped again. I snorted and stomped again. I was winning this freaking starting contest. Ha! I finally will win one. Sure, it may have been against an animal, but a staring contest is a staring contest.
Shit. I took my eyes off the deer to look back up the hill at my daughter. When my eyes went back to the deer, he snorted and charged at me. Holy shit! I let out a scream and then ran like the wind. Luckily, I had just changed from flip flops to tennis shoes, or I would have been deer stomped.
I never ran so fast in my whole life. I mean, there was a snorting, stomping deer with unchewed apple in his mouth coming after me. I had no idea when, but I felt that he was going to tackle me from behind and kick me to death. So, I did the Forrest Gump thing and I ra-an. I made it to the top of the hill to greet my laughing daughter. She couldn’t quit laughing at me.
“Mom, I never knew you could run. Haahahahahhahahahha.”
Well, when you have a crazy deer charging at you, you really should move. The deer chased me halfway up the hill, but must have known by my pathetic “Monster is chasing girl” scream, that the apples were pretty much his. He went back down the the apple tree, knowing that he wasn’t going to be bothered anymore.
And for me, well, that was my last staring contest. Deer will win every time.
I have been playing Words with Friends and have become quite addicted to the little game. I can understand how Alec Baldwin just couldn’t put it away. I play it from Facebook. I’ve always been a Scrabble player, and I didn’t think this would match what Scrabble offers. When I first started playing, I thought you had to sit there and play it. I mean, that’s what you do with Scrabble. But, no. I found out that you can play a word, go out to eat, watch a movie, and then play your next word. It would suck if your opponent had no such plans, and was waiting for you. But, after playing a couple of times, you finally figure out that you can lead a life, be a mother, wash clothes, AND play Word with Friends. But, I’m not writing about how wonderful the game is. Oh, it is wonderful. I’m writing about particular opponents who are just pissing me off.
They are pissing me off because it reminds me of games I played when I was little. My mom taught me how to play everything from 500 Rummy , Gin, chess, to Yahtzee and chinese checkers. As I have written numerous times, I was a hyperactive child, but games and strategy kept me in focus. I was all about the game. But now, my opponents, well, they weren’t in the same league as me. At eight years of age, I was a gaming professional, dammit, and I expected those who played with me to follow the rules. Just follow the rules.
It all started with Candy Land. If my sister was losing, she would quit. I would have my little gingerbread man close to the end, ready for a little gingerbread victory dance. It would be exciting. Everyone likes to win. But then, she would simply stand up and make an exit.
“I quit. This is a stupid game.” What the hell, stupid sister? You always finish what you start. I was hyperactive as that little cartoon dog that follows the huge Bulldog, Spike, and I even knew that. I was three years older than she was, and she was an easy mark, but that is no excuse for a five year old. Get off the short bus and finish the damn game. But no. If was ahead by much, she would just stand up and quit.
Get back up and fight, soldier.
When we played Go to the Head of The Class, and if I was winning, she would quit. If we were playing Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button, and she was on a lower step, she would just get up and walk away. If we played Chutes and Ladders, she would pout for a while, and then get up and walk away. I mean, come on. It was Chutes and Ladders. That is one game that should be played to the very end. Well, like all freaking games. What the hell is wrong with you? Games are meant to be played until the end. End of discussion. Like my mom always said:
Quitters never prosper.
Dear God, I think she said that several times a week. I didn’t know what the hell “prosper” meant for the longest time, but that didn’t matter. I learned about context clues all on my own. Quitters never something…..Quitters never won…..Quitters were always losers. Yeah, that’s it. Quitters were losers. My sister was a loser. God, I wish someone would have thought to put their finger in an L shape over their forehead years ago. I would never have had to talk. There were a lot of losers in my household.
So, why do people quit? Did the ClemsonTigers leave the football field during the Orange Bowl when the West Virginia Mountaineers were pummeling them 70-33? No. They stayed until the very end. Thank goodness, or we wouldn’t be able to put these billboards up on the interstate near Morgantown. I love my WVU.
Yeah, it's a real sign.
It reminds me of the kid who brings the ball and if doesn’t get his way, snatches the ball and walks home. Cry baby. But, for the most part, sports teams stay until the very end. My son had a ten-run rule when he played baseball when he was younger. But, no one was quitting. They were just sent home early, dignity intact abeit tail behind their legs.
I did get confused about the whole quitting scenario because my mom used to always tell me when I got in trouble:
Quit while you’re ahead
Understand my confusion? First she was telling me all Kung Fu Caine-like that “Quitters never prosper” and then she turns around and tells me to “Quit while I’m ahead.” I’m thinking my mom may have been wise, but not all the way. She was a Sybil quoter, split personality and all. I should add that she used to also say, “Cheaters never prosper.” No one prospered with that woman.
I guess my rant should make a sharp point. Well, let me back up. Now that I have been playing Words with Friends for a few weeks now, I have gotten used to the people I play. I can tell which ones use other sources because, I mean, what the hell does “distome” mean? Well, I will tell you what it means. It is a parasitic flatworm. Ok, sure maybe Player #1 had an opponent play it and they remembered to play it with me. I guess I shouldn’t complain. I am using new words that I have learned. I’m not talking about the vocabulary geniuses/Scrabble dictionary users. Right now, I’m talking about the quitters.
I am currently playing twenty people. Well, sixteen people, since my son and I are in the middle of four games. But, I have two opponents that I play a lot who just quit if there are only about seven tiles left and I am way out in front. Then they immediately start another game. What? Oh my God, is my sister on the other end? Why do you do this? I don’t do it when someone is beating the hell out me, 419-302. I know I’m going to lose. But, I don’t quit. I play to the very end. Sure, I may send a friend a note that reads: “Is there any stopping you?” like I did today to a friend I just can not beat. She is good. And she probably appreciates the fact that I don’t quit.
I was about seven years old (circa 1963) when I saw my first commercial for Slinky. I looked at my brother, David, and back to the television. I wanted to make sure someone else was watching this. Oh Dear God, I had to have this. I memorized the catchy song title and almost remember all of the words to this day:
What walks down stairs
alone or in pairs
and makes a slinkity sound
A spring! A spring!
A marvelous thing
Everyone knows its Slinky!
It’s Slinky! It’s Slinky!
For fun, it’s a wonderful toy!
It’s fun for a girl and a boy!
It’s fun for a girl and a boy!
Oh, yeah, I was sooo getting one. The next Friday night, my dad took us to over to the Weirton shopping center to hang out. That’s what he did every Friday night. It was “Dad and the Kids Night So Mom Can Have a Moment to Reflect Night.” It was fun. I’d usually get a 45 record at Grants, and then we would head to the Village Dairy and get a two scoop ice cream. Fun times.
Well, it looked like the Weirton Grants was pretty progressively prompt. There it was! Slinky was looking right at me. It said it was a walking spring toy. It even had directions on the side of the box in case you had no brain:
TO WALK SLINKY DOWN STAIRS: Place Slinky on top stair. Grip the top coil and flip it forward toward the lower step while quickly releasing. Watch as Slinky begins to walk down the stairs-all by itself!
Well, this is no fun
Well, I laugh now. These were directions for an idiot. Because they knew anyone who would by coil and watch it walk down stairs is either stupid or has no life. But, hey, this was for kids and I need to get my “kid hat” on. I wear it most days, anywho, but really, think about it. It’s sort of a stupid toy. But, when I was seven, it was the berries. (I’m even talking like I’ve returned to my youth).
I will continue with the idiot directions.
TO PLAY WITH SLINKY IN YOUR HANDS: Hold the two end coils of Slinky with both hands. Next, raise and lower each hand in a rhythmic motion.
You know, you can screw up those directions. They never said to hold them with the palm of your hands pointing upwards. I just took my new purchase (for picture taking purposes only, you know) and held the Slinky in my hands with my palms facing each other, moving my each hand up and down. If anyone did that, they would really look like their elevator didn’t go up to the top floor. Their directions for that just sucked.
It's a hamster tunnel
Well, I didn’t have to beg my dad much because I had started on the Slinky want for five days. I sort of reminded myself of that little cartoon dog who always hung out with the giant bulldog, Spike. “Can I , Spike? Can I? Hey, Spike? Can I, Spike?” Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Well, I got the Slinky home and played with it for hours. It really went down the stairs. Then I found out stuff about it that wasn’t on the directions. Your sister could hold one end and you could stretch it with the other hand, lie it on the floor, and have your hamster walk through it. We stayed absolutely still, as we didn’t want the retracting coil to cut off his little hamster feet. That was probably a REALLY stupid thing to do. Annie did ok. She seemed to like it, as she stayed in the middle of it and peed. She must have felt like home.
All in all, Slinky was a wonderful toy, It was fun for a girl and a boy. For a while. There’s only so many things you can do. I mean, after it goes down the steps a few hours the first day, the excitement fades. How many times can you get excited about this?
“Hey, Mom, watch Slinky go down the stairs……again?” I did throw it down the stairs once to see if it would elongate and look cool. It was fun, only because my brother David came around the corner in the basement at the same time and it hit him in the stomach. I cracked up.
We did a lot of things with Slinky we shouldn’t have. I personally liked wearing it as a boa. Sometimes two of us would ride our bikes with the training wheels and each hold an end while riding down the street. The directions should probably have read: MENDENHALL KIDS-DO NOT LEAVE THIS TOY OUT IN THE RAIN. DO NOT PLAY WITH THIS IN THE BATHTUB. DO NOT USE AS A THREE STOOGES WEAPON.
One of my favorites games to play when I was little was Button Button, Who’s Got the Button? It was a pretty easy game to play. It didn’t matter how many kids were playing. And all you needed was a penny. When I first started playing the game, I was OCD about using a button, because, well, as in the title, someone was asking for a damn button. But, after using about ten buttons that my mom sort of needed, I was told if I ever used a button again, my name would be Mud. Which in mom speak meant I would be getting “The Belt.” So, I used a shiny penny instead.
The object of Button Button, Who’s Got the Button is an easy one. The game was usually played by several children and one adult. I wish someone would have told my mom that, because we all took turns being the “adult.” The children start by sitting on the bottom stair of a staircase. We played on my front porch steps. If it was raining, we used my basement steps. It was a pretty flexible game. So, again, the kids are sitting at the bottom of the steps. The adult (Me, at the old age of eight, perhaps) would hold out in front of them two closed hands, with one holding a “special” button hidden inside of it. I would ask, “Button, Button, who’s got the button?
For example, let’s pretend that my neighbor friends and siblings were sitting side by side on the bottom step. LeeAnn, Ramaine, Cheryl, and David. I would put my hands behind my back, and put the penny in one of them and then hold it out in front of LeeAnn. “Button Button, Who’s Got the Button?” She would then pick one of my hands. If she was right, she would get to move up one step. Then I would go to Ramaine, etc. etc. Whoever got to the top of the steps won and then they would get to be the leader.
This was such a fun game. For a while. One day, two of the neighbor girls, who were older and never played with us, wanted to join in the fun on summer afternoon. Well, how cool was that? I ran into the house and asked my mom if she would make Kool-Aid for all of us. She obliged and added cookies to the mix. This was going to be a great day.
Well, Linda, (not her real name) one of the older girls asked to be the leader. Of course, you can be the leader. We all squeezed on the bottom step and began to play. The other older girl, Kathy,(again, not her name) picked the right hand first thing. She got to advance up a step. I was next. Loser. David picked the right hand, as did my sister. Lee Ann and I were left behind in the dust. I dont think my bff Ramaine was there this particular day.
It was amazing how Kathy picked the right hand every time. Wow! She was so lucky. She quickly won. My mom then had us come in the house to have Kool-Aid and whoopie pies. Those older girls were going to want to play with us all of the time. My mom’s whoopie pies were the best cookie in the world. It was great how she was making them the very same day that Linda and Kathy decided to play with us.
