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.
I admire teachers who have little class pets in their classroom. Well, not really. But, you have to give them some credit for the extra duty contract they take on by hosting live things in their classroom. Someone has to feed them every day. Someone has to change their habitat. And there are benefits. Some children do not have the opportunity to own a pet. And they could, after all, save your life one day, like the little ferret in Kindergarten Cop did. He was hiding in a student’s jacket, and jumped out and bit the bad guy. The little fellow saved the entire school. You know it could happen.
As I walk down the hall each morning, I can see the little habitrails for Mrs. Karr’s hamsters. I don’t know what else she has in her room. I am sure her second graders appreciate having furry little fun. Further on, I can smell the African frog in Mrs. Arthur’s room. She couldn’t find the lttle hopper one morning. An all-points bulletin was put out for him. I have been feeling sorry for the frog for a year or two now. It just sits in a small aquarium, just hanging there, with its face above water. Poor thing. The whole room smells like algae water. Until last week, she finally changed it.
She changed the water and filled it up too high. Somehow overnight, the frog got out of the aquarium via a small hole at the top of the container lid and made a run for it. Well, it made a hop for it. She was shocked. She thought that he should be found dead near the container. I thought for sure it floundered or hopped somewhere in her classroom. The kids would surely find the froggy, dead and covered in dust bunnies. I am positive the frog commited suicide. I mean, if I was that frog, I would have made a hop for it long ago.
It made me think back to Beepo and Geepo. I had always owned weird animals. I had a salamander named Newt. Thumper the skunk joined our household when I was in college. I had Igor the iguana between my hamster Growl Bear and my Guinea pig, Quincy Bozo. I’m surprised my roommates didn’t frown upon the new additions I brought home with me throughout the years. Especially Beepo and Geepo.
Beepo and Geepo were African frogs that I bought when I was in high school. I think I was in high school. My bff Ramaine and I bought them on the same day. I had them forever. One day Beepo died. Or maybe it was Geepo. It was hard to tell them apart. They weren’t wearing collars. They must have been identical twins. My roommate, Paula, started complaining about Beepo/Geepo chirping every night.
“Vickie, your damn toad is chirping. He chirps all night long.”
“Oh, he does not. He is under water. Frogs can’t chirp.” I imagined that maybe he could “blurp.” But, chirp, oh hell no. I also wanted to remind her that there is a difference between a frog and a toad. Get it right, Miss Fairmont State beauty queen.
Well, I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and heard a cricket chirping. Well, I’ll be. Beepo/Geepo was chirping. Aww, he was crying out for his mate. I felt awful for him. So, I made sure that I tapped his glass and paid more attention to him, which is a little hard to do.
I honestly don’t remember how long Beepo/Geepo lived after that. They can live for a long time. Ramaine’s frog lived forever and grew to be the size of a…..baby bullfrog.
So, as I applauded when they found Mrs. Arthur’s African frog alive, I also felt sorry for it. It just hangs there in the water all freaking day…in greenish water with a fake plant nearby. Her class takes turns feeding it and well, that’s all you can do with an African frog. I’m thinking it needs a friend. I’m going to bring that up at the next Faculty Senate meeting. Ok, I sure as hell will not, but dammit, I can’t stand walking by it every day and I know it is lonely. And it makes me think of Beepo and Geepo, circa 1976.
I know that you are probably wondering if I also have class animals in my room, and the answer would be, “Oh, hell yeah.” I have spiders and other crawling things that the kids scream when they see one by their desks. I rescue it with a sheet of notebook paper and put it back on the windowsill. I would not have a class animal because I would not teach. I would be watching that damn rodent going around and around in its wheel. The kids would not be listening to a damn thing I said. I was not attentive when I was a child, so I am sure I would be distracted by a hamster biting at the metal bars trying to get the hell out.
I remember two years ago getting ready to step out into the hall when I noticed something near my feet. Mrs. Arthur also had a damn hermit crab in her classroom that escaped somehow and was walking down the hall. She let the kids decorate its shell, so I could see the shiny sequins as it clawed its way to me. I remember sitting down at lunch, saying, “I almost stepped on Diana’s goddamn hermit crab this morning.” See, it was trying to get the hell out of that classroom. Her gerbil, Digger, escaped for days last year. There is a pattern going on here. I’m thinking pets don’t want to be in Mrs. Arthur’s room and they are planning and executing prison breaks.
I do have a pet panda. I put the Panda Cam from the San Diego Zoo on one of the computers so they can watch the new baby panda. I told them that this was our class pet. They don’t see to have a problem with that at all.
I think about my African frog pets a lot, only because of……….Lonely, the one across the hall. I just named him.
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 just cranked out my second book. I finished my first book on July 7 and have been working on this one ever since. I didn’t get to go to the beach this summer, so I concentrated on my writing. This book is up for sale as an ebook on Amazon also.
I have always been a fool for play on words Halloween costume ideas. Some of you may remember my Halloween posts every October in which I share more costume ideas. I bought an idiom two weeks ago and have been highlighting those idioms that I could turn into Halloween ideas. I uploaded the damn book before I realized that I hadn’t even added the ones I found in the idiom book. Live and learn.
Anyway, if you plan to attend a Halloween party or wear a costume to work or school, this book has something for everyone. Check it out. And I am going to have to start visting my gym again. I’ve been writing non stop and doing not much else.
There are advantages to going places by yourself. You can set your own time limits, do what you want, and go home when you don’t want to be there anymore. You can’t do that when you are with other people. Well, I guess you could, but I am thinking your circle of friends would get a little smaller each time you brought down your gavel.
Ever since I visited the Bronx Zoo in April while visting my daughter in the Big Apple, I have been on a zoo kick. I hadn’t been to a zoo in years and really didn’t think much of them. I almost cried the last time I saw a dolphin in a very small swimming area. I did cry when that nut case let out all of his zoo animals before he took his own life. All of those animals had to be killed. It broke my heart. So, no, zoos weren’t high up on my bucket list. But they are now.
I fell in love with the Bronx Zoo and had a blast taking pictures of the animals with my new camera that has a zoom lens. I had fun.
I just can’t take pictures, though. If it doesn’t make me laugh, I really don’t stay with anything. I found humor in my next subject: my daughter. I wanted to take a break and she plopped down on a caterpillar seat of some sort that other women were sitting on. So, I laughed and motioned for her to move over like she was with the people.
The girl next to her thought she was hogging the caterpillar or something.
I think she thought Alex was too perky or maybe invaded her personal space. She was not a happy zoo attendee.
She left. And that’s how you get the caterpillar all to yourself for a picture.
Well, it’s been a few months since I visited the Bronx Zoo. If I wanted to visit all of the zoos in the United States, like I wrote on my Bucket List on Pinterest, I thought I’d better get a move on. So, I headed up to the Pittsburgh Zoo. I went by myself. It is a 2 hour drive and I just wanted to do something by myself. Thank God, because I got good photos only because I acted like a loon.
I hadn’t been to the Pittsburgh Zoo since my children were little. I was looking for a nice quiet day, strolling through the zoo, taking an occasional picture of a cool animal. Well, I was surprised how close we were able to get to the animals. Oh sure, some had the foggy glass that separated us, but some were open and close, especially with my zoom lens….and my mouth.
People were taking pictures of a lion and were making clicking noises for the animal to look their way so they could snap a picture. I noticed this at every exhibit. The animals weren’t buying into this bullshit. We were close enough that the animals could hear us, so why make stupid clicking noises. So, I started talking to them.
First up was the lion. I didn’t have to talk too loud. She heard me. “Aw, look how pretty you are.” She perked up and I snapped her picture.
Notice she has a “what the hell was that?” look. I decided that clicking noises were bad, and sweet talking was good. Now, if someone would have been with me, I wouldn’t have said a word. Oh, shit, that’s a lie. I found something that worked. So, I was off to the next exhibit. The elephants were hanging out near the stream across from the viewing area. If I had peanuts or a beer can to throw at them, I could have hit them. That’s how close they were. Time for me to sweet talk the baby elephant.
The first time I yelled over, “Aw, look how pretty you are,” the woman beside me looked at me like I had lost my mind. I didn’t care. The elephant heard me and looked right over. I got a good shot and someone standing behind me said, “Nice shot.” Well, the elephant kept staring at me, so I started talking a bit more and added a “Just look at how pretty you are.” The elephant walked to the water’s edge across from me and started moving its trunk back and forth and flapping its ears. I heard cameras snapping. I realized the lady was now filming the elephant and now had my lovely voice recorded on her camera. I talked a bit more and then the elephant ran back when the zookeepers appeared with food. Time to move on.
I was starting to feel a little cocky because I now realized that I was like a Dr. Doolittle. I could talk to the zoo animals. I was able to tame all the critters that came to my back porch. I tamed a skunk to walk a few steps into my kitchen to get a peanut. I had a squirrel that would knock on my french door for a peanut. I had six turkeys actually run to me when I opened the door and yelled, “Hey, you guys!” like the creature on the Goonies. Yes, I knew I had a way with backyard critters. But, zoo animals. I would have to hit a couple more exhibits before I could put that crown on my head.
I could not believe my eyes when I went to the next exhibit. Gorilla land. They were right in front of us. There was no window. There was a canyon-like separation and that was all. They were so close. My zoom found the old man first. I wasn’t talking yet.
This guy creeped me out a bit. He started staring at me after I took this picture. Sure, there were other peopel squeezed in beside me, but I have 7 pictures of him and I swear he is looking at me. I decided to start talking. I immediately got a response.
He turned around and looked at me. “Yes, you. Look how pretty you are.” I started snapping pictures. Some guy behind me told me to keep talking. Oh, sir, you have just created a monster. I was being egged on. Ok, sure. You have no idea who the hell I am and you will never see me again. So,I started talking to the gorillas.
After taking a bunch of pictures of this guy, he looked at his gorilla friend like he was saying, “Is she talkin’ to me. You talkin to me? What fun. Well, after I heard a couple people now yelling out at the gorillas, I decided that my time with the big guys was drawing to a close. I moved on and talked to the other animals. Two broke my heart. The bear looked at me like, “Please get me the hell out of here.”
A black bear doesn’t live on rocks. The poor thing had no grass or trees to rub his back. They threw him a chew toy and that was about it. He wanted to go home with me, I’m sure of it. There weren’t many people at this exhibit, so I talked to the bear for a long time. We bonded.
My last picture was of an African painted dog of I don’t know where. I’m assuming Africa. I didn’t know. I just know there were a pack of them sleeping. So, I didn’t want to wake them up. One was looking at me. I smiled and waved. I’m sure I looked like a loon. I laughed at myself. Did I expect a head nod or a wave of his paw? I have no idea. But, I got one shot before I left. I was leaning over so far to get a good picture, I thought how easy it would be to fall. That would not have been good.
I was happy with my pictures and thought that I would share some of them with you. I hope to head to the Cincinnati or Columbus Zoo next. That may not be until next summer. But,in the end, I was happy that I acted like a loon. Sometimes you have to go out of your comfort zone to get a response. I am beginning to think that I am quite comfortable with acting like I’ve lost my marbles.
After all, they will never see me again, right?
Wrong. I saw the guy at Walmart in my hometown just yesterday.
My mom made it quite known to me after I had children that she didn’t believe in bragging about her children. Well, Mom, that was obvious. All I was doing was calling her to tell her both of the kids made it to the state social studies fair. I mean, that was an awesome feat that siblings could win the local and then county Social Studies fair. And since she lived two hours away, she would not have know about any of this.
Regardless, I had to hear her tear me down one more time. “Vickie, I think that’s great. You know, you three kids did a lot when you were little, but I never believed in bragging.” No, no you didn’t mom. Well, except when it came to my stomach.
Now, you have to understand that I really didn’t excel at much. I didn’t play a musical instrument. I did try out for our junior high band, if that is what you want to call it, but they just refused to hand me a clarinet or flute or whatever the hell I wanted to learn to play. We had to take a music test of some sort and I really couldn’t hear the difference in tone. I was a tone deaf clarinet challenged retard. It was just another test that I flunked. Like the early entrance test to start school early.
I did win a safety slogan contest when I was in fourth grade and even got a little trophy. That was a big deal. I think my mom came up with the slogan though. I’m not sure. I’m just saying that to continue on with my “I really didn’t excel at much” scenario.
I wasn’t much on selling stuff to win contests in our Bluebird and Campfire Girls troop. I absolutely hated going door-to-door and asking people if they wanted to buy goddamn light bulbs or magazines or even candles. I remember the candle drive. I think I went to five houses and each lady of the house bought something, but I just was tired of that bullshit and went home. I was actually doing pretty well, but I just wasn’t into it. Thank goodness I didn’t have to collect money during the sale, because then I would have had to follow through with it.
My best friend won a selling contest and got to wear a Clorox bottle crown, sit in the front row and hold flowers. I was happy for her because she sold a shit load of whatever we were selling. It wasn’t for me, so I just smiled for the picture as a loser in the back row. Not that the other girls were losers in the back row. Sorry, MaryLou. Talking about me, not you.
So, no, I didn’t excel at much and my mom didn’t brag about me too much….until summer time rolled around.
I don’t know what it was in my neighborhood, but for some reason we liked to lay out in the sun. Like all the time. If we weren’t at the pool, we were laying out. And I laid out on our back patio on a towel. On the concrete. You’d think that my parents would buy some porch furniture for the back, but they never did. That just dawned on me right now. I know my mom always said that the sun didn’t like her and she rarely sat outside, well, because there was no place to sit. We had one lawn chair on our front porch and that was it. So, I laid out on a towel.
The summer after I was a freshman in high school was the summer of my great tan. I was quite dark. I mean, like really dark. And my stomach for some reason was the darkest. I had a little egg timer and would roll over when it would ding. I was like frying my body. Would think that I would look like a piece of leather or a shriveled up raisin now that I am in my fifties. Oh contrare. I still look quite young. Well, that is what my fourth graders tell me. They think I am 30. …brown nosing little shits.