So, after we got done eating, it was Kathy’s turn to be the leader. I was doing a bit better this time and was able to move up a little bit here and there. Linda was getting them right every time. She was almost at the top, when my brother, who was just coming out of the house, stopped and watched the fun, and then exclaimed, “You are cheating!” My little brother did not just say that. Did I just hear him tell the two older, beautiful popular girls that they were cheating? I was ready to get off the bottom step and run past everyone to tell my mom that David was going to make those girls want to quit and go home.
The girls looked at each other and then started laughing. They dropped the penny and looked us over and then Linda said, “This is such a baby game………….. We just came over here because your mom and my mom were talking on the phone and said she was making whoopie pies. We wanted some…….We’re leaving.”
And off they went with an air of superiority, munching on one of my mom’s world famous whoopie pies. I just wanted to cry. It’s funny, but we just sat quietly and watched them saunter down the street. They would turn around in the middle of the road, and laugh every couple of yards or so. I was so mad. I just wanted to throw rocks at them.
Well, Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button was put on the back burner for a long time. We switched to Mother, May I, or Colored Eggs. We saved Button, Button for our rainy day fun.
At least we knew on a rainy day we could play the “baby” game on my basement steps. The older girls couldn’t see us and we wouldn’t have to share whoopie pies with them ever again.
I skipped a decade or so but taught my children how to play Button Button, Who’s Got the Button on my old steps while visiting my parents. We had an inside staircase at the home we just built, but I wanted to initate this fun game where I learned to play. I explained the rules and talked about how much fun it would be. I got a real button from my mom’s decades- of-grand- button- collecting- collection, and we began to play. Adam won quickly and was able to be the leader. I sat down, sort of excited to share this wonderful game with my children.
Button, Button, I've got freakin Buttons
Adam put his hands behind his back, and put them out in front of his sister. One of his hands was out in front of the other. She picked it, and the damn hand held the button. He was lucky if he was six years old and already figured out how to cheat. I just looked at him. He was laughing.
Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t the card game, Old Maid, just a little politically incorrect these days? I mean, I couldn’t care less, but aren’t we making fun of an older lady who has never married or had children? The shame. Another name for an old maid is a spinster.
The card game has been around for many, many years. The origins of Old Maid trace back to the 17th century. It started off as a gambling game, where the loser had to buy drinks, because it got stuck holding the last card. The old maid. The woman who was depicted as a frumpy, bird or cat owner, who wore glasses and a very ugly hat.
The game begins with players trying to form pairs out of all of their cards until someone—the loser—is left with the lonely, spinster old maid.
I remember playing Old Maid. I played it often, along with Go Fish and War. But, Old Maid, sort of made me sad, because of what my mom told me one time when we were playing.
“Did you know that your Aunt Elizabeth was an Old Maid?” I just looked at her. I really didn’t understand what was going on. I mean, I was playing a freaking card game. I was a kid. I never gave it a thought back in circa 1964 that the card with a sweet old lady was my Aunt Elizabeth.
I honestly thought that an old maid was a woman who was like a nanny. She cleaned and took care of people’s homes, like a maid. But, she was more than a house cleaner. She was like a grandma. And that’s what an old maid was. But, my mom was obviously going to explain to me something completely different, I feared. And I really didn’t want to hear it.
“Aunt Elizabeth was supposed to marry someone when she was younger. He was a soldier and he never came home from the war.”
I just looked at her.
“Was she mad at him?”
My mom was confused. “No. Why would she be mad at him?”
“Because he never came home. Where did he go to live then?” Legitimate question coming from the skinny girl on the other side of the table.
Well, my mom explained it to me, and I just really didn’t want to finish the game after I heard the whole story. I made an excuse, and went into my room and cried. Poor Aunt Elizabeth. She lived all the way out in Spokane Washington, and I had only met her a few times, but the story was so sad. She used to send letters to my mom and would always include a clipping of the comic strip, “Family Circus.”
So, I haven’t been happy with the whole “Old Maid” game after that. The next time someone wanted to play, I took a deck of my dad’s regular cards and took the jokers out and left one in so it didn’t have a match. There. That was our new Old Maid.
Over the years, I always came in contact with an old maid or two. The character of Miss Havisham, in Charles Dicken’s, “Great Expectations.” was an old maid. She hung out in the reception hall, clad in her wedding dress, sitting at the table with the ever so old cake, still on the table. That freaked me out. Especially when rats were involved.
The song, Delta Dawn, by Helen Reddy, was about a woman who was walking around with a suitcase, waiting for the guy who dumped her. She was an old maid, but she was also crazy as a loon, just like Miss Havisham. She walked around Brownsville with a faded rose from days gone by.
And Wikipedia mentions “famous spinsters.” Can you believe it? Some mentioned are are Susan B. Anthony, Ann Coulter, (which cracked me up for some odd reason), Condalezza Rice, Emily Dickinson, Florence Nightingale, Greta Garbo, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Bronte, and Jane Austen. Sound like all strong, independent women to me.
My favorite “spinster” is Miss Prissy Hen, from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, although there is some mention of her maybe being a widow. Nevertheless, they dress her in an ugly hat and put glasses on her, just like the Old Maid picture on the playing card. Well, except that she is a bird.
When George Bailey, in It’s a Wonderful Life, sees his life like he wasn’t born, he runs into Mary, the librarian, who is an old maid.
Bette Davis, played an old maid in the movie, The Old Maid.
So, I was thinking, why not change the whole “Old Maid” scenario to “Old Geezer?” There are a lot of men who never get married or have children. I think it is time to make fun of them for a change. This Old Maid crap has been going on too long. So, let’s get a picture of a guy who will fit the part. How about…..Mr. Burns?
You know, I don’t know the answer. When my kids were little, we played Old Maid. It was just a game. My kids never wondered about the name or what the hell it meant.
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So, I just got back from stupid Walmart, and I made a few purchases for myself that may seem strange. Even the check-out lady asked me, “Aw, I remember these. Are they for your grandchildren?”
“No. I don’t have grandchildren yet.” That sort of pissed me off. Fifty-five year old people are too young to have grandchildren. And besides, I don’t look a day over thirty. My class tells me that all of the time, so I know it to be true.
“Oh, you’re a teacher?” Nib shit wanted an answer. I was in the mood to mess with her.
“No. They are for me……I never was allowed to play with toys when I was little……. I can afford them now.” I tried to deliver the line like Bob Newhart, my idol, with a hint of Ellen DeGeneres, my other idol. The man behind me in line cracked up. Ahhh, someone in this town understands snark.
Anyway, I brought home a fun game of my youth: Barrel of Monkeys. I guess you knew that was coming by my title. Can’t fool you guys. I wanted to write a blog post on games we baby boomers played, but thought, “Why, hell, Vickie, buy the damn thing, and take pictures of how stupid you look playing with it.”
Inspiration for my next blog post
For those of you who don’t know what the hell I am talking about, Barrel of Monkeys is a game that was brought to store shelves by Lakeside Toys in 1965. I guarantee you that I had this as soon as it came out. I was nine years old and my mom bought anything in sight in order to find something that would keep me occupied for more than 20 seconds. It’s hard to entertain hyperactive Mexican jumping beans.
Apparently, the idiom, “more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” was the inspiration for the game. I just really don’t understand how people start idioms, because why would monkeys shoved in a barrel be fun? I mean, wouldn’t the damn monkeys be so claustrophopic and pissed to high hell, that when released from the barrel, would start attacking and perhaps chew someone’s face off or something? So, to me, “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” should be a sarcastic remark, to be used, for example, at say, Grandpa’s funeral.
“Well, this is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.” See, makes sense.
Years ago, sometime during the 1950′s, Dave Garroway, host of The Today Show, asked, “What’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys?” A huge barrel was rolled out onto the stage. Garroway released them and they climbed the curtains, ran out into the audience, climbed on top of the cameras, and just generally wrecked havoc on the set. See, once again, sarcastic idiom. Monkeys in a barrel are not flippin fun.
So, fast forward to 2012. I opened up the barrel, all excited, because I have not played with the little plastic simians since my children played with it for ten minutes when they were young. And it was for that long, only because I just brought it home, and made them play.
“It is not boring. Look, hook the monkeys and see how many you can get………Well, they have to be in a pile or it is hard to hook their arms……It is not boring……….I played with this a LOT when I was little……………….What do you mean? I had more things to play with.”
Ok, didn’t last long. I’m sorry, but I just can’t see this being a top seller in 2012. But, I was still excited to play with it once again.I opened up the barrel to find 14 red plastic monkeys in a plastic bag. The plastic bag had warnings in 19 different languages:
“To avoid danger of suffocation, keep this bag away from babies, and children. DO NOT use in cribs, beds, carriages, or playpens.”
Found a loophole. You can put the bag on their high chair.
According to the instructions that did NOT come with the game, each game contains a “barrel” which is filled with brightly-coloured plastic monkeys with “S” shaped arms. Players must dump the monkeys on the table or other even surface and the objective of the game is to hook all the monkey’s arms together to form a chain. A player’s turn ends when the chain is broken. (I got this from their web site, as they neglected to put instructions in the barrel.)
So, what if a person from a foreign country or like, Zanesville, Ohio, opened the barrel only to find just what I did: monkeys in a plastic bag and that is all. Are they to assume that they know what the hell they are supposed to do with them?
Once out of the little barrel, what would you do with the monkeys since there were no instructions?
And the directions are where?
The monkeys would run amok, just like they did in my townhouse.
Messing with my tv, demanding to watch Planet of the Apes.
Messing with my cat, Whiskers, who roared like a lion to scare them. (No, she is not yawning. She is roaring).
They totally messed with a couple of my Words With Friends games, clicking on the ”resign” button when I was clearly beating the hell out of my opponents.
Then I caught them trying to escape, out into the Wild Wonderful West Virginia woods.
Quit flushing the toilet, you stupid monkeys.
I don’t know what the hell they were doing here, but I did find jello with bananas in the refrigerator. One of the monkeys must have decided to swim in the cherry liquid, because it is now hardened up to his neck. I promptly closed the door. (Pictures are too graphic.)
Helping themselves to some mango juice.
Attacking the cat from another angle
They got into my pill compartment thingy that I received as a gag gift for my 5oth birthday, but I use anywho. Two of the monkeys overdosed. You have no idea how hard it is to give CPR to plastic.
They got entangled in my floss and I don’t even want to know what the hell they did with my toothbrush.
Oh, that is just wrong! Get the hell out of the kitty litter box!
Ok, monkeys! That’s the last straw! No really. That’s the last straw.
I found all 14 monkeys and put them back in the barrel.
It was more fun taking pictures of them than actually playing the game. What’s fun with hooking monkey arms?
In the end, this game was great in 1965. I learned to be more patient, since I was a hyper little urchin.
But, in 2012……
it was great. Well, only if you had a camera and followed them around because there were no freaking instructions in the barrel.
Where the hell did this blue one come from?
I really did have more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Ramaine, LeeAnn, and I would get together when we were little and color. Coloring was so much fun. We knew never to take our coloring books and crayons to LeeAnn’s house, though.
Because of the incident.
There we were, at her kitchen table, minding our own business, coloring. All of the houses on the block had the same floor plan, so we were comfortable where ever we were. But, apparently not at LeeAnn’s kitchen table.
The coloring Nazi was ready to make an appearance.
Now, you have to understand that coloring is supposed to be fun. If it wasn’t meant to be fun, we would just have brown crayons. Since I love writing and researching, let me give you a little information about our colorful past in the world of crayons before I move on to that fateful coloring day.
Back in 1885, Edwin Binney and his cousin, C. Harold Smith, formed a partnership and called their company Binney & Smith. They were quite creative. His father, Joseph Binney, founded the Peekskill Chemical Works in upstate New York, where he produced charcoal and lamp black. I don’t know what the hell lamp black is and I am too lazy right now to look it up, but it had something to do with using “black.” So, after Joe retired, and the kids formed their partnership, they went to work on other products. Early products included red oxide pigment used in barn paint and carbon black for car tires.