So, whenever my mom and dad would have company or one of her women friends stopped by for coffee, gossip, and cigarettes, my mom always called me into the kitchen.
“Vickie, show her your stomach.”
“What?”
“Lift up your shirt and show her your stomach.”
Um, ok. I would lift up my little summer shirt to reveal my stomach. And my mom would then laugh and say something different each time, depending on who was sitting there, sharing her coffee.
“Now is that a Florida tan or what?”……………..”Look how dark she is.”……………”Have you ever seen anyone so dark?”………………….”I know. She looks almost like a black person.”………….”And she puts baby oil on her stomach.”………………….”and it really doesn’t fade…………”
She didn’t care what I was doing. If we had company and it was summer time, I knew at some point I would be raising my shirt. “Vickie!…..Vickie!!…….Come up here!…..” I wished she didn’t have friends.
So, the bragging began. No, it wasn’t for being smart as there weren’t any A+ papers on the refrigerator. No, it wasn’t for winning a slogan contest or for even singing Are you Sleeping, Brother John in front a whole auditorium of Campfire Girls or memorizing everyone’s line during the church Christmas play. No, my mom bragged about my stomach tan.
Typical.
You’d think that with the invention of tanning beds that I would still be a fool for a tan. When I did have a pool,I had a tan, but it was a SUN tan. Those tanning beds are not the same thing. My sister has a sun tan business and about 12 beds in her place. I laid in it one time years ago, and felt like I was in a damn coffin. It just wasn’t for me. I am more of a plant me under the sun kind of gal, and haven’t done that for a few years. When I go to the beach, I head under an umbrella after a while as I guess “the sun doesn’t like me” anymore.
My literary debut, Jumping in Mud Puddles is free for download today, Thursday, July 12, through Amazon. If you don’t have a Kindle, don’t worry. It can be downloaded to your iPad, iPhone or even your computer. There is a quick and painless download from Amazon. I bought a Kindle last week before I knew you could even do this.
Jumping in Mud Puddles is a book of stories that I have taken from my blog of the same name. I have added and tweaked my posts into 44 chapters.
Here is the book description:
“Raise your hand if you-
1) Have ever been chased by a nun.
2) Have been stung by a bee because it was injured and you tried to hug it and then you went into anaphylactic shock because the damn thing stung you on the cheek and you had to be rushed to the hospital (The bee didn’t make it).
3) Have ever made a tent caterpillar/dandelion meal in your cabin in the woods and have fed it to unsuspecting neighbor children.
4) Were slipped a mild tranquilizer and was told it was a car sick pill……for years.
5) Have killed the Boogeyman after lying in wait for it/him under your bed.
6) Have peed your pants from laughing because a monkey has stepped onto your best friend’s head and the best friend doesn’t know what is on her head.
7) Have puked on the school bus and all the kids had to raise their feet while the bus was going up hills.
If you have not been able to raise your hand for any of these normal every day experiences, you are invited to join Vickie as she revisits her childhood during the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. Visit the private Catholic school where she was sent because she flunked an early entrance exam. Sister Potato Head is waiting to stick you into the low reading group, “The Slow Sloths.” Follow Vickie as she takes you for a walk around the best neighborhood in Weirton, West Virginia. Don’t eat anything she tries to feed you in her cabin in the woods, however, especially if she is giggling as she hands it to you, but yet promises it doesn’t contain “real” things.
Jumping in Mud Puddles is a witty self-deprecating memoir with stories that will either make you smile because it reminds you of your own childhood or it will make you laugh because you are glad you weren’t a picky, hyper, big fat liar like Vickie.
And for the record, the cursing throughout the book is a really bad habit that grown-up Vickie acquired while teaching fourth grade. I mean, she doesn’t curse in front of the class…..yet. She apologizes for her potty mouth and hopes that you will see that she is just a grown up version of that skinny child of the sixties. Well, you can leave out the skinny part.”
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Thanks! If you feel so inclined to give me a review after you finished reading my little book that would be great, or tag and like me. If not, again, the download is free just today.
I am beside myself. My book, Jumping in Mud Puddles, just went live on Amazon. This is my literary debut, so I really don’t know what the hell I am doing. I do want to mention to anyone who is thinking about going the ebook route that the formatting is very easy. I mean, I did it, and I can’t find my way out of a sack. I even made my own cover because I am too tight to pay someone else to do it.
So, I guess I should know what I am supposed to do now, but I don’t. My book is just sitting there among the thousands of other books. I just left it there and went for a chocolate ice cream cone. Oh, hell, that was a lie. There was no way I was going out of the house today. It is 102 here in West Virginia. Anyway, I feel like I did when I drove my kids to college for the first time. I dropped them off and left them. I’ve nurtured this book for a very long time now and now I’m done.
So, my blogging friends, if you get the chance, go take a look see at my literary debut. Wow, I’m a real bonafide author sort of maybe. And If you are feeling generous, leave me a thumbs up or a review. And then more people will say to themselves, “Hey, people are reading this little book. Maybe I should, too.” I’m sure that’s what they would say.
I guess I should mention what my books is about for all of you who may stumble upon this post. My book is a memoir about my childhood and how I was just a little bit off center. Most of my blog posts are in the book, changed or tweaked in one way or another. The book has 44 chapters and I curse a lot, which I really don’t mean to do, but those damn nuns that I write about are to blame. They really are.
Anyway, like I said, I don’t know what I am supposed to do right now. I guess I should walk around the place and see what other “authors” are doing to promote their book. I’d rather just sit and take a deep breath, and rest a while. It’s just too damn hot.
Update: It’s the morning after publishing, and I made a top 100 list already! Yehaw! #70 in Kindle Store-ebooks-Humor-Essays. And, the book is on the Humor-Essay page as a “Hot New Release.” I don’t know how long it will stay there, but I’m a happy camper.
Well, school is out and I have decided to work all summer on writing my first book, Jumping in Mud Puddles: A Memoir of a Picky, Hyper Big Fat Liar.
Something like this but not really
I have wanted to write a book ever since I first picked up a pen and wrote Ma and Pa Kettle stories a few weeks ago. Ok, kidding. I wrote all of the time when I was little. I’m pissed off at my mom that she didn’t realize that she was living with an Ernestine Hemingway at the time, as she never saved any of my creations.
I was forced to go to a private school when I was in first grade because I was stupid and didn’t pass the early entrance exam. I missed the November 1 cut off by several days. My mom wanted me to go to school, so I had to endure a few years of Sister Maria, that evil nun with sensible shoes. In third grade, I started writing stories about Sister Maria and wrote in a composition book. I don’t think it was a work of fiction. I think I may have been spying on her. I don’t remember specifics, but I have the book somewhere. I just don’t know where the somewhere is right now. But, she inspired the writer in me. I wrote about Ma and Pa after I was able to leave that horrid little convent school.
When I was in seventh grade, we had to bring in a simple fact every Friday in Science class: Facts on Friday. I think that’s what it is called. Miss Caldwell would go around the room and we had to read our fact. Most of the time we would just cut out the little filler facts from our hometown newspaper, the Weirton Daily Times. For example, one Friday I might bring in-
“Roger Smith, a carpenter from Dayton, Ohio, was struck by lightning three times at the same spot.”
Something like that. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not also had great facts that were slightly bizarre. So, after a few Fridays, my bestest friend Ramaine and I would sit down and make up our own facts. They were “retarded,” our favorite word in the late sixties/early seventies. We may have changed the above fact to read:
“Roger Smith, an electrician from Bombay, India, was struck by lightning at the same time he was turning on a light bulb three different times and lived to tell about it. The electricity was captured in his stomach and he now glows. He no long needs a light bulb.”
Our Friday facts became so popular that we became Friday fact writers. It was like our first writing job. Everyone wanted our facts or maybe we just passed them out on pieces of paper and the kids read them. We would crack up at some of them because they were just soo out there. I remember my weirdest one:
“In Bombay, India, two caterpillars. walking towards each other from opposite directions, met and crawled up each other and turned into a flower.”
I don’t know why we did this one, but there was a kid in our class named Joe, who we ended up writing about in most of our facts. He was a quiet kid who loved our facts, so we asked him if he would like to be in one of them, and it then sort of snowballed and turned into Facts on Friday with Joe or something like that:
“A woman in Bombay, India (we liked India and China facts for some reason) had twenty children in twenty years. Joe, the youngest, was retarded.”
Ok, remember it was around 1969 when I was in seventh grade. No one was politically correct back then. Anyway, we had a blast and continued to write strange facts. It just recently dawned on me that Miss Caldwell never called us out on those ridiculous facts because she wasn’t paying any attention. She was using that as a planning period, I just betcha.
I continued to write as I got older and was a feature writer for the Babbling Brooke, that riveting high school newspaper that grew in membership when both Ramaine and I jumped on board. Ok, maybe everyone in the school got the paper free, but you know, we made it worth reading.
I wrote an unflattering poem about Donny Osmond one time and we would make up horoscopes that were hysterical. Well, they were hysterical to us:
Scorpio- This will be the worst week of your life. Stay indoors and don’t drink the water.
Taurus- This will be the best week of your life. Go outdoors and drink lots of water.
Other times we would write a tv listing of the shows that were going to be on that week. The following is just something I made up right now, but similar to the “retarded” things we would write:
“The Brady Bunch Friday-8:00p.m.-Carole Brady decides to get her hair cut and lets her daughter, Cindy, cut it with pretend scissors. Carole is now wearing an ugly, shaggy hairstyle and Mr. Brady won’t sleep with her.”
One of the best times I had in high school was in typing class. Ramaine was in the class with me, so you know it can’t be just a normal typing class. We would arrive every morning, take the covers off of our typewriters, and start typing whatever assignment was on the board. Well, that is fine and dandy, but makes for a boring class. So, Ramaine and I began typing notes and would get to class early and put them under the covers of specific “victims.” One may have read, “Watch out. This typewriter is watching you.” Oh, the fun we would have. Sometimes we would put them under our covers so no one would suspect us. High school was just so awesome.
In college, I started writing ala Sylvia Plath- just- kill- me- now- poetry after my boyfriend, Rick, and I broke up. I still have those poems and they are actually quite good. I mean, if you want to die because life just sucks.
I was a Speech and Drama major and English minor, so I was still writing and acting and pretending to act throughout college. After I married and had children, I continued to write. I mostly researched a lot for a book of names I wanted to write. Not just any baby name book, but I would scour newspaper obituaries for old names, like Zella, or Bathsheba, or Candy and started collecting first names. I had more than 40,000 names. This is about the time I started drinking. Ok, kidding, not a drinker. But, I still have that mound of names somewhere. I know where that somewhere is. Maybe someday…
So, here I am, in my mid-fifties and I’m going to write a book. I’m not going to hunt for a literary agent and publisher. No, I’m going to take the short route and write an ebook and put it on Amazon for Kindle. I hope all of you will want to download it when it is finished. I really don’t care if I make money. I just want to one-up my ex husband. He just married a really pretty younger woman and all I have is a bad hair style and a 16 year old cat. So, I’m going for a best-seller and fame since I would rather put a needle in my eye before getting married again. Well, I would change my mind if Tim Matheson, my all time dream man would buy my book and then ask me to marry him. You all remember Tim from Animal House and the West Wing, right? Well, I love him. I really do.
The writing is shaky because he signed his picture for me on a subway in NYC. Or I am lying.
I have given myself until August 1 to finish the book and hope to have it on Amazon by September 1….of this year. I will do it. I will.
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.
When I was little, my dad used to take me fishing at the Paris Sportsmen Club. I actually hated the whole process of fishing, but felt I should be there to talk my dad and brother into releasing the poor little fish after catching them. It was bad enough they had a hook in their mouth. I just didn’t get it. I guess if you liked the taste of fish and your mom fried them up upon arrival, that is one thing. But, to catch fish for sport? I thought that was stupid.
I worried about the hooked fish. It had to hurt them. If I was hooked in the mouth, I would be screaming. I would still be screaming about it, forty some years later. I just knew that fish had feelings and shouldn’t be hooked in the mouth, dragged to shore, and then shoved into a bag like thingy until they died from being out of the water too long. Where is PETA when you need them?
But, after I realized that my dad was a real fisherman, there was no talking to him. He went fishing all the way up to Canada. North Bay, and more specifically, Lake Nipissing. That name cracked me up when I was little. I still laugh at how I laughed. But, if there was a place to throw a pole in the water, he was there. He went fishing under the Freedom Way bridge that led from our Weirton to Steubenville, Ohio, home of Dean Martin. I would go fishing there with him a lot. He caught a lot of fish there and would put them on a chain like thingy and let them flop around in the water while he caught more. One time I pulled the rod out of the muck and they all floated down the river. Oops. Fish on a chain.
Now, the Paris Sportsmen Club was just a little bit creepy for me. Creepy in that there were high weeds here and there surrounding the pond. Someone needed to pull on some rubbery wading pants and go pull some weeds. Cattails were immense. But, among the weeds and cattails were unseen creatures, I feared. Bullfrogs used to scare me to death. And I saw a snake swim by one time. Of course, I told my mom he crawled beside me while I sat on the bank. I was such a little story teller.
But, above every thing else, I was the most wary of the flying machines. You know, dragonflies.
Dragonflies at the Paris Sportsmen Club were evil. I swear one chased me on purpose. I would run one way and it would fly across the pond and head me off at the path. Ok, well, maybe there were more than one and they were just flitting around, but I didn’t see it that way. Their intent was to sting the shit out of me. They approached me like helicopters hovering over the Viet Cong and the rice paddies. Ok, I’m using my imagination. Also, the club was on Devil’s Den Road. What’s that tell ya?
I never really understood their purpose, but I watched them enough to know that they seemed to rule the roost. Birds eat worms. Snakes went after baby frogs. Who the hell wants to mess with a dragonfly? Dragon fly. I liked the name, but it evoked fear. Could it spit fire at me while it chased across the moors? Yes, I’m in Great Expectations and I’m Pip. Run, Pip, Run. I realize I had not heard of Great Expectations when I was little, but you get my point. I would make scenarios up in my head as we traveled to the Paris Sportsmen Club each time we went.
I would stand by my dad for a while, because the dragonflies didn’t come near my dad. He had a hat full of fishing crap on his head. I always wondered why he put lures and hooks and little bobbers on his hat. Who knew that fisherman were stylish? But, anywho, the head dragonfly this particular day, aka winged monkey dragonfly was going to leave the great Oz with the fishing lure hat alone because he was oh so great and powerful. No, they were coming for me, aka Dorothy, from West Virginia. My house landed on my mom and I had to put on red tennis shoes and find Oz. Red pom poms on my shoes would have to do. So, I couldn’t be standing near Oz to begin with if I was going to play Wizard of Paris Sportsmen Club, now could I? I would have to head down the side of the pond and see what I could find to represent the scarecrow. My mom headed us off that morning before we left.
“Vickie, you can’t take Susie with you out there!” She grabbed my little terrier from my arms.
Damn, caught. I tried to take Susie the dog, aka Toto, to the Paris Sportsmen Club with me that morning. How the hell can you play Wizard of Oz without a damn dog? She just pissed me off. That’s why the house landed on her that day.
Just great. We were only there for about thirty minutes when it began to rain. I was just starting to make a scarecrow out of sticks and cattails when I heard Oz (I mean Dad) call for me. We ran to the car and drove home. Those damned winged monkey dragonflies would have to wait another day.
I did find out something interesting that day. My dad told me while we were driving home that dragonflies can’t bite or sting.
I just stared at him. The hell you say.
I had been going out to the Paris Sportsmen Club with him for as long as I could remember, and he just got around telling me this crucial piece of information when I was like eleven. Thanks, Dad. Although actually, I think he kept that to himself. He had to watch me talking to myself, making up role-playing games while he fished. The dreaded dragonfly would have become just a bug, and perhaps I would have become bored while waiting for him to hook yet another poor little fish. That was an interesting ride home in the rain.
So, when it would rain and we would be stuck in the house, I would sometimes draw pictures of dragonflies. I couldn’t draw worth a shit, but they were dragonflies nontheless. I admired them but feared them. I just knew that the next time we went to the Paris Sportsmen Club, a huge, dragonfly monster was going to rise up out of the cattails in the creepy part of the pond and pick me up with their wicked fly claws and carry me away. Or drop me over the middle of the pond, where another water creature would be waiting for me. Like the gigantic fish with the whiskers. Don’t let the name “catfish” fool you. Catfish were evil too.
The Paris Sportsman Club 2012..The damn cattails are still there.
Well, I guess I got a little older and I was just too cool to go with my dad to the Paris Sportsmen Club anymore. I never went fishing after sixth grade or so. But, the dragonflies weren’t done with me yet.
Several years ago, we had just finished dinner, when my son called me out onto our patio.
“Oh my God!” I could not believe my eyes.
Now, you have to understand that we had an in-ground pool and a pond. Several neighbors had ponds. We were used to an errant dragonfly or two, hanging around. By this time, they were beautiful to me and my favorite insect. Everyone has a favorite insect, right? I had a dragonfly shower curtain in our pool house and dragonfly hooks for the towels. I was all about dragonflies.
But, what I saw made me smile, nervously. There were thousands and thousands of dragonflies heading toward us. And they didn’t stay high up in the sky, like the Canadian geese do when they migrate. Was this a migration or was this a swarm? Like a swarm of Paris Sportsmen Club descendants finally coming for me.
I mean, that’s what had to be going on, right?
Ok, kidding. But, what a sight!
We stood on the patio and watched them fly through. It was remarkable, but eery at the same time. Was it the end of the earth? Would some of those flying beasts have the face of a lion? Revelations and all that scary stuff. A dragonfly apocalyse.
Some of them hung around for a day or two. Stragglers came for a few days afterwards. So, of course, I went right to the internet and found out that green darners, among other species of dragonflies, migrate in swarms through our area toward North and South Carolina. I had lived on that hilltop for sixteen years and never saw such a sight. I am thinking maybe they were a bit west of their normal path perhaps.
photo princeton.edu
Perhaps.
So, that brings me why I am writing this today. I am wondering again about dragonflies. It seems that there are dragonflies in the parking lot of our local Walmart. I’ve noticed them for a few years now, and they are back again today. Why a Walmart parking lot? Maybe there was a pond at one time where this stupid Walmart was built a while back and by instinct they come back here. Nothing else makes sense. A parking lot is a stupid place for dragonflies to hang out.
As I unlocked my door to put my groceries in the back of my car, a dragonfly flew right in front of my face.
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-
My parents never took me to the beach when I was little. I really don’t know why. I’m sure my mom had something to do with it. Three kids were too much for her. But, then again, she said we couldn’t have a real Christmas tree because she was allergic to pine needles. After I grew up and had my own kids, she laughed and told me that she wasn’t really allergic to pine needles, just picking up dead pine needles all over the house. The bitch.
So, yeah, I’m thinking that the reason we never went to the beach was because of my mother. I guess I can understand why. I would be off into the ocean, trying to make friends with a stingray. Cheryl would get mad and march off into the beach sunset, never to be found again. David would just sit and play with a toy truck in the sand, smiling all the while. David would have been a great beach person.
So, we just took trips around the state of West Virginia. Sure, we also ventured down to Tennessee to visit my mom’s best friend or over to Virginia to visit my cousin, Jackie. We went to Canada and watched my dad fish. But, other than that, we stayed in the WV, Pennsylvania, and Ohio perimeter. Which was ok. I didn’t know about how much fun people were having at the beach.
And therefore, I also didn’t know that people could build stuff out of sand.
What??? How cool would that be? If I saw something like this when I went to the beach when I was little, that’s what I would want to do for a living. Yes, I would then want to grow up to be a sand sculpturer.
photo pinterest
If I saw this on the beach I would not go in the water. I would first stare at this for about 30 minutes, and then I would want to create my own.
Ok, yeah, I would get frustrated at first. My mom would have handed us buckets and shovels without involvement. She would just stand over us, looking around. My dad, who would have been filming us as he always did, would hand my mom the camera and would show us how to build a sand castle.
But, that wouldn’t be good enough for me. I mean, I just saw a freaking alligator/dragon sand sculpture. I would want to make something special. Bucket forms in a circle with a shell on the top of each one was not creative enough now that I saw art.
Pure art.
How about something like this, Dad?
Or this.
Oh, yes. I would have given up my smoking actress employment route and taken up sand sculpture for a living. But, alas, my parents never took me to the beach when I was little. I never got to make sand castles with little plastic buckets. I never got to dig a hole and cover up my mother.
I had to wait until I was older. When I had my own kids. Well, not to cover up my mother.
Since I wasn’t able to go to the beach until I was in college, I tried to make up for it by going about every summer. We first started by going to Ocean City, Maryland, where they had wonderful beach sculptures. But, most of the ones we saw were religious. I just didn’t care if the guy worked on it for forty days and forty nights, I just was not into religious stuff. Give me a freaking dragon/alligator or something like this please:
I would love to see this. Young Vickie and older Vickie. I would have stared at it for thirty minutes and then would take the kids to build our own.
Well, except, that since my parents didn’t take me to the beach when I was little, I developed no talent or skill for sand castle making. Actually, I sucked. We did bury my son one year up to his neck and made him into a mermaid without his knowledge. We would giggle as we molded breasts for him and told him we were making him into a beachy strong man with big arm and leg muscles. It was a pretty good mermaid.
But, other than that, no skill. I wouldn’t let the kids use the formed buckets. No, we were going to make a castle with just our hands. Well, not like this one-
This was done by someone whose parents took him/her to the beach when they were little.
Even this one was done by a former beach child I am sure. This kid’s parents owned a beach house. I bet I am right. He probably sculpted this with his eyes closed. That’s how good kids can get at sand sculptures when their parents take them to the beach for vacation. Can’t sculpt out of sand when you are in car heading to Canada to watch your dad fish.
No, I will admit when I have no skill set. So,we were going to make drip castles! I watched someone make drip castles when I was pregnant with Adam. That was the summer that I wore a bathing suit that was green and red with black specks. At seven months pregnant, I looked like a damn watermelon.
So, I learned all about drip castles. I was ready for kids. They would go to the beach every summer, damnit, and learn to sculpt.
So,I found that the sand at Ocean City, Maryland wasn’t as good as the sand at Myrtle Beach for some reason. The first time I started scooping up sand, I was in heaven. I turned into a kid and would sit on the beach all day making the best drip sand castle ever. The one above, no offense, was nothing to the ones the Pellillo family made every year at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We would sign our creation before we left for the evening and put a big WV beside our name. Yes, I was finally able to make a sand castle! Yeehaw!
It wasn’t until my kids were a bit older, and I realized that they had given up after an hour or so of drip castle building, that I found that I was all by myself. I was sitting in a water hole in my Mickey Mouse t-shirt, dripping away on fantastic spires, when I looked at some women that were parked nearby. They were sitting with full make-up on, sun visors on perfectly coiffed hair, with their bright, long, red fingernails resting on the beach sand chair arms. They were my age and they were watching me.
I felt stupid. My kids abandoned the magic family drip sand dripping castle making and went into the ocean with their boogie boards and their father. I didn’t even know they were gone. Adam was working on one of the many bridges and Alex was working on making the roads throughout the kingdom while I sat in my water hole scooping up new wet drippy sand to create yet another forest tree. But, alone I sat. I had my hair pulled back into a ponytail and was wearing a freaking Mickey Mouse over sized t-shirt.
Wasn’t I supposed to be behaving like the golf widows right beside me? Wasn’t I supposed to be sitting in a beach chair, reading a book and watching people walk by?
I guess my drip castle making days were over.
I never made another drip castle. Oh sure, I made some right beside my chair, like the sad looking starter kit that I made in 2010, when I took my kids to the beach after my divorce.
Adam joined in for a while, which made me happy. But, for the most part, we were over drip castles.
Time to read books and watch people.
Until the grandkids come along. Grandma Vickie will explain to them how a drip castle is made.
I was walking down the toy aisle at Walmart the other day, when I came upon something that stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to stare at this oddity, sitting on the shelf, staring at me, before I said aloud, and to myself,
“This is f*&$!# up.”
I had to turn around quickly to make sure that there were no children in this aisle. I teach elementary school, for goodness sake. Teachers aren’t supposed to throw around the f-bomb in the toy department of their local Walmart. But, I just couldn’t believe what I saw.
What the hell happened to Barbie?
Now, I realize that it has been some years since I have played Barbie dolls with my daughter. She had twenty-one Barbies and had names for them all. Well, of course she would name them. You have to. It’s a rule. But, I remember a different Barbie than the ugly, bloated, botox-faced doll that stood in front of me….in a box. I just wanted to tear into each of their packaging and tear their little heads off. Not because I am a loon, but because these were imposters. That’s not Barbie. These so-called dolls look like the dolls my daughter got for the $2 gift exchange in kindergarten. Imposter Barbies. Now the Barbies are copying off of the imposter Barbies. You are following me, right? And I’m not talking about the clothing. The outfits Barbie wears are awesome. Whoever the designer is a Mattel should get a high-five. No, I’m talking about their faces, their bodies. The mold was broken somewhere along the way and replaced by some cheaply made Barbie body. A plastic deformation has taken place…It takes a lot for me to curse in the toy aisle at Walmart.
I had the very first Barbie doll. The first Barbie appeared in the stores in March 1959. I was just three years old. I don’t know if she bought it then, but I had it. I probably toddled around, clenching Barbie in one little hand and my Lassie stuffed dog in the other.
Notice the earrings. This will be important later
I don’t know why I am being so overprotective of Barbie in 2012, because I didn’t treat her so kindly back in the early sixties. I sort of feel bad for what I did to her.
As I got older, I really enjoyed playing with Trolls. Trolls were big from 1963-1965. Barbie sort of got shoved off to the side while my friends and I bought trolls and everything that came with them. Lee Ann was the first to have a troll house. What?? There’s a troll house? Dear God, I had to have one too. We would all get together and play with our trolls. We would comb their hair and have great conversations.
I mean, is this not the greatest thing you have ever seen? I was salivating when I was little when I saw Lee Ann open this case. I realized at this very moment that I would never play with Barbie dolls ever again.
Oh, but I did play with Barbie dolls again. Sort of.
We had a clothes chute that ran from inside my parent’s closet to the basement, right beside the washing machine. I’m thinking that was done on purpose. Anyway, one day when Ramaine and LeeAnn weren’t around, I played trolls with my sister. It was time for…..
Barbie in Peril
Or something like that. We set up a troll make believe campfire made with a few of my brother’s Lincoln Logs near their troll house/cave. I had watched enough Tarzan movies to know that the jungle natives put people in pots to cook them. So, that’s what was going to happen to Barbie. She was going to be cooked by the trolls (jungle natives).
I don’t know how this happened. Trolls were always sweet little creatures that lived in a cave. But, when I didn’t get to play with Ramaine and LeeAnn and had to play with my little sister, I guess I was mad. And therefore, my trolls became mean. Mean enough to cook someone in a pot.
My sister put a piece of twine, which I think was really the dog’s leash, around Barbie, and lowered her down the clothes chute until she was over the campfire. We let her hang there for a while. I do remember her swinging back and forth for a few minutes. We made native noises like they did on Tarzan and then I did something absolutely horrible to Barbie. If my mom saw me do this, she would have taken me to a shrink a minute later. But, hey, we were playing human sacrifice and sometimes, just sometimes, Barbie had to be tortured.