So, we have red and black stuff going on. No crayon invention yet.
In 1900, the company began producing slate school pencils in its new mill in Pennsylvania. Teachers suggested their needs to Binney & Smith and so they introduced the first dustless school chalk two years later. Chalk dust probably was and still is a mess. Well, the dustless chalk ( I first wrote chalkless dust) was so successful, it won a gold medal at the St. Louis World Exposition. Well, you know what happened next. Teachers all over the country were using their chalk.
Now we have red, white, and black.
Now according to the website, In 1903, ”Noticing a need for safe, quality, affordable wax crayons, the company produced the first box of eight Crayola® crayons, selling for a nickel. (red, yellow, blue, green, orange, brown, violet (purple), and black). The Crayola name, coined by Edwin Binney’s wife Alice, comes from “craie,” the French word for chalk, and “ola,” from “oleaginous.” Well, what the hell does “oleaginous” mean, you ask? I will guess, “butter,” but I will go look it up. (She leaves her writing to look the word up in the dictionary.)
Ok, so Crayola means oily chalk. Kids are drawing with chalky grease. Colored chalky grease. Cool.
I’m missing something here, though. They jumped from making chalk to all of a sudden having 8 colored crayons in a box. Oh, but before you think you are going to read that they invented the crayon, you are wrong. Crayola did not invent the crayon. Records show that Europe was the birthplace of the “modern” crayon. The first crayons were made from a mixture of charcoal and oil. Later, powdered pigments of various hues replaced the charcoal. Wax was substitued for the oil, which made the crayons sturdier. All the great painters of that era, Leonardo Da Vinci, included, colored with crayons. Well, I didn’t read that. But, I’m sure they picked up a waxy colored thing and used it at one point or another. Fast forward to the mid 1960s to LeeAnn’s kitchen table. We are now the artists. Or so we think.
I personally loved to color.
It’s weird how kids sit down, pick up a crayon, and attack the coloring page differently. Why is that, I wonder. We all have the same picture, and the same 64 choices of color, but yet, they all ended up different. I remember how my friends colored. Weird, isn’t it? I can’t remember why I walked down to the basement. “Hmmmm, why did I come into this room?”
Anyway, this is my own opinion, but I think that there are different types of colorers (?)
1. The “I don’t Give a Shit” colorer- This child just picks up a crayon and goes to town. He (notice I’m visualizing a boy) doesn’t sit and ponder which color he should use on the clothing the people on the coloring page are wearing.
The picture of this kid made the rounds on the internet with the “I F*CKING LOVE COLORING”
written underneath the picture. But, if you look closely, he is holding a pencil.
2. The “I Press So Hard, I Break the Damn Crayon” colorer- This colorer was not my friend. My brother, David, was this type of colorer. You know, the ones who think it has to be so dark or no one will be able to see it. You will actually see crayon shrapnel lying on the coloring page.
3. The “Either You are in This, or Just Go Home” colorer- This colorer is just coloring to be with her friends (notice I use a girl here) She will either sing or hum while she is coloring. And this is the part that just pissed me off. She left items uncolored and was the first one done. “Um, you didn’t color the girl’s hair. Or the sun. Or the grass.” God dammit, go home. That’s all they wanted to do. I mean, if there is a freaking sun in the sky, and you are at my house, you better freaking color the damn sun.
4. The “I Think I will Add Shit” colorer- Guilty. I added things to the picture. If there was room for a sun (well, if it was an outdoor picture, duh), I would add a sun. If it was a close-up of a girl, I added earrings or a Wilma Flintstone necklace. I put rings on fingers and purses in their hands. I accessorized.
5. The “Less is More” colorer- This type of colorer always win the coloring contests. They shade their coloring picture and then use a darker stroke to go over the drawn lines as to highlight their masterpiece. Or they outlined it first, just to show where the coloring boundering lines were. My bff Ramaine was this type of colorer. Her dad was an artist and she inherited some great artistic genes. In my book, she was the best colorer in the whole world.
Which was a problem the day we sat coloring at LeeAnns’ table. Apparently, her dad, who usually hung out downstairs fixing people’s broken radios and tv sets, was upstairs, sitting in his chair, while we were in the kitchen. Now, Lee Ann was a “I don’t give a shit colorer” AND a “If you’re not in this, just go home” colorer. So, I just wanted to slap her. But, I didn’t have to. Her dad came into the kitchen for his fourth cup of coffee and lingered beside the table. He watched us color for a few minutes. I wanted to puke. He was different. I think he had some mental issues. Well, yeah, I’m sure of it.
“LEE ANN!” His voice was so loud, I almost colored outside the line. (Which I never would do, ever.)
She immediately stopped and looked up at him. He continued.
“Quit coloring like that! I don’t want to see you coloring outside of the lines again…. Color like Ramaine!!!!”
Well, uh, what about Vickie? I was doing ok. Ok, maybe the polka dots I drew on the empty dress were a bit much, but I thought I was doing well. I looked at LeeAnn. She was using a purple crayon at the time. She quit humming, and finished everything in that picture with the purple crayon. A dog was purple. A person’s face was purple. Every freaking thing was purple. She stayed in the lines, but the mood in the room was clearly all over the place. I wanted to crawl under the table.
Well, so much for our coloring day. We left right after he went downstairs. He stood over her for a very long time. He was so mad at her. For not coloring the way he wanted her too. And I never colored at LeeAnn’s house again.
But, she never colored outside of the lines again. And she favored purple, which I never questioned. (Ok, I have no idea about that. I just sometimes like to lie.) Maybe she was suffered from post tramatic coloring stress disorder. She went on to graduate with a 4.0 from high school, I believe. I never doubted that one bit.
I often wondered that if we were given blank sheets of paper, if LeeAnn would draw her family with her dad standing in the background on fire or something. One for a future therapy session or something.
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.
Since the beginning of time, someone always had to go first. “Ladies before gentlemen,” “Age before beauty” and on the Titantic, “Women and children first.”
The same thing is true when you play any kind of game. Someone has to go first. When I was little, I always got away with going first when I played with my brother and sister.
“I’m the oldest. I get to go first.”
End of discussion. They never once told me it was unfair. My mom taught me how to play chess when I was very young because I was hyper and needed to learn how to concentrate and stay on task. Or she just wanted to play chess. But, she always let me go first too. So, in our household, Vickie went first.
Well, once you venture out of your own backyard, the rules change. I couldn’t use “I’m the oldest, I get to go first” because several of my friends were older than me. This put me in a quandary. I was a tad bit OCD to begin with, so there has to be some sort of order to our childhood game madness. Who the hell is going to go first? What chaos this would ensue. Someone suggested ABC order. ABC order? First name or last name? Who gets to choose? It would usually be the person who’s name is Ashley Anderson or something like that. Um, no. That would put me in the middle. I wanted to be first. Some one then said,
“How about Eeny Meeny Miny Mo?”
Well, that might work. We all stood around in a circle. The person who suggested it, got to start it. Now, you have to understand that it was the early sixties, and we didn’t know any better. Our chant was taken from a popular version that American school children had been using since the 1880′s.
Eeny meeny miny mo
Catch a nigger by the toe
If he hollers, let him go,
eeny meeny miny mo
A couple years later, out of nowhere, it was changed to “Catch a tiger by the toe”, which makes absolutely no sense. Politically correct, yes, but I guess you wouldn’t catch a black person by the toe either. I would like to know where our parents were and why they didn’t suggest another rhyme. I would cringe if I heard my children chant that. But, again, the 60′s were a different time. But, back to the tiger fiasco. My friends tried to use tiger with “tail,” but you couldn’t say tail because then it would have to be eeny meeny miny mail, catch a tiger by the tail or something like that. It would HAVE to rhyme. My OCD raised its ugly head. Rather than argue with me until I won, someone then suggested playing “Rock Paper Scissors.” I balked at the idea. Mainly because I had never heard of it before, so therefore, um…no.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t have to listen to how it is played. A clenched fist means “rock.” Two fingers out means, “scissors.” A flat hand means “paper.” Apparently on the count of three, you put one of them out in front of you with your opponent.
The objective is to select a gesture which beats that of your opponent:
Rock breaks scissors, so rock would win.
Scissors cut paper: scissors defeats paper.
Paper covers or captures rock: paper beats rock
I had only one response, mainly because I just didn’t listen. I would never have remembered it. It just didn’t make sense..scissors, rocks, paper.
“That’s stupid.”
That night when I went to bed, I started thinking about ways people can go first. OCD like. My dad and grandpa always had a way to see who goes first: coin tossing. They would simply take a coin out of their pocket and each would yell “heads” or “tails” and then flip the coin. But, they both fooled me for several years with a particular coin tossed they used with me.
“Okay, Vickie.” He’d take the coin out of his pocket. “Heads I win. Tails you lose.” And he would toss the coin. I never ever won. It takes me a while to figure things out.
When my mom and I would play Yahtzee or Bunco, we would roll the die to see who would go first. Highest number on the die would go first. I thought that was fair and square. In Scrabble, the highest number on the tile would go first. One time we had to keep drawing because we kept drawing the same number. Then we switched to whoever drew the letter that came closest to the front of the alphabet. That worked better.
A much longer way to choose who goes first is by playing “One Potato.”
One potato
Two potatoes
Three potatoes
Four!
Five potatoes
Six potatoes
Seven potatoes
More!
We would stand in a circle and hold our fists thumbs up in front of us. The leader would hit her fist on each of our fists while chanting. If she hit your fist while she said, “More,” you would be out. This took forever, but elimination games were fun, even if it was to see who went first.
When we played with jacks, we used a method called “flipping” to see who would go first. One would place the jacks in cupped hands, flip them to the back of the hands, then back to cupped hands. The player who holds the most jacks goes first. That person would get to scatter the jacks on the floor and begin play with “onesies.” How did jacks lose its popularity? It was a great game.
In chess, white is supposed to go first. Well, who the hell decides who is white? This could take a while.
In the neighborhood and out at the baseball fields where my brother played Termite baseball, I used to watch the boys use a baseball bat to decide which team bats first. The team captains gripped the bat, starting at the bottom, and took turns climbing hand over hand until one of them ran out of wood, thus deciding whose team batted first. I liked watching that. It would have looked stupid if they did “Eeny meeny miny mo.”
Now that I am in my mid-fifties (sigh), I kinda like the “age before beauty” scenario. But, I guess that would go back to “I get to go first. I’m the oldest.”
I won’t step foot onto the Scrambler at your local traveling carnival. I think that once you have been traumatized by an event, you just don’t care to take another chance. And that’s how I felt about the Scrambler. I wasn’t personally injured, but I was scared so badly one evening that it took me a while to head to another carnival.
Oh, carnivals can have a certain element of excitement. There’s cotton candy and the carnival barker trying to get you to step up and win a nice fluffy stuffed animal. I even remember one time we paid a few dollars to see “Ronnie and Donnie the Siamese Twins.” That was wild. We got to walk through a trailer and see them through a one-way mirror as they watched tv. I thought that was really sad. But, not sad enough to go back through and really study them. I thought for sure they were fake. I mean, they were just a few years older than me. What parent would let their children be strutted in front of the public because they were different. But, the family did get some of my money, so I guess everyone won.
I got motion sick a lot , so I was just a lot of fun at carnivals. I don’t think anyone wanted to sit with me on the rides for fear of exiting with Vickie’s dinner all over them. So, I don’t know who I was in line with at this particular episode. I do know that it was a traveling carnival in Weirton, West Virginia, my hometown, and I was in junior high. My dad dropped us off and parked the car. We didn’t wait for him because we didn’t want to be seen with our dads. Just standing near us was embarrassment enought. Poor dads. Anywho…I was standing in line, waiting to ride my favorite, the Scrambler. I didn’t get sick on the Scrambler. I was able to get a focal point going and could ride it easily without throwing up. The only problem with the Scrambler is that if you sat on the right side, you got squashed. I was quite skinny back then, and never enjoyed being smashed at each turn by the Scrambler.