I took the earring out of her ear and plunged the tiny needle point into her chest. Well, her breast. And then I put her in the campfire pot (mason jar.) Barbie was going to be dinner.
I sound like a little Jeffrey Dahmer in the making. It sounds like something stupid brothers would do. One one hand, I’d like to think that I was just really being creative. I mean, I looked through pictures of the National Geographic and watched Tarzan. I knew all about Ubangi’s and native jungle people. And on the other hand, I feel like, years later, I need to apologize for being a part of a tortuous duo. I’m pretty damn sure this was all my sister’s fault. But, I feel compelled to write an apology to my first Barbie doll.
Dear Barbie,
I am sorry I stabbed you in the breast with one of your own earrings. I will never do it again.
Love,
Vickie
My mom gave my Barbie dolls away to our stupid church when I went away to college. They had been packed away since I was in junior high. She never asked me if I wanted them. I did. That first Barbie doll is pretty valuable now. But, some little church going snot got my Barbie doll.
I wonder what she thought when she took off her swim suit, only to discover that Barbie had pin holes in her breasts. What’s your Barbie doll worth now, huh?
Ok, I’m done ranting. But, you know, it’s like everything else. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
When I was young, I was all about making stuff. I made those colorful potholders. I remember my mom buying the plastic loom and I would sit and loop until it was done. And then present it to her for her birthday or Mother’s Day. I never realized that she probably knew what she would be given.
I was never one for the paint by numbers pictures. Oh, I am sure I did paint one or two of them, but I really had no patience for that little piss ant of a paint brush. You know what I am talking about. And besides, I would always end up with screwing up the whole picture by painting orange on #3, when everyone knew that #3 was supposed to be blue. I was an idiot. And you could never undo it, because two colors mixed turned into pukey brown green.
My mom took paint by number to a whole new ugly level. She borrowed a projector and projected a picture up on the wall of my bedroom and painted a picture….of a cherry tree. It covered the whole damn wall. A cherry tree. Pink blossoms. I hate pink. After that, she decided she was ready for a more difficult project for my brother’s room. She painted a clipper ship on his wall. I am talking about the whole wall was a clipper ship.
I wanted the clipper ship. The cherry tree, with its freaking blossoms, stared at me every day. At least I could hop on the clipper ship and sail out of the retarded bedroom.
Oh Dear God, the cherry tree is making a comeback. I had the whole damn tree.
Close by not really. My mom’s was actually pretty good
So, you would think that after staring at a cherry tree for a few years that I would not want anything on a wall. But, no, I’m a glutton for punishment.
No, I found another outlet: latch hooking. Once I learned how to latch hook, there was no stopping me. I hooked all of the time. I hooked in high school and hooked a bit through college. And then I hung the ugly rugs on the wall. Well, hell, I didn’t want anyone walking on them. I worked hard on those babies.
Latch hooking. So easy I could do it.
Ugly babies to boot. I can’t remember how many I actually hooked, but I do remember latch hooking the Wizard of Oz characters. Yeah. It was after I pledged into the Sigma Sigma Sorority. The tri-sigs at my college had the Wizard of Oz as their big theme for everything. So, when I found a latch hooking kit for Dorothy and her friends, well, I had to latch hook it.
ebay photo
Ok, so it didn’t look like this, but it’s the only one I could find.
I did make a pillow for my boyfriend, Rick.Or maybe it was Jay. I can’t remember, but some lucky boyfriend received this great gift. Made from love. It was a red heart on a black background. I am sure it was truly ugly. I can’t remember what I hooked in the middle of the heart, but it was something retarded I am sure.
I did find one that I did latch hook. I think. Isn’t it simply awesome?
Is that a……clipper ship
The more I google, the more latch hookings I find that I completed. But these aren’t them. These are lovely examples that you, too, could latch if your heart desires so. I think you should.
and my favorite-
I mean, who wouldn’t want a Mrs. Doubtfire latched rug?
I did get excited to see that latch hookers are finding creative ways to latch hook, but without the ugly kits. There is a tutorial on pinterest for taking strips of old t-shirts and making a rag rug. And, I saw a rug that doesn’t have a face or smurf or a unicorn on it. I just may start hooking again……You know what I mean.
t-shirt latch hooking. Not too shabby.
In the end, there have been some pretty ugly things that people make and hang on the wall. I guess rugs shouldn’t be hung on a wall. And potholders shouldn’t either, I guess. We had some crazy things that were pretty ugly back in the seventies. But, this one is king:
Now, this is the real deal. Dogs Playing Poker was a collection of sixteen oil paintings that were commissioned by a cigar company and painted by C.M. Coolidge. And this was started back in 1903. I personally like the originals. I would so hang one in my home. It is the reproduction of these pictures that have found their way into our basements and closets. Many are gag gifts. And some are on black velvet. That makes it extra special. Now they are collectibles. Go figure.
Whatever you do, think long and hard before you paint on your walls. Sure, it can always be covered up by paint in the future.
But, your children will have already been damaged.
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 guess there are a lot of things that just grate my nerves. I already wrote about the whistler that was following me in Walmart. I loathe people who chew their food and make that disgusting smacking noise. Keep your mouth shut please. And I want to be a teacher and hold out the palm of my hand to all gum snappers. You know who your are.
I would have to say that gum snapping ranks in my top 5 of “Things That Make Me Want to Slap Someone.” I really can’t stand it.
Years ago, while I was sitting in church, I heard a woman behind me snapping her gum. I looked behind me and gave her a look. Oh, it was just a fake smile kind of look. I wanted to connect the sound to the face to see if I could take her. Gum snappers have no place on this earth. Well, she must have just put the Dentyne in her mouth (I saw the wrapper) and she just really went to town on it. My daughter, also a gum snapper hater, gave me a look that rivaled mine. I was impressed and proud. But, the church gum snapper lady would not stop. No one else seemed to be bothered. Gum snappers remind me of cows chewing their cud. And this cow had to stop.
The church I belong to is not one of those raise your hands in the air and talk out loud kind of churches. But, I wanted to turn it into one of those that Sunday morning. I wanted to raise my hands in the air, sway them from left to right and then stand up and exclaim to the congregation-
“Dear people…. the lord just spoke to me!…… (Gasps from the crowd I am sure) And he told me that this woman (pointing to the gum snapper) is going to be struck down by a Mack truck…..this afternoon….if she does not stop her gum snappin ways.”
I could only dream. Well, I stopped attending church and so I don’t have that problem anymore. Yes, I run away from my problems. It’s hard to do when you are on a plane, however. Yes, there was a huge gum snapper in the airport while we were waiting for our flight to Cancun last summer. There was no way I was going to sit with a gum snapper in a closed in space for a couple of hours. It was not going to happen. I would have to shake and then slap her. I moved from where I was sitting at gate whatever and could still hear her. Shit. Thank God she ran out of gum and even told her husband she was out of gum. She was going to hurry and buy some before boarding the plane, but her husband told her no. She looked like a drug addict waiting for withdrawl. I was pleased.
So, imagine my surprise when I was looking at images on pinterest last night and came across a photo of a gum wrapper chain. Wow, I haven’t seen one of those………..since I made one in the early seventies. Completely forgot about those things.
Wow. I made a gum wrapper chain. I forgot about that. I made one either in junior high or high school. I hung it in my bedroom, running it all around the perimeter of my room. Sort of looked like a narrow little border. My room was about 13×13, so it was a long chain. And I made it. So, was I a reformed gum snapper? I had to think back.
You know, reformed people are the worst kind. Former cigarette smokers are judgemental. They will tell you to your face how bad cigarette smoking is for you. Well, some of them are. I don’t want to piss anyone off here. Some people who never wore their seat belt until they had an accident now won’t start the engine until everyone is fastened up. And some people who didn’t attend church and now found God will let you know all about it. So, was I a gum hater because I once was a gum snapper?
I don’t know how I came across making gum wrapper chains, but I was all about making one. It was easy to learn. Not so easy yesterday, when I tried to make one on my own. I forgot how it was done. Luckily, the interneter gods have photos and videos all about making a gum wrapper chain.
First, you need about a thousand gum wrappers. I remember asking my friends for their empty chewing gum wrappers. Throw away the silver inner wrapper and give me the outer one. I also remember chewing a lot of gum for the gum wrapper chain.
I don’t remember how long it took me to make the chain. I wanted to wrap it around my bedroom. And I refused to stop until I was done. I kept it as one long chain, so I am sure I kept standing on my bed to see how far it had made it around my room. I realize that I could have just laid it on the floor and run it around the same way, but I was an airhead, so I did it my way.
I never made a pattern with my gum wrapper chain like the person did in the above photo. I had no time to be colored coordinated. It was like one of those pot holders I weaved. Random colors. I was all about being random. My OCD anal ways didn’t rear its ugly head until much later.
It’s funny how memories can be supressed. I now remember my mom yelling at me to stop snapping my gum. Dentyne to be exact. It was the most snapable gum. Really. Dentyne.
So, I was one of those………..Wow.
I don’t chew gum so much anymore. I only chew it when I fly because that’s what I was told to do so my ears wouldn’t explode. I was fine this last trip to visit my daughter in New York City. And I didn’t sit by anyone who was a gum snapper either.
I wish I would have kept my gum wrapper chain. I remember taking it down when I went off to college when my little sister took over my room. I simply threw it away. I spent hundreds of hours making that damn thing and I just threw it away.
Maybe I didn’t want to be remembered as a gum snapper.
Remember when you were very young and you were given shapes and had to put them in the holes of the same shape? Well, you shouldn’t, unless you played with them when you were eleven. But, most of us have played with those little shape finders. Some kids were stared at by some guy with a clipboard, clad in a long white jacket to determine how long it took you to put the circle block in the circle hole. If it took too long, then you were retarded. (Sorry, my word in my generation.) Regardless, we had to fit things where they belonged.
And now I am doing that again with an addiction called Pinterest.
Pinterest. It’s going to what gets me fired from my teaching job. I haven’t gone to Pinterest from school yet. But, I want to. But, for those of you who have not received your invitation yet, you are probably wondering, “Vickie, what exactly is a Pinterest?” Hell, I don’t know how to explain it.
It’s like gathering and sorting and putting things in their places. Things we like. And we put them in little squares and rectangles. And then we give those little “boards” names, like “My Style” or “Bucket List.” You see, Pinterest is for pinning our interests. Hence, the name Pin terest.
Say you like cats. Well, there are cute little images of cats that other pinteresters (my word) find on the web and upload onto one of their little boards. And then someone might see it and smile and think, “I like that, and then you would re-pin it, which means steal it in a way. Someone is doing the work finding an image online and you can take it for your own little categorized board. And then maybe your friend likes that picture and takes it from you. Oh, they don’t take it, per se, but copy it. And it goes on and on. It’s all the rage.
Being that my explanation sucks, let me say that lot of well known people have pinterest. Martha Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres, and Maria Shriver, to name a few. Maria Shriver is now following me. Yeah, you can follow people if you like their boards. You can even see if someone repins one of your pins. Doesn’t this sound fun?
So, as mentioned so precisely, a board is where you put everything from one category. Here are some random boards that people have on their pinterest:
Recipes to Try Travel Furry Friends Quotes My Style Christmas
Humor Sweet Tooth For the Birds For the House Products I Love Fall
You can have as many boards as you want on Pinterest. Some people only have five. Some have hundreds and thousands of followers. As of today, I have 70 boards. I am following 74 people and I have 50 followers. And right now I need to wash clothes. But, here I am, writing a blog post on my wordpress addiction about my new Pinterest addiction. I’m so glad I don’t smoke or drink.
I do worry about myself when I look at some of my board titles. I have some “normal” boards, but then I have weird ones. I mean, I have one titled, “Ventriloquist Dummies Creep Me Out,” where I have repinned a bunch of disturbing scary wooden people.
“Nuns Scare Me” is another board. Because, well, they do scare me.
And then I followed it with some food. A board just for dips. “Dip It, Dip It Good.” I liked that title.
Here’s a list of some of my other boards. Well, just in case something may catch your eye. And then you could say, “Hey, Vickie likes that too!”
1. My Blog-Jumping in Mud Puddles
2. Wanderlust
3. I Love Central Park
4. Favorite Movies
5. Quotes and Written Stuff
6. My Fascinating People
7. Hang it On a Wall
8. Animals I Like
9. I Dont Think So…
10. History Dork
11. Funny
12. Bare Ware
13.When Pigs Fly
14. Saturday morning Cartoons
15 All Things Mendenhall
Yeah, I could go on for another 55 titles, but you can see my sampling and the things that “pinterest” me. Don’t you want to be a pinterester too?
Katie Couric just pinned a bunch of pictures for one of her boards, “Best Advice Contributors.” Pretty interesting selection. Or perhaps I should say pinteresting. She’s getting into it, I can tell.
All in all, pinterest is a lot of fun. I’ve tried new recipes and now know that I can use tootpaste on a pimple.
WordPress, please don’t be jealous. I have several categories just for you, “Photo’s For My Blog” and “Blogs I Follow.” Writing is still my passion. But, pinterest is my obsession this month.
And that’s how easy it is to put a round peg in a square hole.
Every week my fourth graders discuss and then draw an idiom. With Easter approaching, I had them draw “A Good Egg.” We discussed its meaning and then they drew some pretty great pictures. They also wrote an Easter haiku. As I walked around the room, admiring their creations and listening to one say that his was a disaster, it reminded me of one Easter that was a true disaster. For my daughter.
You know, most mothers do try to do their best when it comes to raising their children. Oh, sure, there are some women who should just live in a box and never reproduce, but for the most part, most of us really do try our hardest. Every once in a while, however, we just screw up.Royally. But, in our defense, we are on call 24 hours a day, so I’m thinking that we should be allowed a couple of mistakes. But, when you personally do something to make your child cry, well, you just want to start drinking.