I was standing in line in front of a pretty nice looking kid. I had never seen him before. He seemed a few years older than me though. Our city was divided into two counties, Brooke and Hancock, so I didn’t really know the kids who attended any of the Hancock County schools. I just remember that he was talking loud to the person in line with him, and I was eavesdropping. I have no idea who I was standing in line with. But, this is how the conversation sort of went.
“Yeah, so, my brother said that a kid died on this ride last night when the carnival was in Wheeling……Well, I guess there was a ratttlesnake nest in the corner of one of the cars and the mom snake and the babies kept biting this girl……..she kept screaming for them to stop the ride, but the ride guy thought it was how everyone screams on a ride and didn’t stop it. She jumped out of the ride and was hit by another car.”
I was really eavesdropping by this time. It was also time to get on the ride. I didn’t think I wanted to ride the Scrambler. As we got on the ride, the boy was walking to get on the next car and was still talking to his friend….”Yeah, it was car #4 and I just heard that they only found one snake.”
I looked ahead and saw the number “3″ written on the back of the car in front of me. OMG, that means I’m in car #4.!! I tried to unstrap myself and get the hell out of the car, but it was too late. I put my feet up on the bench I was sitting on and closed my eyes. I screamed and screamed because I just knew I was going to get eaten by rattlesnakes. Whoever I was with (my sister?) yelled over at me that she didn’t see any snakes. That’s because they were probably way up under the bench seat we were sitting on.
When the ride finally stopped and I opened my eyes, I started crying. I couldn’t quit crying. But, the kid that was in front of me, pointed at me to his friend, and they started laughing hysterically.
My mom always knew how to “get my goat.” She would say things like, “Why don’t you let me take you to my beautician so we can do something with that hair.” Just a little subtle. She always had something to say that would just rub me the wrong way. When I would get pissed, she would always add, “My God, Vickie, you are SOOOOO sensitive,” and then add a snickering laugh. Oh, I think she meant everything she said to me. But, it wasn’t until I had children that I realized that she really truly didn’t like me. How did I know this? She bought my kids the Fisher Price Marching Band.
What better way to piss off your daughter than to come visit with a huge wrapped present for your children? She knows that it would be too late to discuss the appropriateness of the gift. She always seemed to bring something that needed batteries on the day stores were closed because of a holiday. My kids would whine because the gift was just sitting there, lifeless, and damnit, Mommy, we want to play with it.
All my mom could come up with was, “Why don’t you keep batteries in the house? Everyone I know keeps batteries in the house, Vickie. Well, except you.” You have no idea how many times I have left the room, turned to face her so my husband could see me, and flip her off behind her back. So, this particular day, the kids tore open the package and there it was, looking at me. Are you freaking kidding me?
Fisher Price Marching Band….Guaranteed to drive your mother crazy. I think I could have put my fist in my mouth. I sat there, stunned. This, from the woman, who went outside, screaming at Mr. Softee for making too much noise with his ice cream truck on summer afternoons. Well, that was a lovely tune. This Fisher Price Band was going to make dogs howl.
The kids were so excited. What a great grandma! They opened up the box to find many wonderful instruments of music. There was a drum with sticks, and a lovely strap that the child could put around their neck so they could walk around while beating the hell out of the drum. And then there were the cymbals. Remember, my mouth was ajar for a very long time. It seemed like they kept taking musical instruments out of the box. And then my mom finally spoke to me.
“What’s great about this, Vickie, is that when you are done, all of the instruments store in the drum.” She looked at me like she was doing me a huge favor buying something that was also its own storage facility. I didn’t know if I wanted to strangle her or strangle her.
Guaranteed to make you drink
There was also a glockenspiel or xylophone in the mix. But, the worst seemed to be a sliding whistle. No, what was worse was watching the expression on my husband’s face. He was smiling from ear to ear. He knew that shit was about to hit the fan and he wanted a front row seat.
But, you know what? I didn’t say a word about it to her. I thanked her like she bought the best gift in the world. And then I said. “Well, Adam, and Alex, why don’t you put on a show for Grandma while I go get dinner ready?” I am SURE she would love to see how much fun you are going to have with it. And as I left the living room, I smiled at her and finished by saying, “Make sure you beat on the drum extra loud for Grandma.”
And they did. Grandma asked them to quit about 5 times. Each time I said, “Now Grandma, you bought this for them and they want to thank you by performing for you. Kids, how about playing, “This Old Man…” or “Grandma thinks you guys are getting tired. She really would like you to play as loooong as you can.” Oh, yeah, I milked it for as long as I could. She was happy when dinner was ready.
We all sat down to eat when I came up with a great idea. “Adam, how about some dinner music? You can play an instrument for a few minutes while Alex is eating and then when she is finished, she can play and you can eat? Which instrument would you like to hear, Grandma?” I finished with a little tilt of my head, and batted my eyes so there was no mistake what I was now doing to her.
My mom didn’t stay too long after dinner. She had to drive two hours home and I’m sure she did it in silence. I even let the kids march out with her to her car. They sure loved their marching band. My mom gave me a dirty look as she drove off. I blew her a kiss.
Sure Alex looks all innocent and sweet....
The kids drove me crazy with their new present. They would march from the living room to the dining room, to the kitchen and back into the living room, beating the drum and slamming the cymbals. They had a blast and I let them go at it. But, one day, oops, they couldn’t find the sliding whistle. “I wonder what happened to it?” It had a terrible sound to it and I was hearing it in my dreams. It had to go. I put it at the bottom of their toybox so I wouldn’t feel like too much of a witchy mom. But, dear God, it was all I could take. But, they had so much fun with the gift from Grandma.
So much so that when we went up to visit Grandma, I bought a second Fisher Price Marching Band that they could keep at her house. “This is the best gift EVER, Grandma! They love it!”
I’ve been teaching my fourth graders about the Revolutionary War and we discussed yesterday how the colonists chanted “No taxation without representation” over and over again. So, naturally, since I am one to go off topic whenever I get the chance, I asked my class what chants they yell nowadays. They just looked at me. So, I just looked at them. Seriously? Has it gotten that bad that they don’t even know what a chant is? Well, I remember the ones we used when I was little, and I can’t remember where I put my car keys half the time.
I think the first clapping song we were first taught is
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark it with B,
Put it in the oven for baby and me.
Patty cake, patty cake, baker’s man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Roll it up, roll it up;
And throw it in a pan!
Patty cake, patty cake, baker’s man.
I loved teaching this one to my own children.
The next one is more of a song than a chant, but more of a song that we did a hand clap with. I think. You can’t expect me to know everything. I’m old. It went like this-
“Say,say, Oh playmate, come out and play with me. And bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree. Shout down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door, and we’ll be jolly friends, forever more…..Say, oh playmate, I cannot play with you. My dollie’s got the flu, Oh boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. Ain’t go no rain barrel, ain’t got no cellar door, but we’ll be jolly friends, forever more.” Heres an example of one way we sang the song.
Ta-da.. I remembered it. My mom used to sing this song ALL the time. And without taking a pause to inhale her Salem cigarette. She loved this little ditty.
2. “A sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see, and all that he could see see see was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea.” Yeah, I remember that one. And then we would clap faster each time. I had great eye-hand coordination back then. Hyper little chichuahua’s can concentrate on clapping games and do pretty damn well.
Comet—it makes your mouth turn green.
Comet—it tastes like gasoline.
Comet—it makes you vomit
So eat some Comet and vomit today.
Boys use to chant this one. Of course, we probably did too. We had no idea what anything meant.
”There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off. There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off. There’s a dozen on my cousin’s
I can hear the bugger’s buzzin’
There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off”
We abbreviated this song into a chant/jumprope/clapping game
My mother told me if I was goody
That she would buy me a rubber dolly
My auntie told her, I kissed a soldier
Now she wont buy me, a rubber dolly
Three, six, nine
The goose drank wine
The monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little row boat. Clap Clap.
We repeated this one alot.
______________________________________________
I think this was my favorite- John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
Of course, this is the nursing home version…the one I will be rambling over and over in 30 years..probably earlier.
“Gorgie Porgie Puddin Pie Kissed the girls and made them cry He kissed them once, then kissed them twice, how many tears did they cry? 1..2..3..4.. -”
”Mabel Mabel if you’re able, don’t forget to set the table…” I don’t remember the rest.
“Cinderella, dressed in yellow
Went upstairs to kiss a fellow”, how many kisses did she get…” and then we counted?
”One two buckle my shoe
Three four close the door
Five six pick up sticks
Seven eight shut the gate
Nine ten start again”
Down in the valley
Where the green grass grows
There sat ______(girl’s name)
Sweet as a rose
She sang, she sang
She sang so sweet
Along came ______(boy’s name)
And kissed her cheek
How many kisses did he give her
{count until someone misses}
Well, I think that’s all my brain can take for one day. If you can think of any others from the 1960′s and 1970′s, just add them to a reply and I will put them on here.
I hope that you will sing at least one of them. You know you want to.
When I was little, we lived about 25 minutes from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was nothing for us to drive to the airport to watch the planes take off. We were also close to the Pittsburgh Zoo and Kennywood Park, a well-known amusement park in our area. We went to the big city quite often. But, it was always a thrill to approach the Fort Pitt Tunnel.
As noted in Wikpedia, “Before entering the tunnel at its southwest end, one sees a commonplace view of Western Pennsylvania’s rolling green hills, but upon exiting at the northeast end, one sees a spectacular view of Pittsburgh’s skyline, often famous as “the best way to enter an American city”. So true, so true. It is just a barren drive on the parkway. And after exiting the tunnel, a whole world of skyscrapers and bridges appear before you, magically, like Dorothy seeing Munchkinland for the first time. Well, except, this was Pennsylvania and not the great land of Oz.
The one thing that I didn’t like about the drive to Pittsburgh was the tradition of holding your breath when you go through the tunnel. I mean, really? We have to do this? Whose messed up parent invented this? And is it just with this Pittsburgh tunnel, or is everyone across the nation demented? Everyone was always excited about
I have no idea who this hamster is
the prospect. “Ooooh, here comes the tunnel. Hold your breath!” And with that, everyone would blow up their cheeks and sit quietly, if not passing out, while they traveled through the tunnel.
From what I understand, if you are able to hold your breath all the way through the tunnel, and then make a wish, that wish is supposed to come true. That’s just wrong. I have always had the lung capacity of a worm. I would never have a wish come true. And what happens if you are in the car with someone who is a slow driver. Like my Grandpa, creator of the traffic jam. He drove like he was heading towards yesterday. Whatever the hell that means.
the light at the end of the tunnel
My sister could hold her breath until she attained brain damage. That explains so much about her nowadays. So could my brother, David. They would sit through that whole drive through the tunnel and then let out an explosion of air noise when we reached the other side.
So, I did the only thing I knew how to do. Ask questions. My dad rarely answered questions while he was driving. My mom was more than happy to answer questions when she wasn’t swiping us with her hand when we were fighting.
Now, this does explain a lot
“Vickie, why are you talking? You are supposed to be holding your breath……..Because you are…………..No, it isn’t a law…….I don’t know if the president holds his breath when he goes through a tunnel……..Vickie, you won’t be able to make a wish if you don’t hold your breath…………..Because that’s how it is……….It just is…………..Vickie, that’s ridiculous, dogs don’t hold their breath………..Please be quiet…………..Please……………..Vickie, ENOUGH!”
And then we would be through the tunnel. Sometimes I would pretend to hold my breath. I would puff my cheeks out like a stuffed, over-fed hamster and still breathe through my nose. I wasn’t born yesterday.