My daughter, Alex, was named Alexandra when she was born. I love that name. Except when people called her Alexandria. Pissed me off. Do you see an extra vowel in her name, Goober? Well, then, don’t call her Alexandria. Anyway, she decided one day that she didn’t want to be called that anymore. She wanted to be called Alex. Her brother, Adam, always called her “Alice” when he was a toddler, so she knew that it could be shortened. And she was tired of learning to print her name. It took forever to print Alexandra. So, Alex it was. Oh, I love that name too, but I really should start calling her Alexandra again. Alexandra.
Anyways, Alexandra, now Alex was in kindergarten, and Easter was approaching. Her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Phillips, sent home a note and asked each parent to send in 6 eggs for the kids to color. Being a great mother, I naturally sent in a dozen. I was worried that some other child had a mother who should be living in a box and would not come to school with eggs. So, I sent in a dozen. I was a good egg.
I was glad they were going to color eggs at school, because I was never a fan. When I was little, I just didn’t get it. Dipping hard boiled eggs in a dye. Well, and then what? Some people ate them. Well, I learned very early that if you take something out of the refrigerator for so long, they really shouldn’t go back in there. Yeah, I was and still am OCD about food storage and reheating. Plus, I thought hard boiled eggs were gross. I was a picky child. Picky Vickie.
My mom really never colored eggs with us. Some people hid eggs outside and then the kids hunted them down, put them in their baskets, and then bragged on who found the most. I didn’t get it, even when I was little. After plastic eggs came on the market, then I got it. You could hide good stuff in the eggs. Like money or Hershey kisses. Then it was fun. But, hard boiled eggs that had been left out long did not appeal to me.
So, I boiled the eggs and sent them in.
Alex came home that afternoon and got off of the bus crying. I hated it when she cried. She was such a good little girl with such a good heart. It hurt when I would see her upset. I was ready to beat up whoever made her cry. She said that “….they made fun of my eggs.” Little kindergarten punks.
We got into the house and I went through her little backpack and saw a note in her homework folder from Mrs. Phillips.
“Vickie, Alexandra Alex cried all afternoon. I had no idea why until I noticed her eggs we just got done coloring………..You sent in brown eggs.”
I just stared at the note.
It may as well have looked like this:
Shit.
I sent in brown eggs.
I wanted to first blame my husband for making me buy brown eggs in the first place. The Mendenhalls never ate brown eggs. I never really even saw a brown egg until I went to college and my roommate brought some from her real chicken. (As opposed to a fake one I guess.) Luckily, my roommate, Pat, who was from Philadelphia, and was just lost in rural West Virginia, spoke up first.
“Jeri, those eggs you brought back with you are rotten.”
“How do you know? Do they smell?”
“Uh, no. They are brown.”
Jeri cracked up and then explained that they weren’t rotten. They were just brown. Well, hell, that didn’t explain a damn thing to us. In my book, that meant that black cows really did give chocolate milk then.
But, after my flashback, and blaming my husband for thinking brown eggs taste better than white eggs, I re-read the note.
Shit. I sent in brown eggs.
I could just picture the kids in the kindergarten class. Sitting there, dipping their eggs in bright red, blue, and green colors. Oh, what fun. Well, for everyone except Alexandra/Alex. Hers probably came out camouflaged pukey green. All of them. No matter what color she used, the outcome would have been subdued and ugly. Fugly. She would probably look at the first one as a mistake and then was crying by number three dippy egg. Poor Alexandra/Alex.
I felt horrible. What a rotten egg. I was not an eggcellent mother. I was eggstremely awful.
So, I put the kids in the car and we drove to the store for some spiffy white eggs and an Easter egg dye kit. And we colored eggs that evening. And she quit crying because one of them was truly beautiful. Of course, I sang her praises and apologized a million times, as it wasn’t her fault. It was mommy’s fault. So, we colored eggs.
It would have been nice if I had remembered to boil them first though.
I was an avid reader when I was younger. I always knew what that crazy Nancy Drew was up to. I knew the Ringmaster’s Secret. I knew where the Hidden Staircase was hiding. I knew that showboat was haunted. Yep, I read all of the books. I was a huge fan.
And sure, I read Dr. Seuss, but I was years beyond his silliness. Ok, I did fall for One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and I stared a little bit too much at the dog party in the tree in my favorite, Go, Dog, Go, but I really felt a bond with Nancy. In fact, I felt like I could be Nancy. Except that I would have never worn a skirt while solving a mystery. I would have been all about pedal pushers and sneakers.
Fast forward many years and I was still able to keep up with my reading, even after I had my two children. Of course, then I was a huge Dean Koontz fan. His early book, Whispers, will always be my favorite Dean Koontz book. I also read a lot by John Saul. But, my reading time was diminishing. It was no one’s fault but my own. Al Gore had just invented the internet, you know, and I had surfing to do. I surfed the world wide web. And down went the book.
Bad Vickie. I never did sit and read Great Expectations again. Oh, how I love Miss Havisham. I purchased The American Tragedy last summer because I loved the movie version, A Place in the Sun, with Montgomery Cliff and Elizabeth Taylor. East of Eden and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother are still staring at me from my nightstand. They realize it is never going to happen. Afterall, I then discovered Facebook and Farmtown. Farmville. Something on a farm.
And it was never going to happen once I discovered blogging. WordPress is really to blame for my inexcusable lack of reading. If I wasn’t writing, I was reading other blogger’s blogs. I was then commenting on them. Soon I decided, “Hell, I want to write my own book.” I was a frenzied writer. I found that I love to write. I don’t know if I am a good writer. I cringe when I notice that I have left out commas or spelled “threw” for “through.” Not professional, Vickster. But, just put me in a cabin in the woods with a typewriter and some paper laptop and my username and password, and I could just write all damn day long. But, I guess I have to earn a living, so a fourth grade teacher I shall be.
But, something got me back to take another look at books.
No, it wasn’t the new-fangled Kindle Fire. That may get to me to read again. It didn’t.
No, I didn’t fall for the Harry Potter or Twilight books. I hated Eat, Breathe, and Die or whatever it was called. The movie version starred Julia Roberts. I saw the movie and hated it. You know that woman got an advance to write the book before she even took the journey to find herself, right? She surely laughed all the way to the bank.
No, it was Hunger Games.
I don’t know why it was Hunger Games that made me head to the couch, curl up with a lightweight throw on my lap, and settle in for the evening. Ahhhhhh, a good book. I felt like I was home. Oh, sure I was home, but I felt so satisfied, so complete, so intelligent. I was reading again. Yeehaw!
But, wait. I am torn. My lost love of reading has been reborn. But, alas, what the hell is to become of my blogging? I plan on reading all three of the Hunger Game books in the next week. I can’t put the first one down. Well, I did, just to write to all of you a farewell of sorts, until this reading foolishness subsides.
Yes, blog buddies, I am not going to blog again for a week or so. I want to read. And read I must. And I can’t do both. That would feel like cheating.
So, I bid adieu to all my old and new blogging friends as I need but a brief respite….so I can read. After all, I want to go see the Hunger Games movie this weekend, so I must get a move on. All of my teacher friends at school have already read all three books and are getting tired of not being able to talk about it. I need to catch up before they bust at the seams.
I bought the book yesterday and am on Chapter 11 right now. I am hooked.
Well, time is up. I gave myself fifteen minutes to write this. Times a tickin. My book is calling out to me.
My best to you and I will see you in a week’s time.
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.
Technology has come a long way since the sixties. We now have personal computers, cell phones, and video games. Our cell phones are also personal computers and video games. Our personal computers are also movie theaters and music venues. We have many choices. Back in the sixties, we had a tape recorder.
Oh, my, what a newly purchased tape recorder can do for a kid. A tape recorder, also known as a cassette tape, or compact cassette, was originally designed for dictation. Secretaries all over the world were now able to just push a button instead of sitting across from their boss, steno book and pencil in hand, furiously writing in shorthand. Life was good.
photos via wikipedia
Philips invented the compact audio cassette in 1962, and the first compact cassette, creatively called Compact Cassette, was available for purchase. By 1966, over 250,000 recorders had been sold in the U.S. alone. And guess who had one of them? That’s right, the Mendenhall family.
Now, you have to understand why I was salivating. We really didn’t have much in the way of new fangled technology of any kind. Pong wasn’t even invented yet for use on our television sets. I don’t know if we even shortened the word television to T.V. yet. Our telephones had cords on them, attached to the wall. Oh, yes, I was salivating.
I quickly learned how to use our new Compact Cassette. I believe I was about ten years old at the time. Fourth grade was a memorable time, and now, Dear God, I had a tape recorder.
The excitement was just too much. My mom told me that I could play with it the next day, so I don’t think she was too happy that I woke her up so early.
“Mom, can I use the cassette recorder?”
“Vickie, it’s 6:00 in the morning. Go back to bed.”
Shit.
“Mom, can I use the cassette recorder now?”
“Vickie, stop it. It’s only 6:30.”
Stupid mom. Birds were up. I heard them chirping. Mom’s were supposed to be up early.
“Hey, Dad, can I use the cassette recorder? It’s 7:00.”
“Sure.”
Good Dad. Bad Mom.I was already dressed and ready. I don’t know why I had shoes on, but maybe I would run outside and let the world know that I recorded a message. I ran into the kitchen.There was a little plastic tri-pod that the microphone would sit on. I positioned it close to me. I remember that I was a nervous wreck I put the cassette in the player, and hit the record button. My first recording was thought provoking and highly imaginative.
“Testing. Testing, 1-2-3″…..giggle giggle giggle. Voila!! History was made.
I couldn’t wait to replay it and listen to my voice. I had never heard myself talk before. I looked at my mom, who was fumbling with the coffee pot and mumbling something about killing me.
“That doesn’t sound like me.” I sounded like a little girl. I mean, I was a little girl. I guess I wanted to sound, well, like a newscaster.
“That sounds exactly like you.” my mom replied. She lit her first of 88 cigarettes for the day. She sat in her housecoat at the table, waiting for her coffee to percolate. She wanted to try recording her voice. That pissed me off. I mean, shouldn’t she be in bed?
So, the rest of the Mendenhall family had to go and use MY cassette tape recorder for most of the morning. I went into the living room and watched Casper the Friendly Ghost on the television set. Actually, I have no idea what the hell I watched, but I did watch a cartoon, because our cartoons rocked back then.
Well, the unimaginative family members had their morning of fun with the newly purchased Cassette Recorder and went about their Saturday morning.business. I sat quietly, like a buzzard waiting for a groundhog to get hit by a car. I had plans for this tape recorder.
Oh, the fun I had. My first item on my tape recording agenda was to tape record sounds. I turned on the recorder and rang the doorbell. I slammed a door. I followed the dog around, trying to get him to bark. He wanted no part of me. I called my bff Ramaine and asked her to call me back so I could tape the telephone ringing. I taped anything and everything that I could make a sound out of . What a great weekend.
I had my bff, Ramaine, walk up later in the day. She was even more creative than I was. She would think of something we can use with the newly purchased Cassette Recorder. I do not remember how this was decided, but the next thing you know, we were singing the definition of ‘lima bean” into the tape recorder. I am sure no one else has ever done that before. Ever. We were highly imaginative. We then opened the dictionary again, pointing to a word and singing that definition, too. We laughed and laughed at our choice of leisure activity. She could sing. I, on the other hand, sounded like a drugged up back-up singer for Janis Joplin. Fun time with my bff.
Saturday evening was spy time. I put the recorder beside the couch. I realized that one side of the tape was only 30 minutes long, so I had to think of a way to push the button so my parents wouldn’t see me doing it. I was going to tape record things my parents talk about after we went to bed. What fun!
I waited until my mom went into the kitchen and talked loudly while playing with my dog so my dad wouldn’t hear me press the button. Success! I went to bed and could hardly sleep. I was so excited to spy on my parents. I began thinking bigger, like taping my teacher while we were at lunch. That may have been tricky, as we didn’t have back packs back then.
I woke up on Sunday morning, and ran to the living room. It was 6:00, so I was sure that the fam was still asleep. I re-wound the tape and waited, impatiently. This was going to be so much fun. I loved spying. I hit the play button. It was my mom’s voice. This was fantastic!!
“Vickie, the next time you try to tape record someone without letting them know about it, it would be a good idea to sneak back in the room and turn it off before it makes a loud noise turning itself off……You will have plenty of time trying to figure out how to do this while you are in your room. You are grounded.”
Shit.
Well, all in all, I had a blast with our newly purchased Cassette Recorder. I interviewed neighbors and friends, taped the sounds of grass cutting, and the Mr. Softie truck making his rounds through the neighborhood. I taped my sister having a temper tantrum. Life was good.
It’s the little things in life that make such a big memory.
And that’s one for the record books…or in this case, tape recorder.
The old saying, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, certainly holds true when it comes to imitating others. And you know that each one of us is guilty of imitating someone at least once in our lifetime. Or once a day, depending on what colorful people are nearby. Rather it be a friend, a boss, or a celebrity, we have somehow managed to mangle their voice, posture, or gestures for the amusement of others. It is just who we are. Some of us are pretty good at it. Some of us should probably not do it again. I am in the first group. Right up there with Rich Little. Really.
Rich Little, nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” was and still is one of the greatest impersonators ever. He could imitate celebrities, such as Johnny Carson, Jack Benny, and my favorite, Richard Nixon. He had a vast repertoire of voices, and I was in awe of his talent. I was just a kid, but I tried it out myself. I stood in front of the mirror, trying to get the look and the phrase just so. I remember sitting in front of the tv, watching a Jerry Lewis movie, with my brother. The next thing you know, David IS Jerry Lewis. We were little and goofy, but it was one of the first times I remember imitating someone. I do remember David and I trying our best, “Whack-a-doo, Whack-a-doo” in our best Jerry Lewis voice. We sucked. But, boy did we have fun. You have no idea how excited I was to find this clip. This brings back such great memories of antics with my brother. Weird, I know, but that’s how we rolled.
Now, you have to understand that as a child of the sixties, we only had three television stations, so we had limited viewing options. We could imitate Lawrence Welk, Ed Sullivan, or Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show, and in 1965, we finally got Gomer Pyle. Everyone was imitating Gomer.
“Shazam…….Shame Shame Shame……….Surprise Surprise Surprise…………Golly.” Soon everyone was doing the Gomer. Then came Tarzan and Jane movies and everyone tried their best Tarzan yell. Carol Burnett even imitated it often on her own show.
Then came Johnny Carson, who was a wonderful impersonator. This clip of him impersonating President Ronald Reagan was hysterical.
I don’t get the impersonators of today. I guess there is a difference between an impersonator and an impressionist. I don’t want to go to a whole show with someone who is pretending to be Marilyn Monroe or Abe Lincoln. I am not talking about that. I’m talking about people who are on stage and can do many impressions. I did watch a great Michael Jackson impersonator at a resort in Cancun, Mexico, last summer. He was awesome, but it was free, part of the wonderful all-inclusive that I came to love. But, I wouldn’t have gone if I had to pay for it.
Every summer the little town that I just moved away from had a festival and hired an Elvis impersonator as one of the stage events. You would have thought that Elvis never left the building and was alive and well, gyrating to his sounds to the many swooning white haired women in the audience. I sat on my front porch, chuckling at the madness. Um, that is not really Elvis on stage, people.
Now, I do think I that Tina Fey did an awesome job impersonating Sarah Palin. Many of the Saturday Night Live actors throughout the years have mocked famous people. Chevy Chase, for example, did a great job impersonating former President Gerald Ford. Ford was a clumsy man, and Chevy Chase did a great job tripping and falling. Dana Carvey and Darrel Hammond were wonderful with their impressions of George Bush 1 and 2.
So, impressions are all around us. There is even one who impersonated a cat.
Penn or Teller doing Mr. Boots, the Cat- I get the two guys mixed up. The shorter, quiet guy was on an episode of Dharma and Greg years ago. This has got to be one of the funniest espisodes that I have seen on tv. I couldn’t quit laughing the first time I watched it.Great impersonation of a non human.
Ok, so that takes care of the famous impersonators. Normal, every day people think that they are great impersonators too. My son, for example, can do an awesome Kermit the Frog. He used to be able to do Mrs. Doubtfire when he was younger. He also tried to do Bill Clinton, but that ended up sounding like Mrs. Doubtfire.My ex thought he could do Tom Brokaw, but he just sucked. That’s why the clip of Dana Carvey doing Tom Brokaw when Gerald Ford dies is so hysterical.
But, throughout my life, I have impersonated many a celebrity. I entertained my sorority sisters and patrons at bars with my uncany impressionistic talent. Sure, maybe there were a few times that I didn’t actually remember doing an impression. Case in point. I performed my routine in Ocean City Maryland in 1977 and wasn’t even aware of it. I was lying on the beach, minding my own spring break business, when friends that we met up with the night before, laid their towels out next to ours.
“Vickie, you were so funny last night. Sing “Where the Boys Are again.”
Um, what? Say what? Looks like Little Vickie had more than three beers the night before.I guess I did all of my impressions with a high success rate. It helps when there are drunks in the house.
Here are some of the people that I thought I could imitate.
1. Rhoda Penmark-Ok, most of you have no idea who I am talking about. Rhoda Penmark was a character in the movie, “The Bad Seed.” I loved that role and watched the movie to the point where I knew all of her lines. She was an evil little girl, and I thought I had her down pat. Problem was, only my family and closest friends really knew who she was. It was a great movie.
”You better give me those shoes. They’re mine! Give them back to me!” Oh, yeah, I sound just like her.
2.. Paul Lynde- Ah, Paul Lynde, my favorite impression person. I loved Paul Lynde. He was funny as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and hysterical on Hollywood Squares.He had an unforgetable voice. And his laugh was ornery. I sounded just like him. Of course, I only had one line I could repeat like him.
“You think it’s easy?” But, it was his laugh that I could do. I was good. Really.
3. Connie Francis’s “Where the Boys Are”- I can’t sing for the life of me, but I can belt out “Where the Boys Are,” and I guarantee I sounded just like her. Oh, I would oblige anyone anytime the first line of her hit song. I was Connie. The song starts at around 1:32.
“Where the boys are, someone waits for me.” Ta-da.
4. The Swedish Chef-I love the Muppets and could do a great Swedish Chef imitation when my kids were little. I entertained them so.
5.. The Mayor of Munchkinland-Ok, I’m not kidding now. I WAS the mayor of Munchkinland in our sorority rush events. I can talk munchkin like no one else. Really. I’m that good.You know how the munchkins sounded.
6.. Cousin Itt on the Addams Family- I know you are quite envious of my talent up to now, but my Cousin Itt impression was Dead on. I mean it.
I know what you are thinking. Yeah, I am quite talented. Thank you. I can also do impressions of Lisa Douglass on Green Acres, Peter Lorre’s “Yes, master,” Snoopy in Pain (a drunk favorite), E.T. phoning home, and I really should have tried out for the Afflac duck.
So, think about it the next time you make fun of your boss, or mock your mother-in-law. You are just being creative. It’s our nature to imitate.
After all, that’s how we got cubic zirconium rings instead of the real thing. Can’t really tell them apart, now can we?
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.
It’s bad enough that I have to go to Walmart once or twice a week, but throw in some smelly people, a guy talking on an obviously pretend cell phone, and children who need slapped, and I am beat. But, yesterday was a day like no other. Because, yesterday in Walmart, among the mystery smells and nose pickers, there was also…….a whistler.
I really don’t know how the general population views whistling. I have never asked anyone. Some whistling is great. For example, the opening song to the Andy Griffith show is a whistle. I used to like that. Didn’t bother me a bit. I used to sit down on the floor, in front of the tv, whistling along to the opening and closing credits. But, nowadays, many many years later, it grates on me to the point where I lose my mind. I mean, I lose my mind.
Years ago, when my children were quite small, we would go to Hills Department Store. I could always hear ”The Bird Lady,” even if she was on the other side of the store. It was that loud. She was like a damn mockingbird. I am not kidding. One bird call after another after another. There was no break. The first time I heard it, I had to search the person out. I thought it might be a guy. I was surprised to see an older lady with short hair and dirt under her fingernails. She was a farmer. I was sure of it. The second time I heard her, I smiled, and went on my way. She seemed to be there whenever I was. By the 6th time or so, I was ready to say, “Enough already.”
I think the whistling that sends me over the edge is what I call, “Jesus whistling.” I was in an antique shop several months ago, and the owner was whistling while I was walking through the rooms. The shop was on the first floor of an older home, so her whistling was right on top of me. She was at first attempting (notice I said “attempting”) to whistle, Bringing in the Sheaves, and then followed that successful tune with What a Friend We Have in Jesus. But, she was multi-talented, as she could switch from whistling to humming and back again. It was easier to know what the hell song she was trying to butcher. By the time I found my way out of her maze, I wanted to slap her and say,
“Jesus is not your friend.” I actually thought that shoplifting may have been justified that day just to get me the hell out of there.
“Hey, look what I stole out of an antique shop today because the owner was whistling.”
So, when I heard the whistling, I had to find out who was doing it. I thought it was a woman since the music was in the makeup aisle. Maybe the elderly bird lady was still alive, whistling her bird calls. Like Odysseus rowing toward the Sirens, I had to search this person out. But, no, it was an older man, clad in jeans, a jean jacket, sporting a beard and some stupid ass hat I can’t even describe. He wasn’t whistling a song or even bird chirps. He was whistling….nothing. Why would you waste your time inhaling and exhaling to exert sounds that sound like a monkey on crack was making them? Or a owl on crack. Something on crack. It pissed me off. It wasn’t even a song. So, I decided to get the hell away from him.
He followed me.
I went in the cat food aisle. I could hear him coming. I grabbed the wrong bag of cat food and left the area.
I then went over to pick up some wide ruled notebook paper for my classroom. Dammit, I could hear his off-key whistling. I felt like I was playing Marco Polo with a whistler.
“Shwee wee.”
“Polo.”
Nah, would never have worked.
No, I must note that I was in a SUPER Walmart. That means it is bigger than a BIG Walmart or in some towns, a SMALL Walmart. This is super big. Tall ceilings. I should be able to get away from Willie. Yeah, I already named him. Willie the freak of a Whistler.
Well, I did have a moment or two of peace while picking up my strawberry whipped yogurt in the dairy aisle. But, then I heard him. He somehow was in front of me in the aisle. Shit. He was hesitating by the juice. Hesitation means a break in whistling. This guy could not multi-task. That was good. I needed my mango juice. I had to open the door right in front of him. I reached for the juice, and was almost out of there, when he started again. Right in my ear. Freakin Dr. Seuss nonsense. If Dr. Seuss whistled, that is what it would sound like. What a goober. I put my mango juice in my buggy and looked right at him.
“Sure like whistling, don’t you?” I smiled.
“Can you whistle?” He sounded normal. He should just maybe talk more often.
I shook my head and immediately thought of Lauren Bacall.
He continued. “It’s real easy. I think I learned how to whistle before I learned to talk.”
I wanted to say, “And that’s all ya got?” But, I was nice. I smiled and just strolled away, until I was in the next aisle and then took off. I had to get the hell out of Walmart. I could not take it any longer.
I went to the furthest check-out aisle, fearing if he would be behind me in a long line and I would be stuck. That would be like a claustrophobic moment for me. And then I would surely lose my my mind. I even leave my classroom door open because I’m just not fond of closed in places. I do well on a plane…and in a public restroom. I just must be retarded. But, to be STUCK behind Willie the freak of a whistler would not bode well for me. I could hear the person over the loudspeaker now.
“Code DeltaDawn in checkout aisle 22.” That means, “older lady by herself just lost her mind.” Yeah, I’m well aware of Walmart’s codes. The main one is Code Adam.
I wish I would have had some backup with me. I wish Don Rickles, Jerry Seinfeld, Lewis Black, or Richard Lewis would have been with me. Or all of them. Add in Chandler Bing. They would have said something to him. They would have understood the absurdity that whistling is. But, it was just me and I could see the guy coming. But, wait. He didn’t have anything in his arms, and a lady with a buggy just pulled in behind me. I was in the clear. Everyone stared at him as he passed each check-out aisle. I looked at him and wondered if he whistled while he worked. Shit. He was coming my way. Shit.
Wait. Willie the Whistler has a wife. She was behind me with her buggy full of toilet paper. That’s why he didn’t have a buggy and he was just wandering around, whistling. Figures. Willie came and stood by her.
“Jack, stop whistling. You sound like a broken drill.”
And with that, he quit whistling. I glanced back at them and he looked beaten down, almost depressed. Poor Willie. I felt sorry for him.
I have been tagged. I didn’t know what that meant at first, so I headed over to Marina Sleeps to see what was up.
It isn’t an award. But, it’s almost like one. It’s a diversion! I don’t think people realize how these things are a great way to build readership and in the process discover some other really great blogs. I mean, not saying my blog is great, but you know what I mean. (My blog is great.)I really enjoy these things. I can get into this. So, here are the rules:
*You must post the rules.
*Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you tagged.
*Tag eleven people and link them to your post.
*Let them know you tagged them.
Eleven? Ok, I can ask questions all day.
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Here are the questions that Marina Sleeps has asked eleven bloggers and here are my answers.
1.What does the saying “Kicking ass and taking names” even mean???
When you see someone kicking a donkey, you need to find out who they are so you can turn them in to the animal cruelty people.
2. You are driving. Someone flips you off. What is the best reaction?
Ah, Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton’s mom flipped me off one time. She was in front of me in her stupid little convertible, looking at herself in the mirror when the light turned green. I had to honk my horn, and she flipped me off. I laughed and did the little motion with my index finger circling the side of my temple that means one is crazy, and she flipped me off again. The best reaction, however, is to hit them with your car.
3. If you could be someone else for a day who would you be?
Oh, that is so easy. Wait. Would I also be able to time travel? If so, I would be my grandfather, circa 1965. I would change my will to leave everyone out but my favorite grandaughter, Vickie.
4. What is the craziest thing you have done?
Ihave done so many crazy things. When I was in college, I was on the costumes crew for a play and we were not allowed to miss dress rehearsal AT ALL. If we did, we would get a cut in our final grade. Well, I was invited by a really nice looking guy to attend the Billy Joel concert that same night. So, over the course of two weeks, I became progressively sicker each practice (the director kept telling me to go home, but I told her I would be ok) The night before the concert and dress rehearsal, I told the director I just had a blood test to see if I had mono. She felt my forehead and told me to go home and that she didn’t want to see me for three nights. I went to the concert, and on the way home stopped at a club and Billy Joel was there. We had drinks with him and he sat at our table for about 45 minutes, and I couldn’t tell anyone. Karma bites me in the ass.
5. How will you survive the Zombie apocalypse?
Zombies have poor motor skills, so I would have to be faster than them. And that means, I will need GatorAde. Yes, electrolytes will save me. I would also hide out at a carnival’s House of Mirrors. The poor undead would be so confused. I would be able to get out and be on my way to my next hiding place. He would then forget what he went in there for.
6. Can you explain what is wrong with the Olsen Twins and Lindsey Lohan?
It’s a twin thing. Ashley Kate or Mary….Ashley Mary and Kate…..Kate Mary and Ashley…shit…wait…I can get this….Mary Kate and Ashley. Ok, Anywho, they have an identity problem. Remember, only one of them were able to be on Full House. Lindsey Lohan had to play two kids on The Parent Trap. Lindsey thinks there really are two of them. The Olsens think there should only be one. That’s why they are photographed standing so close to each other. They are trying to morph into one. Lindsey is a lost soul because she can’t find herself.