Former tunnel breath holding champion, now mermaid
In the end, I have no idea why people hold their breath when they go through tunnels. Perhaps parents wanted a bit of peace and quiet and created this as a nice diversion. Perhaps people enjoyed passing out from lack of oxygen.
I will always remember the day in school when we got to blow up a balloon and rub it against our hair. Miss Caldwell, our seventh grade Science teacher, didn’t dare do it against her short manicured coif, so she asked for a volunteer with long hair. I can’t remember who she rubbed the balloon on, but I thought it was the neatest thing next to pumpkin pie. That girl’s hair stood straight up, wherever she rubbed it. I couldn’t believe it. How the hell did that happen?
I guess I had been living under a rock to not have seen that before seventh grade. Miss Caldwell let everyone try it. I wanted my own balloon because there was no way I was rubbing a used balloon on my head. Even in seventh grade…in the 60′s, I knew this was not a good idea. People should not share balloons. It’s just wrong. As I looked around the room and made a mental note of who should have washed their hair that day, I really didn’t feel it any longer. I passed. Besides, my mom warned me about using other people’s combs or wearing their hats. She didn’t warn me about rubbing other people’s balloons on my head, but I got the drift..lice avoidance. I surely didn’t want my head shaved like she told me would happen if I got bugs in my hair.
We did learn a lot about static electricity that day. And I couldn’t wait to show my family what I had learned. As soon as I got home, I went hunting for a balloon. I was going to perform a scientific magic act for everyone. I would start with the “Balloon hair” trick, followed by the amazing, “Balloon on the wall”, and finally, the “Let’s shock the shit out of Mom” trick. I would need the help of my assistant and younger sister on the last one.
All kids like to shock each other. It was fun to deliberately shuffle your feet against the carpet and then zap unsuspecting victims. First, we would try it out on the dog. She would just run away after the first time, and I just didn’t feel right doing it to her. She was just a poor sweet dog who just wanted love. No, we needed to move on to our mom.
This was great. Mom had just yelled at us for shocking each other. My sister always went for my ear, while I marked a target on the back of her neck. We would stand about four feet apart and someone would yell, “Go.” We would then shuffle around on the carpet and then when we felt we were charged to the max, would go in for the kill. It was fun, but Kill joy Mom made us quit because we were making too much noise. We were gone all day. Didn’t she miss us? I’m thinking that sitting all day, drinking coffee in her housecoat and smoking Salem cigarettes was just too much for her.
But, after we were ordered to stop and we went on to other things, we noticed that she had fallen asleep on the couch. She was in a half sitting, half lying position, holding on to her National Enquirer magazine. This was perfect for our “Operation: Shock Mom” event. We whispered and decided where we would attack and made sure we would do it at the same time.
We looked at each other, started shuffling along the carpet, and whispered softly, “ONE……….TWO…..(silent giggle)…..THREE……..”
We decided to go for the eyelids. Such uncanny precision. It was if we practiced this for weeks. A direct hit on both of her eyelids.
Uh Oh, Mom's awake...
Uh Oh….not good. Not good at all. Oh Shit…
Her eyes flew open and she was standing up before I knew it. Someone released the Kraken.
It’s never a good idea to mess with someone when they are sleeping. When they wake up, they will lash out at whoever is the closest. This time it was me. My sister was just a little faster. It was “Circle Time.” No, we weren’t going to read. “Circle Time” in my household meant my mom holding us by the arm with one hand, and beating the crap out of us with the other. And we would walk in a circle, trying to get away from her.
I was then sent to my room, like always. My sister was sitting in the closet. The dog was in her lap.
All in all I learned a good lesson in Science class that day. Static electricity is fun. And don’t ever shock your mother on the eyelids when she is sleeping.
Fast forward many years. I had children of my own who were shuffling on the carpet, shocking each other..and me. I was still pretty quick. I had to go and tell them the story about Grandma Georgie though. Not a minute later, I was getting eyelid shocks.
I thought it was fun. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with my mother.
So, of course I told my fourth grade class all about shocking my mom on the eyelids while I was rubbing a balloon on my head in class today.
I have a feeling I am going to get some notes in the morning from some “shocked” mothers.
It’s a given that kids like to play with their toys. They will drag them out, play until their little hearts content, and then put them away at the end of the day. Well, some children put their toys away. My son, Adam, didn’t.
I was a stay-at-home mom, so we played all day. It was like a little day care center. We would make crafts and paint, build with blocks and Lego’s, and color the day away. Adam liked taking his books and making a road with them. All of the downstairs rooms were open, so he could ride his little Hot wheels car from the kitchen through the living room, the dining room and back into the kitchen. It was at the end of the day, that Adam just didn’t want to pick up all of those books.
Every time I would ask Adam to pick up his toys, he would ignore me and go about his business. So, I would ask him again. “It’s tooooo much.” he would always reply.
His next line was, “My back hurts.” He would hold his back like he was in pain, and just couldn’t possibly pick up all of those books. The bending over was just killing him.
I thought I was being a nice mom by helping him pick up his toys, but I soon realized that he had to learn to do this all by himself. New mothers need to learn a lot too. Trial and error. So, I told him he had a choice, pick up his toys, or I would put them in a bag for a day and he would not be able to play with them the next day. I don’t think he believed me and off he went.
So, I got out a black trash bag and started picking up his toys. I walked into the living room and held the bag up. “You can have this back on Tuesday.” Well, that didn’t go well. But, I stuck to my guns and I thought that that would work. It didn’t.
The next day, Adam decided to place his books on the floor as a road. He and Alex jumped on his little car and away they went. So, when it was time for him to pick up his books, he told me that his back was hurting. Oh, he thought he was a good little actor. But, I was better. He had no idea who he was dealing with.
“You know, Adam, your back has been hurting a lot lately. Almost every day. I think that I am going to have to make an appointment with Dr. Dev. to take a look at your back. I’m really worried about you.” I stuck a Pee Wee’s Playhouse tape in the tape player, and said on my way to the kitchen, ” Now, you guys please sit and watch this while I make a private phone call to the doctor’s office. I will be back in a few minutes.”
Well, I knew that Adam was going to eavesdrop. He’s my son. I picked up the phone, with its long cord, and went around the corner, peeking back around like I was going to make a private phone call. He watched my every move. I knew that in a minute, he would be at the corner, eavesdropping on my conversation with the doctor’s office. This was going to be good.
I dialed the phone. ” Hello, yes. I need to make an appointment for my son to get his back checked.” I went on to tell the receptionist about how his back hurt when he bent over to pick up his toys and how it seemed to be getting worse. They put the doctor on the phone for me. I was whispering, in a loud sort of way.
“Hi, yes, Dr. Dev…………why can’t he just have an x-ray?………………Oh, are you serious?………………….He’ll have to have an operation?……………………..I had no idea…………..I mean, how long will he have to stay in the hospital?………….Oh my gosh, he will not be able to get out of bed for how long?………………..Summer will almost be over by then?…………………Why can’t he go swimming after the operation?……………..Well, is there any way at all I can just watch him for the next week or so to see if his back feels any better. I would hate for him to have a back operation. He’s so young………We are going on vacation in a few weeks.He would have to stay with his Grandma Georgie…….. I hope it is just a muscle hurting or something. I will watch and see, Doctor.”
I finished my fake conversation, hung up the phone. I could hear Adam run back to his place in front of the tv. I walked in the room, wiping a pretend tear from my eye, and said nothing. His eyes were wide, but he knew he couldn’t tell me he heard the rest of the conversation. “What’s wrong, Mommy? he asked. “Nothing, sweetie. I just have a piece of dust or something in my eye.”
That evening Adam came up to me as I was picking up his toys and said “Mommy, I think my back is feeling better. Look.” He bent over 3 or 4 times. “I’m going to try to pick up my toys.”
”Well, ok, Adam.” I hugged him like I was never going to see him again. “Thanks, Adam. Mommy loves you.”
I will be the first to admit I am a toy hoarder. I think it goes back to when I was young and I had the first Barbie doll. The first one. She was wearing a black and white bathing suit. My mom gave away all of our toys to the church when we were older. She didn’t even ask us. We just came home from high school one day and she announced that she gave our toys to our church. How non-christian. Thou shalt not steal and all.
I ran to my room and saw that my boxed youth was gone. My Barbie dolls, my trolls, even my Dr. Seuss books. My Nancy Drew books were safe. Well, four of them were. Some little Sunday school munchkin now had my Barbie doll. That’s probably why I don’t go to church anymore. I was so mad at my mom I couldn’t see straight.
So, I hid her cigarettes for weeks afterwards. She smoked about 85 packs a day, but I made sure she thought she was smoking much more. I would take a cigarette out of her pack about five times a day and throw it away, one at a time. I figure that was about 60 cigarettes. Less curling and twisting smoke making its way second-hand like into my poor, little, innocent lungs. I don’t know why that felt like silent vindication, but it did. It was just wrong to give away my toys.
So, I vowed that I when ever I had children, I was going to keep their toys. And I have. Well, they are out at my old house. Everything is boxed up and labled. For example, there are 4 huge plastic boxes full of nothing but Lego’s. I told my ex-husband not to even think about giving away their toys.
“Vickie, there’s a box of Adam’s ghost buster toys…..” I stopped him in his tracks.
“Don’t even think about it. Those are Adam’s Ghost Buster’s. Even if he says, “Dad, I don’t want those Ghost Busters anymore. I am 25 years old,” I don’t care. I will then take ownership. Leave them packed. OKKKKKK????”
So, there are packed boxes of Cherry Merry Muffins, and Ninja Turtles, Barbies, Matchbox cars, and abut 70 Beanie Babies, just to name a few.
My daughter wanted to have a yard sale last summer. She informed me that she didn’t want most of her toys, especially her Beanie Babies. It brought a tear to my eye. Not really, but I could have if I wanted to. “But, Alex, they are brand new. Wouldn’t it be great to bring out one every once in a while for your own little girl? “ She just rolled her eyes at me. I took that as a “We won’t have a yard sale then.” Mom’s toy hoarding prevails. So, in the future, when crazy Grandma Vickie comes to visit, she will have a Beanie Baby for the grandchild, and in the end, Alex will have them in her home and she won’t be able to give them away. hahaha
I did tell my daughter, just for laughs, “And you can’t sell the Rosie O’Donnell Barbie in the box.” I made her keep that doll in the box, because “it was going to be worth something some day.” Ok, maybe when hell freezes over.
So, whenever I decide to quit renting and buy a house for myself, I am going out to my ex-husbands to collect all the toys and books that he is keeping for the kids.
Because I don’t trust him. We have too many of these phone conversations:
“Vickie……there is a box of stuffed monkeys in Lexy’s closet. Seriously, just monkeys. You know that, right?…….Vickie, when is enough enough?…..But, she doesn’t want them…….You remember their names?……Yes, I remember I named the gorilla Reuben……….Well, Vickie, they are easy to give away because they are f(&*^& stuffed monkeys…….Hello?……..Vick, you there?”
With Christmas just around the corner, it reminds me of the toys and games I received for Christmas when I was young. The 1960′s and early 197o’s were the decades of “The Misfit Toys.”
I don’t think they had testers back then. If someone invented a toy or game, perhaps the toy manufacturers just packaged it and put it on the shelves. I really think that if there were toy testers back then, some of them surely would have died. I’m thinking specifically of my first chemistry set. I can’t find any research on “toy tester deaths.” I did look. If they would not have perished, toy testers would have received brain damage, an amputated finger, or if not injuries, than stains on their clothing. And on the carpet. And on the couch. Which piss mothers off to no end. Probably worse than the brain damage. This mother hates glitter. Just thought I would add that because if glitter gets in your eye, you WILL go blind. For that reason, it is banned in my house. I know I read that somewhere. You can’t dispute facts. Especially if you make them up.
Anywho, children got to be “guinea pigs” when the product actually game out. And of course you know that a “guinea pig”
Gus testing a new product
is a person is a person who is subjected to experimental or other observational procedures. Like children of the 1960′s and early 1970′s. That would include me. I very well may have been one of the “Guinea PigChildren.” I was, after all, hit in the temple by flying clackers.
I loved my Clackers…. until THE incident. Clackers were popular in the early seventies, when I was about 13-16 years old, perhaps. Clackers were two hard plastic marbles, (if marbles can be plastic), each about two inches in diameter. They are attached to a ring with a sturdy string. A person puts their index finger in the ring, allowing the marbles (or balls) to hang below. Through an up-and-down motion, the two balls swing apart and together, making the clacking noise that give the crazy toy its name. With practice, it is possible to get the marbles swinging so that they ”clack” together above and below the hand.
Clackers were discontinued because children were being injured. I continuously hurt my fingers while honing my clacker craft. Not all children follow rules. They also made an excellent weapon. If you swing them over your head, and let them go, they could fly across the room and either hit or strangle a kid…. Or a poodle. I read that cave men used Clackers. Or bola’s, as the South American gaucho called them. (See, I do research). I heard that if struck too hard, the acrylic balls could shatter, with flying consequences. I became really good at clackers. I could hit them above and below. I was the Crystal Lane Clacker Queen. Self-imposed title, perhaps, but queen, nontheless.
Clack...clack....crack
One day, several of us were “clacking”, and mine flew across the room and knocked over a glass of water that was on the coffee table, which in turn, spilled the water, which then flowed into my mom’s pack of Salem cigarettes. I guess water-logged cigarettes aren’t easy to light. I tried to get one out of the pack and it just wilted in half. So, I put it back in there. We were done clacking for the day. My sister told on me and off to my room I went. When I came out, my Clackers were gone. Damn….
I really don’t know what the fascination was with Clackers. You didn’t win anything. You didn’t have a high score. But, you could be timed to see how long you could “clack.” Time clackers, so to speak. Maybe it was a lesson in eye-hand coordination.
I really think that I could have been a ninja assassin with my clacking skills. But, I preferred to grow up and become a teacher.
Here comes November! November is my birthday month. All great people are born in November. It’s a fact. So, this year I will be 54 years old. My how times flies! It always makes me think of when I was young and the small parties I would have with friends and family at my house. And it always made me think of my mom and how she could not sing worth a dime. And, on top of that, I always wondered why she always semi-ruined my birthday by singing this birthday song:
Vickie, the birthday monkey
Happy Birthday to you, You live in a zoo, You look like a monkey…and you smell like one too.
Sometimes she would change the ending to “and you act like one too.” Quite frankly, it pissed me off. Was this supposed to be funny? I mean, it was bad enough that she forgot candles at times, and at the last minute stuck playing card numbers in the cake. No lie. For my 14th birthday, I had a 10 and a 4 in my cake. It was always a homemade cake. She went that far. But she stopped short of really making it special by singing a stupid song and lighting the cards on fire. Ok, she didn’t light them on fire. I should have pretended to blow out the cards after they sang that stupid song. But, she rarely had candles in stock for my birthday. Was probably saving them for my sister’s birthday, which was one week later.
That wasn’t the only variation she would sing. On the years she did sing the song correctly, she would add shit:
“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, dear Vickie, Happy Birthday to you…and many more…..on channel four…..and out the door…..like Zsa Zsa Gabor…….” Seriously?
And then there were the birthday whippings? What the hell was that all about? We got spanked for each year and then got pinched for “and one to grow on.” One to grow on what? Made no sense to my sore butt. If we had a foreign exchange student living in our home, they would have run away.
And then there was Grandma. I knew when Grandma was starting to go to the land of senility when she handed me a birthday card one year. I tore open the envelope, and opened the card. She and Grandpa always gave me a lot of money for my birthday, so I always hurried to get to theirs. She wrote:
” Vickie, Happy Pearl Harbor Day! Love, Grandma and Grandpa”
I just stared at the card. I wanted to laugh, because we knew Grandma was demented even before senility hit. Now she won’t remember all the crazy shit she did. And now, here we were, celebrating Pearl Harbor Day…..on November 9th.
“Grandma, thank you. Isn’t Pearl Harbor Day December 7?”
“Yes, it is. Such a sad day to have your birthday on.” She replied, oh so sadly. I just looked at her, and then looked over at my dad, her son. He smiled, and gave me one of those hand movements around the temple, meaning that she was a loon.
One sad note about my birthday is that was also the day we buried my dad, in 1989. I was 33 and it was one of the saddest days of my life. I was so lucky to have them that long. He had a bad heart. I’m truly surprised he didn’t die earlier. Living with my mom was disheartening……get it? Well, he was a funny guy. He would not want me to be sad.
Now, the one thing I did like about birthdays in our household was the fact that we also celebrated half birthdays with cupcakes instead of a cake. That was pretty cool. So, on May 9, when I turned 6 1/2, I got cupcakes. I loved that. I still note when my half birthday is each year, and buy myself some Hostess cupcakes as my little treat.
I tweaked it a bit for my kids. I baked cupcakes and bought them a card, which I cut down the middle, envelope and all, and we sang half of the birthday song: “Hap birth da t yo” or “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you” and then we would stop singing.
When I was young, we held seances whenever we had the chance. It didn’t have to be on or near Halloween. We usually went to Lori’s house, our friend who lived right across the street. She had a small fruit cellar in her basement that was jus the perfect place to light a candle, shut the door, and burn to death. But, we never dropped the candle and we never stopped chanting.
We really had no idea who the hell Mary Worth was, but we believed in her.
We believe in you, whoever you are
Tweens have no brains, they really don’t. There were usually four of us who held these seances. We would stand in a circle, shut the fruit cellar door, and slowly begin to chant into a mirror, I can’t remember for sure, but I think Lori put a mirror on one of the shelves, leaning it against the wall. You had to have a mirror, because Mary Worth was supposed to appear in it.
We would start the chant, always serious, because we knew this would work.
We would start with a whisper. “I believe in Mary Worth……I believe in Mary Worth….” I think that’s all we said. But, we said it over and over and over again, because that’s what you had to do if you wanted to bring her back. Those were the rules. I think that anywhere between the third and thirteenth chant, Mary Worth was supposed to appear in the mirror, looking all vengeful and malicious.
So, who was Mary Worth, you ask? Well, hell, I don’t know. So, I looked her up for your reading enjoyment. There are many different stories about Mary Worth. Some call her Bloody Mary. One account is that Mary was wrongly accused of killing her children. She went mad and commited suicide.
I honestly can not remember if we even knew the circumstances of “our” Mary. We just enjoyed scaring each other and occasionally getting locked in the fruit cellar. Lori’s mom would also at times don a mask and slowly open the door to scare us.
So, this Halloween, whatever you do, don’t repeat that phrase while standing in front of a mirror.
Unless of course, you want Mary Worth to appear, wondering who the hell you are.
Mothers often suffer from guilt. Many women don’t have the luxury to be able to stay home with their children. Some women don’t think of it as a luxury and don’t want to stay home. And that is ok. I lived in both worlds and they both have their pros and cons. But, that’s not the kind of guilt I am talking about here. I’m talking about not giving children what they want for Christmas. What they dream of when they are tucked in bed at night. What they want so badly that they just may die if they don’t get it.
I stood in lines to get the newest Ty Beanie Baby. One Christmas, my daughter got like 60 of them. Yeah, I went a little bonkers in my bid to get them all for her. She wanted Beanie Babies, so I delivered. My son had the Ghost Busters and Ninja Turtles that he wanted. He had the cool Ghostbuster car and all the accessories. They had Lego’s galore. I got them everything they always wanted for Christmas. They were great kids, so I acknowleged that with a fantastic Christmas each year. And that meant hunting down every single item on their list.
Sure, it was hard to find some items, but I was an awesome mom. I camped out and called places. I had connections.
But, there is such a thing as a veto. Yes, a Mom Veto. (I made this up, so it is real in my mind. If any mother would like to borrow and use the Mom Veto, by all means, have at it.) Anywho, A Mom Veto is when a mom thinks a particular item on a want list is lame. That can happen one time per child through their thirteenth birthday. I elected to use my veto one time, on my daughter, Alex. And I am still hearing about it..For the love of God….
My 23 year old daughter reminds me every once in a while that she never got an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas or a birthday.
Kid, it’s just a light bulb. Nothing will cook
That’s right. An Easy Bake Oven. I never fell for that gimmick. No Easy Bake Oven was going to come into my house. It was a frickin light bulb that cooked the cake. She had it on her Christmas list once or twice, but Santa thought that it was dangerous and messy and stupid, so he didn’t leave it under the tree on Christmas Eve.
Ok, I never told my daughter this, maybe because I filed it under For the Love of God, Things that You Do That Remind You of Your Crazy Mother. No one wants to be compared to their mother, especially if she is a loon.
But, the truth is, I wanted an Easy Bake Oven when I was like 7 or 8. I had it on my Christmas list. They came out in 1963 and I wanted one. Everyone wanted one. It was the hot topic. My friends got them on Christmas morning. I didn’t. I remember my mom telling me that they didn’t work. Well, how the hell did she know that? And if they didn’t work, why did Santa bring my friends Easy Bake Ovens, but not me? I wanted answers, damnit. And I wanted them now.
I went to my friends house and was very disappointed in my hearts desire. We mixed the cake, and patiently waited for the “ding.” When it finally dinged?… dang?…. dung?…. whatever….it was still gooey. I was pissed, yet happy, that my Santa Claus brought me something else instead of an oven that cooked a cake with a small light bulb. They must have had a different Santa Claus. A retarded one, perhaps. Because, this damn thing could not cook. Should have just been called Easy Stir for the Real Oven.
I know it’s not Christmas yet, but since they put out the Christmas items beside the Halloween and Easter and Valentine’s Day displays (I shall save that rant for another day), I was just thinking about my kids and what to get them this year. Well, it’s not going to be an Easy Bake Oven, that’s for sure.
I found out that there was a recall in 2007 for the Easy Bake Oven. Since 1963, there have been about 11 re-designs. Seems that during 2007, there were 249 reports of children getting their fingers stuck in the oven door and 16 cases of second or third degree burns and a finger amputation from the oven. Well, looks like they changed the light bulb wattage over the years. Wow. Poor little children. They will grow up to eat take-out. You know that, right?
Every girls dream in 1963…
Finger amputation….. Don’t think my future grandchildren will be getting an Easy Bake Oven.
Maybe my daughter will pass the tradition of not getting one for Christmas down to her daughter.
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I mentioned before how my mom taught me how to play chess when I was in second grade. She said it was because I couldn’t concentrate on anything and games seemed to keep me from flitting around. I don’t understand why we just didn’t play Candy Land. I mean, we did play that game a lot, alongside Chutes and Ladders, but to throw chess in the mix seemed strange. The only thing I can think of is that I must have acted like a moron and my mom wanted to show moron-pointers that her child was bright, because, after all, she could play chess at 7 years of age. Yeah, that will show them.
My dad took a picture of me one time playing chess and entered it in one of his photography contests. He was a pretty good photographer and was always entering and winning contests. It felt weird seeing a photograph of myself hanging on an easel, with a ribbon attached to it. I even remember the caption- “Checkmate.” Was this guy creative or what? I have no idea how he won with that picture, because your eyes didn’t go to the chessboard, or even me,the young child playing the game. It was straight to my little white anklets I had on with my peddle-pushers. My socks were filthy! I mean, the only thing I can figure out is that there weren’t any other people in the contest that month.
I didn’t like chess. I guess it did keep me from climbing the walls. And I guess it kept my mom from cleaning and washing clothes because she was busy playing games with me. ”I need to help Vickie concentrate so she will do well in school”, she always told my dad. I sat daily and played games with her, all the while taking in second hand smoke from her Salem cigarettes. No wonder I have the lung capacity of a worm. I finally told her that I didn’t want to play chess anymore. That’s when my dad stepped in. Found out that he was the real chess whiz in the family. He made it as fun as chess could possibly be for a hyperactive wall-climber. I finally tired of chess and decided I never wanted to play it ever again. Burn-out at age 7.