7. What deadly sin are you guilty of committing?
Oh, how easy is this one. Writers are vain. My deadly sin is Pride, the “excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.” I think I am awesome. I’m so vain, I probably think this blog is about me…. Don’t I? Don’t I? Don’t I?
8. What is one song you are embarrassed to like?
I’m going to go with the first song that popped into my head…”I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” I can really sing this one.
9. What is a day in your life like?
Well, it is excitement with a capital E. Let’s take a weekday….a Tuesday. I get up at 5:30 and play on the computer until 6:10. I take my shower, get ready for work, talk to my cat, back out of the garage, drive through Hardees and order a butter biscuit and a medium Coke, drive 40 minutes on back roads, dodging stupid drivers who drive left of center, get to school, put the schedule on the board, after the rugrats come in, teach all day, only taking 30 minutes to have lunch with “The Lunch Bunch,” (best group of ladies ever), where we curse and bitch about the kids, drive to the gym on the way home, curse at the elliptical, stop at Subway for a 6 inch turkey breast on Italian with provolone, lettuce, just a few onions and one line of mayonaisse, and a medium Coke, go home, eat, get on the internet, do some house crap, and then watch New Girl at 9:00, talk to the cat, and then go to bed after talking to friends on Facebook. Fun times on a Tuesday.
10. Can you dance like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever?
Uh, yeah. I was there.
11. What kind of child are you? 60′s child? 70′s child? etc etc?
Well, I was born in the mid-fifties. I was ten years old in 1966, and sixteen in 1972. I touched base with all of them. I am old. But, you could never tell because I look so damn young. Plus, I am vain. See deadly sin question.
Ok, that was fun. Now my turn to ask questions to the people I shall tag……
1. What one movie could you watch every day?
2. If you had to change your first name, what name would you fancy?
3. You just got kicked out of your country. You aren’t allowed back. What country would move to? Why?
4. You are only allowed to eat one vegetable for the rest of your life. Discuss.
5. You get to bring home a celebrity. Do with them what you want. Who would you bring home?
6. Name three adjectives that describe you best.
7. You have to pick one…cat or dog? Why?
8. You have just been chosen to be in the Olympics. And you get to pick any sport you want. What sporting event will you be participating in? For what country?
9. Pick an idiom that you would like my fourth graders to draw this Friday for Idiom Friday.
10. My favorite cartoon character was Foghorn Leghorn? And yours?
11. A two-part question: What is your favorite smell? Your favorite sound?
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TAG, YOU’RE IT!!!!! Answer the questions, and follow the rules. And if you don’t, I totally don’t care. People will click and come visit your blogs and find out what great writers you are, and will then follow you and write wonderful replies to your posts. And then they will find more blogs to click on and so it goes.
If your blog is not one of those up above, and you read this post and want to play along, just copy the questions and answer them in the reply. Don’t forget to put your link on the reply so we can visit your blog.
Ok, so I have done my part. Well, except for letting the eleven know that I tagged them. They will want to hug me, I am sure. Or throw rocks. But, in any event, I have done my part.
So, “Tag, you’re it!” And I am now sterilized forever.
When I was little, I had to look up words to see what they meant in a gigantic red dictionary my mom kept alongside our World Book Encyclopedias. I was never able to look up phrases like we can today on the internet. I was so curious about everything. But, you know, I used to have to be nibby and ask people about things I was curious about. I would have never met most of our neighbors if I had the internet and all the answers to my childish questions. “Mrs. Jones, why does that man drive into your garage in the middle of the night almost every night and then leave right before I get on the bus? Is that your brother?” Ok, just kidding, but I could have just looked up “What is an affair” into the google search engine that would have answered all of my questions. But, how lonely that would have been for me. I would have salivated over the opportunity to travel all over the freaking world without leaving my chair………. Um, like I am doing now at age 55…….. Shit. I am a loser.
I have to admit that I really enjoy reading all of the search terms that pop up every day on my Word Press dashboard. For those of you who don’t blog here, we bloggers are able to see what search engine terms brought people to our site. For example, I wrote a blog about a monkey, and tagged the post with words such as, “monkey,” “fun,” laugh,” and ”pet store.” Meanwhile, some stranger in Internet Land typed in the Google search bar, “monkey poop,” and it showed up as a search engine term. That internet person would be able to read my blog post if he wanted to, or just say to himself, “Well, hell, this is about a monkey on someone’s head. Monkeyshines Where’s the monkey poop?
Of course, I didn’t know the monkey poop question poser was from. But, since I have started blogging, I have seen bizarre search engine terms pop up. I’d like to share some of them with you. And my blog posts that brought them here.
1. Was Helen Keller black slave- This poor person has no idea what is going on in life. I wrote One Tough Cookie about several strong personalities. Helen Keller was one of them. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a black slave. I also wrote Play Time, where I discussed how my bff, Ramaine, and I used to play Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. I always got to be Helen. Bad Karma. My hearing is shot nowadays.
2. How old is a 1 year old pig- I got this one yesterday. I just don’t know where to start with this one. I guess a one year old pig is different ages. Maybe the searcher wants to know how old a one year old pig is in human years. I have no idea, but here, pig googler, read one of my pig blog posts. And This Little Piggy…., Guinea Pig Children and an early post, Feeling Like an Oinker-Pig
3. Billy Joel fat ugly- Aw, that is just so not nice. Where you looking for a picture of Billy Joel? Because what you got was this. Lies That Bite Back
4. Fish guts stains your teeth- Um, okay…I wonder what this guy has been eating. Evidently his teeth are now black. Or some color. I just shuddered…again. My story is about fish guts, but someone was wearing them, not eating them. The Fish Head Story. It is also the second hardest I have ever laughed in my life. That’s right. I have them numbered.
5. Can nuns carry guns- Uh, oh, someone is in trouble or planning to make a hit on Bingo night at the church. I have a lot of posts about nuns. I am afraid of nuns. I do think they carry guns. They keep it in a thigh holster. I’m pretty sure. But, while you are contemplating robbing Sister Betrille, sit awhile and read about my nun stories. Snakes, Gasoline, and a Nun, Vickie With an E, Edgewood, and one of my favorites, Bring Back the Nuns Arrrgh!
6. I have mosquito bite boobs 15- Oh, honey, I can relate. This blog post will not help whatsoever. But, I once was a mosquito bite boober. Sigh. Mosquito Bites
7. dirty potato- What was this person thinking when he searched for this? Maybe he forgot to wash potatoes before cooking and now thinks maybe bugs were all over them? I’m sure he is going to die. If you take your lap top to the Emergency room, you can read these posts while they take an x-ray of those dirty veggies in your stomach. Rats! is about how we fed a rat in our apartment to keep him from coming upstairs and eating our faces while we slept. Or try, Old Wive’s Tales, where you need to know the importance of washing behind your ears.
8. boogey man just called me- Ok, let me get this right. The boogey man just called you, and you get off the phone and google, “Boogey man just called me.” Wow, you are a brave soul. I would have run upstairs and hid under my bed. Which would probably not be a good idea, because that’s where the boogey man is. Dear God, I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight. I Killed the Boogey Man
9. Wont be fooled April 1- I used to be the Queen of April Fool’s jokes. But, someone finally got me. Got me good. So, April Fool’s Day google searcher, read this post and feel for me. D-I-V-O-R-C-E
10. catsup is catsnip- Ew, and my God you are stupid. The whole Ketchup/catsup scenario is mind boggling I know. I wrote a post on ketchp sandwiches, which is not the same as catsup sandwiches, which is somehow cat related, I was told. I should google it. Ketchup Sandwiches
So, those are just a random sampling of some of the search terms I receive each day. I really like the idea of how tagging can bring more traffic to my blog. It’s a great idea. But, the next time you want to search for something and you don’t want anyone to know about it, just know that we know.
Here are some more search terms that are just weird as hell:
*What is it when I have white stuff on my gums near my molars.
*pee in my snowsuit
*video girls in mud
*vomiting hid in nightstand
*the longest poop in the world
*ant bit lips
*detergent poison how to poison
*green snot infection
*stuck his tongue down my throat
*is eating paint chips still bad
*Hitler had son Jimmy Hitler
*armpit smells like garlic
*pet dead dog infreezer til ground thaws out bury
Yes, search terms are interesting, that’s for sure.
I remember the very first thing I did a search on when I got the internet……Wooly worms. Do you remember what you searched for?
I don’t know if I am much of a camper. We just didn’t camp out much when I was little. I can’t even imagine the Mendenhall family, aka the Griwsolds, sitting around the campfire, singing Kumbaya. I imagine it would go something like this:
Mom: “Elwood! Elwood!…….Where did that man go? ……I need you to put up this tent…..Elwood!…….I’m telling you, when they were passing out brains, your father thought they said, “train” and left…….Elwood!!………………Well, we are just going to have to go home.”
Elwood- (2 miles away, press camera in hand). “Ahhh, just look at this beautiful tree!” (Takes pictures of the probable pine tree from different angles. Can’t hear Mom because he has wandered purposely away from the camp.)
Vickie- “Mom, look what I found! (Holding a skunk.) Can it sleep with us in the tent? I think he is lonely.”
Cheryl- Cheryl is still in the car, having another one of her famous temper tantrums. We can hear her muted screams through the rolled up car windows. “I HATE YOU…….STUPID MOM…..I HATE YOU…….” .BLAH BLAH BLAH SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM KICK THE BACK SEAT REPEATEDLY…….SILENCE…………POUTING……….
David- (Holding a stick, trying to wittle with a butter knife) Smiling…”This is fun.”
No, I can’t even imagine camping back then. My dad was a scoutmaster, so he used to go camping all of the time. It’s just when Mom was thrown into the mix that Dad just wanted no part of it. My dad was always “damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.” That was his motto. My mom was one of those rolling pin wives. Bitch bitch bitch. Dad was Wally Cox. Wally Cox was a mild-mannered, soft spoken actor, aka the voice of Underdog. “There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!” Well, except my sweet dad sounded just like Ronald Reagan.
So, needless to say, the Mendenhall family rarely went camping. To compensate for our outdoor challenged lifestyle, my dad built a playhouse in the backyard. I know you are probably picturing a little playhouse nestled in a tree line on the edge of the property. Oh, no. This playhouse was as soon as you opened the back door. Down three steps, turn left and Voila! A cabin…..for camping. Swell.
I went camping when I was in the Campfire girls. Campfire girls were like the Girl Scouts, but we had campfires. They had Samoa cookies to sell while we put marshmallows on the end of whittled sticks. Well, most of the girls put their marshmallows over the fire. Not me. That was gross…and black. Who the hell wants to eat charbroiled marshmallows. And then some older girl came up with a bright idea.
image via whatscookingamerica.net
“Hey, Susie, I see you are eating grahamn crackers. Can I have one? And you, Cindy Lou, I see that chocolate bar you are eating. Can I have a small section? Next thing you know, the older camper put a melted marshmallow and a piece of chocolate between a graham cracker sandwich and ate the damn thing.
“Hmmmmm, I wish I had “some more.” And the rest is history.
image via wikipedia
You believe me, right?
Well, I wasn’t much of a Campfire camper. While walking to the pool one day in my bathing suit, clothing wrapped in my towel, my underpants fell out of my towel and onto the ground. Everyone laughed at me, and I wanted to cry. I sent a postcard home to my mom that I wanted to come home. How funny, because I lived like ten minutes from the camp and we were probably only there for two nights at the most, maybe. I was home before the postcard even arrived.
The next time I went camping was when I was in love. My boyfriend, (future husband, future ex-husband) nicknamed Magoo in my posts, was a list maker, so we had everything you could possibly think of. He even had cut wood on the top of his car. We were, afterall, going to a National forest, so they would probably frown on cutting down trees for fire wood. The first time we went camping, Magoo had everything packed in so tightly you couldn’t add even a spoon (just a slight exaggeration). He had a hatch back, and when he slammed it down to shut, the window burst. He didn’t check to make sure the damn hatch back would close without hitting something. No problem. Magoo took out several black garbage bags, duct tape, and after a few minutes we were on our way. Well, after I swept the glass off to the side of the curb.
We usually went with another couple. The first time we went camping, we took Brent and Jeannie with us. Brent was Magoo’s best friend. We drove to the Monongahela State Forest in our wild wonderful West Virginia mountains. I know West Virginia gets a bad rap, but it is so beautiful in the mountains. Breathtaking, really. The first time out we were hunting for a place called The Sinks of Gandy, a cave that we wanted to explore. I was all about seeing some bats.
image via cavingintro.net
The Sinks of Gandy are a tunnel that the Gandy Creek flows into and disappears into the mountain. It is on private property, and is actually hard to find. We weren’t all the way stupid. Just partially stupid. Years later, my son was a guide for a summer adventure camp, and made numerous trips to the Sinks.
But, anywho, the next thing you know, we are on a gravel road, stopped because a bunch of sheep were standing in the road, looking at us. Um, Magoo, where the hell are we?
So, we never found the Sinks of Gandy, and drove around forever. Where the hell are we going to camp? We finally found a sign for the Monongahela National Forest, dropped down the mountain, and a beautiful sight unfolded right in front of our eyes. It was beautiful.
The Monongahela National Forest at Laurel Fork Campground
I immediately fell in love with the place. And there was no one else in the whole area for the first part of the long weekend. There was a large stream that ran by us, and a trail head in case we wanted to take a hike. It was perfect. It was Fourth of July weekend, so we had a cooler full of picnic food and bags and bags of snacks. The boys, who had been at fishing cabins throughout their lives, remembered the time they were stuck eating nothing but hot dogs for 2 days, so they packed a lot of food.