Well, the years passed and so did the types of games we played. When I was a teenager, we played Yahtzee, and 500 Rummy and Gin a lot. We used nickels when we played Gin. I never heard her tell my dad that she needed to help me play games to concentrate in school anymore. She was using real money. We were bonafide gamblers now. We added Tripoley to the mix and had an ante and a pot and a kitty. Learning new gambling terms every day. Mom thought of it as Vocabulary growth I guess.
“Vickie, wanna play Gin?” ………”Well, what kind of homework do you have tonight?”………”Is it due tomorrow?”……..”Vickie, let’s play just one game.”……..Vickie………”It doesn’t take long to play one game.”……..Vickie…..
So, I had to fit a game of some sort as part of my homework, I guess. I would work on Math and then play Bunco, because Mom justified that Bunco is Math based. Well, gees, so did Monopoly. She would make me be the banker to practice Adding and Subtraction. Now she was happy… Games curriculum..
There was one game that I would gladly give up homework for….. Parcheesi. I loved to play Parcheesi.
Flying Parcheesi Board
The object of the game is to be the first player to move four pawns from START to HOME. I am not going to get into how to play, because it is a bit complicated to explain. All I will say is that on one particular day, my mom had a melt-down while we were playing Parcheesi.
We were playing the game and I made a blockade. Here are the rules pertaining to blockades.
BLOCKADES:
17. When two pawns of the same color rest on the same plain or Safety Space it is called a BLOCKADE and may not be passed by any player, even though made up of his own pawns.
18. A BLOCKADE may be held by a player as long as he can move another pawn. It must be broken, however, if the full number spun cannot be completed otherwise.
This next rule is the most important of all. Well, it was in my case.
21. While there is no rule governing the breaking of a BLOCKADE, It is not in the best interest of the game to hold one too long.
Well, I had a blockade and she couldn’t move. And I laughed. I was able to take my other 2 pawns all around the board and into home. And I laughed again. She was stuck. And I laughed again. She had to roll the dice, but it didn’t matter, she couldn’t move..and once again, I laughed at her predicament……Well, she must have had enough of me, and the next thing you know, she quickly stood up, and aggresively shoved the board off the table, pawns and all.
“GO TO YOUR ROOM!!!” She was pissed to high heaven. I was stunned. I guess I wasn’t done laughing. I laughed at her absurd response to losing big time. I mean, who does that?
I was a teenager, so it was in my nature to talk back just a bit.
“You are sending me to my room for blocking you? Are you kidding me?”
She just stood there. Her face was beet red and she was mad. All she could do was point in the direction of my bedroom. She reminded me of that finger-pointing Ghost of Christmas Future on A Christmas Carol…I couldn’t believe it. The Parcheesi board went flying and the pieces did too. Momma just had a hissy fit.
I went to my room and slammed the door. I didn’t care if I got sent to my room. I had books to read. I had a tv. My dog had followed me when I was exiled from the family for Parcheesi laughing. And it was on that day that I realized that my mom was crazy.
An hour later, there was a little knock on my bedroom door. It was my mom. “Whatcha doin?”
???????????????? Well, crazy lady on a broom, you sent me to my room for playing Parcheesi with you. She had the nerve to act like she had no idea why I was in my room. I heard them eating dinner. Wasn’t invited. “Vickie, want some angel food cake?”
Sure, Mom, feed me dessert and no dinner. And you played games with me to help me concentrate. Well concentrate on this, Mother.
“I ‘ve decided I’m never playing games with you again……. Well maybe 500 Rummy…… And maybe Yahtzee. But, I will never play Parcheesi with you ever again, Mom.”
And I never did. Last night I played 2 games of Scrabble, Crazy 8′s and Spades with my 23 year old daughter. I beat her at all of them. I laughed. Called her a loser.
Ok, I have done a lot of stupid things in my lifetime, but nothing as stupid as swallowing goldfish. Yeah, I did. Three of them. Why? Who the hell knows why I do things.
Goldfish swallowing was a fad that first started in 1939 when a Harvard freshman did it on a bet. It received some local coverage, and in the next few weeks, students from all across the country were trying to top the previous feat. It was nothing for a student (mostly males) to swallow ten, twenty, and even 30 in one sitting. Many towns then passed ordinances making it illegal. The fad only lasted about two years. So, how the hell did it appear on the campus of Fairmont State in West Virginia in 1976?
I had a sorority sister who worked part time for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and some one (maybe the Greek association) sponsored a dance marathon titled, “Dance for Those Who Can’t.” Proceeds were given to the Jerry Lewis people. The dance was going to last through the night, with games and activities going on alongside the marathon. Plus, beer was sold in the Nickel, which was our student union, so that was also a plus. So, we danced, we drank, and I apparently swallowed some goldfish.
There was a guy who swallowed one and the crowd went nuts. He was the first one to do it. And it was pretty early, so I don’t think this guy was drunk. Just really stupid. And I think he had people placing bets and the proceeds were handed over to the MD. So, we went back and danced alongside the marathoners and drank some more. You could buy plastic glasses of beer for a nickel, so we had cafeteria trays full of beer for our group of friends. I usually started laughing after 1/2 a glass of beer, so I was laughing at anything that night. I had a sorority sister walk out of the bathroom with a long line of toilet paper walking behind her from one of her shoes. I don’t know why that made me laugh so hard, but she walked like she was all that, and here was that toilet paper following her around. Everyone knew she just peed, so I guess I found that amusing.
We came back after we heard that some guy in our brother fraternity (TKE) was going to swallow two goldfish to beat a rival fraternity’s goldfish record of 1. Everyone gathered around. The person with the microphone stopped the music during a mandatory break for the dancer marathoners, and announced that they had a person that would swallow two goldfish if they could make $200 in the next 15 minutes. Well, college kids usualy don’t have much money, but there were people from the community also there, so the drunk donors opened their wallet a lot that night, I can tell you that. They had $200 pretty quick. And the guy swallowed 2 goldfish. Wow..I was drunk impressed. So much better than watching a toilet paper walker.
Well, a little later, I saw a little boy being pushed into the dance room in a wheelchair. I thought it was pretty late for the kid to be up. It had to be 1:00a.m. He was about 12 and appeared bummed out that he just missed a college student swallow 2 goldfish. It was a Fairmont State college record. Well, maybe because it had never ever been done there before. He sat quietly while his parents talked to the people in charge of the dance and in a few minutes another announcement came over the loud speaker. “Does anyone want to volunteer to swallow a goldfish for our important guest here?” Come on up and lets’ see if we can make another quick $200.”
Well, I saw like 3 guys raise their hands and were coming up from three different directions at a pretty fast clip. I was right beside the little guy in the wheelchair ( I was drunk staring at him) and it was my sorority sister, who was employed by MD who had the microphone this time. Out of the blue, I raised my hand and said, “I will swallow 3 goldfish!” Whaatttt did I just do? No…didn’t even think that I must be demented. I saw the wheelchair kid and wanted to show him that anyone could do anything if they put their mind to it. I was determined to show this kid that a drunk college girl could swallow some fish.
I don’t have any idea how much money was raised for Muscular Dystrophy for my swallowing 3 goldfish, but I had a crowd. I beat the record of 2 goldfish and no one else tried to swallow anymore. Why? Well, there were only 2 goldfish left in the bowl. No one else was going to swallow a goldfish unless a record could be beat. So, as far as I know, I hold the record for goldfish swallowing in Fairmont, West Virginia. If only the story ended right there. It didn’t.
When we got back from the dance, the phone rang. It was a sorority sister, Diane, who lived upstairs from me in our apartment complex, Garden Lane. She had some disturbing news for this drunk goldfish killer.
“Vickie, I don’t want to get you upset, but I think you need to hear this.” I can’t remember her exact words, but she informed me that she knew someone who had swallowed goldfish at Penn State (I’m not sure what college she used), and got very sick when the goldfish didn’t die in the guys stomach. She went on to tell me that somehow the fish lived in the mucous membranes in the stomach lining and then mated. The guy had to get his stomach pumped because his stomach had expanded because the goldfish hatched and there were hundreds of tiny goldfish swimming around in this guys stomach and they kept getting bigger and it was just awful. And I drunkingly (if that is indeed a word) believed her.
I went into the bathroom and shoved my finger down my throat I have no idea how many times, to no avail. No goldfish babies. I was sick with worry. Drunk people obsess about things, and I was no different. But, of course, no one else had fornicating goldfish in their stomach. I cried myself to sleep. I felt horrible for killing poor innocent goldfish. They didn’t do anything to anybody to deserve such a horrible death. I was a crying drunk…I am sure I had raccoon eyes, because I really liked mascara.
When I woke up, we all put “scarves on head” (girls wore those big blue hankerchiefs on their head when they didn’t feel like washing their hair in the 70′s), hopped in my car and headed to McDonald’s. McDonald’s was our cure for a hangover. The greasy food did wonders. When we got back to the apartment complex, Diane and her roommates were coming out. She was smiling. “Almost had you last night, didn’t I?” She laughed. Oh my God, she was messing with me!! I was soo relieved. Now, I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital and ask them to stomach pump baby goldfish…”Oh, you sure did. I almost believed you. That was a good one.” I was one gullible guppy.
I felt so much better.We walked into the apartment and I plopped myself down on the couch. I felt great….. Until on of my roommates spoke.
“I once swallowed a penny and it came out a day or two later……you know……(she pointed to her butt like I was too dumb to understand the digestive system),so….
I wonder if all three goldfish skeletons will come out at the same time?” That could really, really hurt.”
Skeletons? Oh, that is just great….
Well, it will make for a good story when I get older, I thought.
The problem with kids today (I sound like an old person who walked 2 miles every day to school with cardboard in my shoes) is that they aren’t creative. They don’t know how to play. Years ago, little boys would play cowboys and indians. Cops and robbers. One is the good guy, one is the bad guy. You would run around and chase each other, scream like a banshee, and it was fun. Girls would play house. They would put on a babushka and sweep the floor. Talk about what they were going to fix for supper and what a loser their husbands were. (Well, maybe some talked about that.) They would have tea parties. Even play with Barbie dolls, or in my case, trolls. You used your imagination to create a time and place and characters. It was fun. Especially playing Doctor. Or so I have heard.
Video games have taken away creative play. The kids sit like zombies, working the controls, excited if they blew up the right thing. There are different levels and the higher you go, the more your brain becomes mush. I know they say that if improves eye-hand coordination. Well, so does double jump roping. Get out there, chubby brain-mushed kid and jump around. I think that if you took two 9 year old video game addicts outside and handed them a white cowboy hat and a black cowboy hat and told them to play, they would look at you like you had 3 eyes. And then go into withdrawl from not being able to finish their level of the game they were playing.
My mom would lose her mind if we stayed in the house all day. Even if we were mute. It didn’t matter. We were there. She would hate video games. We had Pong. So, we entertained ourselves. For one, we went through a period where we made prank telephone calls. Can’t do that anymore because of caller ID. We made so many prank calls. I remember one in particular where I called some random number and as Random guy would say I had the wrong number ,I would cry ,because it was my last dime and my daddy forgot to come get me and it is very scary and then I would say in a whisper, “Oh, no…someone is coming…please help me and call my daddy. My number is 723-…” and then I would muffle the rest of the number and hang up..like some boogie man got the kid……..I’m just rotten to the core. One day my mom came downstairs, furious. This was going to be another Joan Crawford moment for sure. She couldn’t even look at us and just said, “Ramaine, go home.” and then proceeded to clean the phone with a wet cloth. Clean the phone?? “You will never make prank phone calls again. Do you understand me? The operator just called me and told me that you were making prank phone calls. She may call the police. Do you want to go to jail, Vickie?”………..I am cleaning the phone because you have a dirty mouth……..I know you brush your teeth, Vickie. But, you know what I mean……Go to your room, Vickie………..The operator did so just call me……………Go to your room,Vickie…………It only rang one time and it rang upstairs, not down here………….I was right by the phone when it rang………..What do you mean I never stand by the phone?…………Get to your room, Vickie……..The operator said you were making prank calls to people……………..I don’t know to who, Vickie, why don’t you tell me?…………….What do you mean it was Cheryl. Your sister is not even here……..
I never made another prank call again. I really thought the telephone operator called. I found out later that my mom just happened to over hear our most recent prank and decided to scare me into stopping them. They were creative, though, I have to admit. But, what goes around comes around. My son made one that surpassed anything Ramaine and I ever did. I will have to save that one for later. t was brilliant. I was quietly proud of his creativity.
Speaking of my sister, we even made the bathtub our playground. When we were pretty young and still took a bath together, we would use the ugly sliding doors with the swans etched in the doors and slide them so she could stick her head out at the front and I could at the back. We would go through about 10 washcloths and play neighbors and called the whole nightly role-playing event, “Mabel and Ethel.” We were always water logged. My mom must have used that time to smoke another pack of cigarettes. She never checked on us. We would use so much water in the bathtub and that bubble bath soap that came in a Sylvester or Tweety Pie bottle.
We also made a cabin in the woods across the street where we lived. Those days were saved for summer. Well, I guess that just makes sense…duh.. It really wasn’t a built cabin, more like cleared out areas between little trees that we imagined was a cabin. We were very creative. Kids younger than us wanted to hang out in our cabin. So, they were more than happy to do a lot of the weeding…of what was most likely poison ivy. And soon we even had a bigger cabin.. So, we fed them little pears with sprinkles of dirt on them, like pepper to the little neighbor children. Whatever was edible, the little kids ate, because we were nice enough to invite them into our cabin and fix them supper. I am so going to hell.
We also had a band. I think I was about 12 or 13 when we did this. It was called Carnival Kazoo. (I have no idea why I remember this.) Our first song was titled, “Catastrophe in A Minor.” I had a little organ on four legs. Someone played that. I played the Tupperware. My brother David had a guitar. Ramaine and her brother Bucky were in the band also. I think we only did this for one day. But, we had fun and it was creative. Meanwhile, the nutcase boy, Eddy, who lived a couple doors down was being creative also, throwing bricks at little kids. But, hey, he was outside, getting some fresh air. He was more of a danger than the German Shepard police dog, Max, that bit kids left and right when it got lose. Max was the meanest dog alive.
When it rained, we would usually go downstairs in the rec room and play ping-pong or perform our most creative role-playing game ever.
Yes, thats right. We played Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.
Most of the time I was Helen. I would keep my eyes open and look up, and feel my way around the ping-pong table. Hunting for my teacher, Annie Sullivan, who was usually Ramaine. I can’t even believe I am talking about this. Anywho, Annie would spell letters in my hand, and she would take my hand and put it against hercheck and shake her head yes, like I understood. Just like in the movie. We were such weird-o’s. And we were small, so I just think we were just so far advanced for our ages. That, or we had some mental issues that needed dealt with.
I now have an inner ear disorder called Meniere’s Disease, which is marked by progressive hearing loss. Karma, Vickie, Karma.
I guess my point that I am trying to make is that if you are a parent, take a look and see where your kids are. If they are playing video games, shut it off, drag their little mushy brains off of the couch, and…..
When I was at the gym last night I saw on the counter a special to buy 4 tickets for $30 to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play. That made me smile. I used to love to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates. I haven’t been to PNC park yet, because I hate PNC Bank with a passion. Well, that really wouldn’t keep me from seeing a Pirate game, but that will be another blog for another day.
When I was little, my dad used to take us to Forbes Field all the time. We lived about 35 minutes away on a good traffic day. We used to hold our breath going through the Fort Pitt Tunnel ( that probably explains a lot) and I was always in awe of the sight of the city after coming out of the tunnel. It was breathtaking. Well, so was holding your breath through the tunnels. I don’t understand who the hell started that, but someone would always yell, “Hold your breath” and you could hear a collective inhale and my dad would have a little peace and quiet for a bit. Hell, maybe he is the one who started that ritual.
Anywho, Forbes Field was built in 1909 and closed in June of 1970. The field at opening, had 25,000 seats, which was the largest in the league at that time. It was named after a Revolutionary War guy, General John Forbes. (I’m not that obsessed with the Pirates. I am at Wikipedia, just so you know). They built Three Rivers Stadium to replace Forbes Field. Did the architects not ask someone if they thought it was an attractive site? I wish they would have called me. What a cold, sterile, uninviting place. I missed Forbes Field.
The best part of watching the Pittsburgh Pirates was getting peanuts in a shell. I thought it was so cool to be able to crack open peanuts and then just throw the shells at your feet. We could be slobs and not worry about getting yelled at! It was great. My dad would buy us whatever we wanted. Nothing ever bothered my dad. He was cool. He went with the flow and always seemed to enjoy the day. Cheryl even behaved herself. Maybe it was Mom who set Cheryl off, because she was ok when she was with Dad.
There always seemed to be some sort of special day at a Pirates game. There was Hat day, Pennant Day and the day I loved the most, but can’t remember the exact title, so I will call it, “First Come First Seat”. People got to pay one price and go sit wherever they wanted to sit. How cool was that? So, we would get there very early and then sit in the first row. Now, my memory is not great, so I can’t remember if we sat along the first base line or third base line. The only thing I know for sure is that we sat where the players would come out of the dugout and hang out by the wall. We were so close to the players. Not so close that we could touch them, but close enough to hit them with peanuts.
Yeah, that’s right. The four of us bought bags of peanuts and threw peanuts at the players. I think I was about 10 when we went to Forbes Field, so that would make it around 1966. The Pirate roster was just unbelievable. There was my favorite player, Gene Alley, and of course Bill Mazeroski, the great 2nd baseman who was from the Ohio Valley. Others included Matty Alou, Willie Stargell, and Roberto Clemente. You may not have heard of Jose Pagan, but he was my favorite target during our peanut assault.
Now, I realize some readers here may be wondering why we would throw peanuts at the Pittsburgh Pirates. Well, because they were there. I remember the one day when Clemente, Jose Pagan and Gene Alley were standing around, talking. Gene Alley ended up being a Fuddy-Duddy, so I replaced him as my favorite player. David started the whole peanut throwing contest. “See who can hit Clemente.” David threw first and it hit him in the shoulder. He didn’t feel it, or pretended he didn’t feel it. I threw one at Clemente and it hit Jose Pagan. I was a terrible throw. He quickly turned around like he was mad and looked through the aisle. Surely it wouldn’t be the four people sitting right in front of him, with bags of peanuts on our laps, quietly shaking from keeping the laugh inside us. He turned back around. Cheryl hit Gene Alley and he didn’t play our game and went back into the dugout..I hated Gene Alley.
Well, I know the whole thing only lasted about 3-5 minutes each time, but it was so much fun hitting these guys with peanuts. David was pelting Clemente. Now that I think about it, they were great sports. Jose Pagan would speak Spanish to Clemente and I just thought that was cool. We could never hear Clemente speak, just Pagan. I guess it was Spanish.
Who would have known that we were throwing peanuts at the most famous Pirate (in our opinion, of course) who ever lived. I remember my dad telling us when we woke up on either New Years Day or January 2 in 1973 (I was junior in high school) that Roberto Clemente had died in a plane crash while delivering supplies to a country that had been hit by an earthquake.
Years later, I asked my dad why he let us throw peanuts at the Pittsburgh Pirates every time we attended “First Come First Seat” Day at Forbes Field.
My dad got a big grin on his face and answered, “Because my dad let me.”
Ever wake up and see a clown sitting on the edge of your bed? Pretty scary, right? Well, that’s how I felt when someone mentioned playing Red Rover. I hated when we played that game when I was little. I mean, who invented this horrible little game? I’m thinking some German woman weightlifter named Olga. It was bad enough that I had to sing about the plague with “Ring a round the Rosie”, now I had to get a knot in my stomach every time Red Rover was mentioned.
“Oh, Dear God, Bozo, they want to play Red Rover today. What would you do?”
Future Bully Loser
First of all, no one wanted me on their team. Remember, I was anorexic skinny. The other team loved not having me on their team, because they knew I was the weakest link. They didn’t even need to whisper, “Run through Vickie”…..or… “See that girl, the one with the shaking knees and…wait, ok, she was standing sideways,..anyway, see that girl with just a little bit of skin on her bones?… Yeah, the one who is crying…. She will let go of Lee Ann’s hand every time. Run at her!”
Now,you have to understand, I wasn’t bad at outdoor games. I was awesome at kickball. I didn’t have much power in the kick, mind you, but I could run. I ran like a deer. A graceful anorexic deer. We played kickball in my neighborhood all of the time. In the street beside my house. I played Duck Duck Goose. (I’m laughing out loud at that one right now)… Mother May-I?…Freeze Tag….Red Light, Green Light….Hopscotch…Colored Eggs…..Do I need to go on? Ok, I will. Drop the Hankerchief….Hot Potato…Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?….Chinese Jump Rope (made mine with a bunch of rubber bands)…Ok, done..Wait..I really liked singing The Farmer in the Dell, but damnit, never got to be the cheese, standing alone….I remember one time when it was getting late, we started playing Hide and Go Seek, and had Monica be it. We told her to count to 100 so we could find a great place to hide, and then we all went home..Yeah, that was my idea.
We would play outside all day long. We had to. Our moms kicked us out of the house. If we stayed in the house, we had to fold towels and do chores. We had freedom outside. The only times we ran in the house was to pee and to get money for the ice cream man. When we were very little, the whole neighborhood was pissed off at my mom because she called the ice cream trucks company and told them that the truck came when “her children” were taking a nap. How dare that ice cream truck. So, they came after dinner until we got older and didn’t take naps. What kind of pull did that woman have to get them to adjust their arrival times..Wow, what a witch…Anyway, the ice cream man came later…sigh…not when you were playing and it was hot, but after dinner, which was not as gratifying. Thank goodness I was fairly liked by my friends, or they would be doing much worse things to me than trying to break my arm with Red Rover.
For any of you who have been living in a bubble and have never experienced the painful game of Red Rover, let me tell you the rules. You get two lines of kids that don’t have anything else to do but inflict pain on each other, make them hold hands and then you take turns calling someone over. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Vickie over” That person runs like hell and tries to break all the bones in your arm as the person you are holding hands with has a death grip on your hand and won’t let go. And you know damn well they will try to run off-center and concentrate on Brittle Girl. Every time.
In the end, all games foster cooperation and teamwork, teach social skills and help develop coordination for those who walk funny.
But, call me crazy, but I think Red Rover was a game for losers…..Yeah, that’s right….. Future loser bullies. Because it was those loser bullies who were the first to also want to play Dodge Ball.
Don’t even get me started on that brain-damage-inducing game.
Rocky Point-Rhode Island
Flooded after Katrina
2011
My literary debut….. Amazon.com for $3.99. It’s sort of funny.
Where the hell did this blue one come from?
Like the picture slider above, this popular slider had fifteen tile blocks.
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Having fun now.
I just found my next collection.
Fisher Price Marching Band….Guaranteed to drive your mother crazy. I think I could have put my fist in my mouth. I sat there, stunned. This, from the woman, who went outside, screaming at Mr. Softee for making too much noise with his ice cream truck on summer afternoons. Well, that was a lovely tune. This Fisher Price Band was going to make dogs howl.
Ok, I have done a lot of stupid things in my lifetime, but nothing as stupid as swallowing goldfish. Yeah, I did. Three of them. Why? Who the hell knows why I do things.