Since I was not a camper, and the damn campground did not have any bathroom facilities whatsoever (that we knew of at that time), I made the guys build a bathroom area. I don’t even want to try to explain it, but it consisted of finding three small trees close to each other, a large piece of cloth (told you the man could pack), a hammer, and a couple of nails. Dig a hole, and a “dry creek bed” and we had ourselves a bathroom. Magoo even brought toilet paper and little garbage bags. Also, it looked like rain, so the guys put up a makeshift canopy, since we thought we would find a place that had a shelter or something. So, we improvised and it was fun. Sort of. I couldn’t go past 10:00 in the morning without taking a shower. My skin starts to crawl, like I have cooties or something. I HAVE to take my shower. So, I walked over to the creek, walked in with my tennis shoes, and took a creek bath. Washed my hair and everything. It was so freaking cold. I thought I would turn to ice in the middle of the stream. Next thing you know, Magoo and Brent come running in, holding soap, laughing, and sat right down in the creek. They, too, I thought, must feel cooties after 10:00. Jeannie didn’t care. She put a scarf on her head and claimed that she liked being a dirtball. So be it.
So, yeah, it was a fun weekend.
Well, until the guys disappeared.
We were supposed to go fishing, and I hadn’t been fishing since I was little and went with my dad. I used to go all of the time, and either fished, or chased dragonflies around the lake. To this day, dragonflies are my favorite insects. I knew you would want to know that. The guys wanted to go outside the Monongahela Forest to find more firewood somewhere. And yes, Magoo had a saw with him. So, they hopped into the car without a back window and off they went.
And they never came back. Well, that’s what it felt like. It was at least four hours. We were pissed. So, we decided that we were going to fish all by ourselves. We didn’t need a man to put a worm on our hook. We could be hookers. (she cracks herself up) Well, hell, they were all gone. We were wormless. We had no dough balls. We had nothing.
Well, we did have bologna.
Jeannie and I cracked up, as we took a slice of bologna and tore it to look like a worm. A bologna worm. If colorful little bobbers or lures attracted fish, wouldn’t a worm dangling off of the hook? It was a brilliant, hooker idea.
No it wasn’t.
The bologna hung on the hook for just a few seconds, and would then slide through the hook and fall into the creek. We tried it a “couple” of times. Defeated, we went back under the canopy (that leaked later when it stormed), and just started drinking. We did get scared when two guys walked very close by our campsite. We saw them coming and we were very frightened. We ran to the tent and zipped ourselves up and looked out the little screened area. We were going to get raped. No doubt about it. All we had to defend ourselves was some bologna and a flashlight. But, wait. Magoo brought a handgun. (What did I tell you?) And it was in the tent. I could kill them.
Well, at the time, we had no idea that the start of a long hiking trail started right beside our tent. We knew it was nearby, but the trail went right by the tent. They were simply two hikers who were following the trail.
Our mountain men finally came back. They got lost. And they had no firewood. Worthless.
Jeannie and I were already drunk. Well, I had two beers, so I was sloshed.
The guys were so fixing us dinner that night. Magoo opened the cooler.
“Hey, what happened to those two packs of bologna?”
I guess I didn’t mention that we made two packs of bologna worms. We really thought we would get one to work.
We were hookers working our corner of the creekbed.
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.
Enjoy this story? Jumping in Mud Puddles is now an ebook that you can download on your Kindle. Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. Amazon will let you download their Kindle app FREE…Yes, free. Have a look see. My literary debut….. Amazon.com for $3.99. It’s sort of funny.
My fourth graders had to write an essay the other day on what they wanted to be when they grew up. I do this every year and it always comes out the same way. I try to keep the girls away from each other after I make the assignment, because they basically can’t think for themselves. Oh, I have one or two who know exactly what they want to be and will stand by it, but for the most part, whatever the most popular girl in class wants to be, her handmaidens want to be the same thing. This year was no exception. I made the mistake of letting the class take a bathroom break, and dammit, I am sure they all shared their lofty aspirations with each other in front of the bathroom stalls. And so it began.
“When I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian. I love animals and……………”
“I love animals, so when I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian…..”
I want to help cats and dogs when I grow up. I will go to vet school and be an animal doctor.”
“When I grow up, I want to help dogs that have been hit by a car. That’s why I want to be a vegetarian.” Well, at least that one made me smile.
I have 21 students in my class. There are thirteen girls and eight boys. Most of the boys wrote that they wanted to be a soldier. I had one exterminator. Besides the veterinarian girls, I also had one teacher, one pediatrician, and one that just stunned me. One of my brightest students wrote:
“When I grow up, I would love to work at a carnival. It would be fun to set up rides and learn how to make the rides start and stop. It would be fun to see everyone having fun. I wouldn’t want to work at the game booths, though. The stuffed animals you win smell like wet hay and you would have to stand up all night. If I took the tickets and started and stopped the rides, I could sit down a lot. And that’s why I want to be a carnival worker.”
Um, okay. Wow. I was shocked. So she wants to be a carny. Of course, kids change what they want to be when they grow up a hundered times. I told the kids to take the essays home to give to their parents to put away until they graduated from high school. I hope reading what they wrote in fourth grade makes them smile. It made me think of what I wanted to be when I little.
When I was very little, I wanted to be an actress when I grew up. Oh, not just any actress. I wanted to be a smoking actress. Because back then, actresses all smoked. I was sure of it. If you are an actress, you have to look the part, you know. Oh, I was styling. Most little girls play “Dress Up” when they are little, and don stuff out of their mother’s closet. Well, shit, I didn’t want to wear a house coat that snapped up the front. My mother lived in her housecoats. I don’t think any mother on the block actually got dressed each day. So, I asked for high heels, a boa, and other odds and ends for my next birthday so I could start actressing.
I was a good actress. I would say, “Dahling” a lot and would take a puff off of my cigarette. That part was a problem. I had no prop. I pretended that I had a cigarette. I knew how to pretend smoke. I watched my mother light up millions of cigarettes. I’m serious with the number, just ask my second hand smoke lungs. But, she would have the cigarette in her right hand, arm bent, with her elbow up in the air. That cigarette was in her mouth most of the time. She would inhale, and then move her hand away, like the smoke coming out on the exhale wouldn’t be able to go around her arm. I could see the smoke swirl and curl away from her. And right up my nose it went. Well, ok, I don’t know that for sure. But, in college, my Phys Ed instructor told me, “You’d be able to run around the track if you’s quit smoking.” I was pissed. I couldn’t help that I had the lung capacity of a worm. I never smoked a day in my life. Well, that’s a lie. I smoked when I was a child actress.
You see, a good actress should be able to act out a scene by either using a particular prop or pretending she is using the prop. Like, um……a cigarette. Oh, I had candy cigarettes. Those were big when I was little.
But, you know, if you are going to dress the part, you really need to act the part. And everyone knew back then that all actresses smoked. I knew that because I watched movies. Yes, all actresses smoked. And so, then, I should too.
Anyway, the candy cigarettes weren’t working. I didn’t like my working conditions. If I was going to be an actress, I need a real cigarette. So, with my boa wrapped around my neck and my clickety clickety of my plastic high heels, I waltzed into the living room and took one of my mom’s cigarettes. My dad was always behind his newspaper. He wasn’t going to notice I lifted one of my mom cigarettes.
Oh, my, did I have fun with that cigarette. Of course, I didn’t light the cigarette. Honestly, I didn’t think to light it. But, I puffed and smoked in between my “Hello Dahling’s.” My dog, Susie, sitting in the audience, loved my performance. How funny that years later I would major in Speech in Drama in college.
Oh my. Maybe my little fourth grader may be a carnival worker after all.
You know, I wonder if I am too old to be a child actress?
My family and my best friend’s family took a trip during the summer of 1972 to Acapulco, Mexico. We drove all the way there from Weirton, West Virginia. It was a blast. They were in their Station Wagon and we were in my mom’s boat of a Cadillac. Once we crossed the border into Mexico, we stayed in a roach infested motel room. Ramaine’s mom, Dora, wanted us to have a pajama party and stay up all night long. We knew it was because she was afraid that when we fell asleep, we would be subject to all creepy crawlers of the night. We thought it was fun.
Along the way, we stopped at an open air place that was supposed to be a burger joint. I was a little concerned about what kind of meat they served. While we were waiting to get our food, out of the blue a mother pig and her piglets waltzed through the outdoor restaurant. The baby pigs were adorable! They were right by our feet, squealing, and brushing against our legs as they ran around the tables. I just fell in love with the little piggies.
I believe I was 15 when we went to Mexico. On our way back from Acapulco, we stopped at several market places along the side of the road. I found a small paper mache pig. I smiled and just knew I had to have it. After our Mexican adventure was over and we were back in West Virginia, I started my pig collection. And I have been collecting things ever since. My first purchase, of course, was a piggy bank.
One day, when I was driving on a back road somewhere with the school’s driver’s ed teacher, I quickly put my foot on the brake, and yelled, “Pigs!!!” There was a pig farm right on the side of the road. Little piggies were running around and I fell in love all over again. I explained my love of the little porkers to the teacher, who just smiled, probably happy that I didn’t put the car in a ditch during my excitement. The next day he brought me a little plastic pig. “I stole it from my little boy’s toy farm.” I thought that was so sweet. I still have the little guy.
Now, when you are young, you can get away with having a bunch of crap in your bedroom. I used to have stuffed animals when I was little. As I got older, it was Barbie Dolls and Trolls. When I was a teenager, it was pigs. Where ever I went, I tried to find something with a pig on it. After a while, it was obvious that I really liked pigs. Even in college, I managed to find a pig poster. It wasn’t in the best of taste, but during the mid 70′s, this poster was very popular. (Makin Bacon) I hung it above our toilet in the apartment I shared with three others.
After I graduated from college, I looked around my “I’m an adult now” apartment, and realized that most of the pigs had to go. I gave away or threw away (sigh) most of my pigs. I only kept a few things. But, my love of all things piggy was too hard to get rid of altogether. I found an old “The Three Little Pigs” book in an antique shop, and decided, “Hey, what a cool collection that would be!” So I am on the look-out for those when I am antiquing.
In the end, I think everyone should collect something. My grandfather collected marbles. We used to go to his house, crack open the can that contained the round beauties, and shoot marbles on the carpet. They were so pretty. My grandmother enjoyed her National Geographics. I really didn’t consider magazines a collection, but she enjoyed them. My dad owned cameras. He was an amateur photographer, and had different kinds of camera. After he died, I was able to obtain a mini camera that he owned.
I collect a lot of things, ranging from duck decoys to swizzle sticks, from antique letter openers to cast iron banks. I’m a collector. As I was looking around my dining room/living room, I made a discovery. I’m still a pig hoarder.
My little piggy from Mexico
Well, talk about subconscious purchasing. I bought the lamp last month. As soon as I saw it, I had to have it. My son gave me the pig cutting board at Christmas.
I guess I’m a pig collector once again. I kind of like the little porkers.
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.
A friend on facebook took a picture of a cake she made for her daughter’s sleepover. She found the picture on pinterest and made her own cake.. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t her design. In my book, she is now the most creative person I know.
photo by Crystal Bennington
When I was little, in the 50′s and 60′s, we didn’t have elaborate birthday parties. For the most part, we had several friends over and had cake and ice cream. Then Grandma and Grandpa would come over and give me a card with something bizarre written on the front. Grandma was living on Pluto for a few years, and really didn’t know which end was up. She knew my birthday was on November 9th, but there was always something else that shared my day.
Happy Birthday, Vickie Pearl Harbor Day
Oh, she didn’t do it every year, but as I got older, I really appreciated the humor that being crazy generated. Cute, yet alarming at the same time.
But, back to the cake. So, my 5 or 6 friends would sit down and enjoy a round chocolate cake with white icing. It had to be devils food chocolate. My mom would stick candles in the cake, we would sing, and then eat and laugh for the rest of the time. It was great growing up in my neighborhood. But, never, ever, would anyone, ever, have a cake so wonderful as the one my friend just made. I work with another girl, Misty, who makes cakes for her children also. The next three are cakes that she has made for her children. I would never be able to create anything like that. I’m too afraid to make a gingerbread house at Christmas.
photo by Misty Riffee Owens
Another teacher, Stephanie, who admits that she doesn’t cook, also tried her hand at the cake making for her son a while back. Everyone around me is creative like that. I tried one time for my son. It was supposed to be an army cake, even though he never played army. He played with his Ghostbusters, which would have been easy….in my book. I would have just had a white icing cake and called it a ghost. But, the army cake never stood a chance. First of all, I didn’t have the icing thick enough to hold the plastic green army men. I did try to dye the icing to look camouflaged. I even messed that up. It looked like vomit with strings of spinach running through it. I’m creative in my descriptions if nothing else.
So, kudos to you, Crystal, the Cake Lady. Well done.
This guy creeped me out a bit. He started staring at me after I took this picture. Sure, there were other peopel squeezed in beside me, but I have 7 pictures of him and I swear he is looking at me. I decided to start talking. I immediately got a response.
He turned around and looked at me. “Yes, you. Look how pretty you are.” I started snapping pictures. Some guy behind me told me to keep talking. Oh, sir, you have just created a monster. I was being egged on. Ok, sure. You have no idea who the hell I am and you will never see me again. So,I started talking to the gorillas.
After taking a bunch of pictures of this guy, he looked at his gorilla friend like he was saying, “Is she talkin’ to me. You talkin to me? What fun. Well, after I heard a couple people now yelling out at the gorillas, I decided that my time with the big guys was drawing to a close. I moved on and talked to the other animals. Two broke my heart. The bear looked at me like, “Please get me the hell out of here.”
A black bear doesn’t live on rocks. The poor thing had no grass or trees to rub his back. They threw him a chew toy and that was about it. He wanted to go home with me, I’m sure of it. There weren’t many people at this exhibit, so I talked to the bear for a long time. We bonded.
following me home
Rocky Point-Rhode Island
Flooded after Katrina
2011
photo pinterest
Latch hooking. So easy I could do it.
ebay photo
I mean, who wouldn’t want a Mrs. Doubtfire latched rug?
t-shirt latch hooking. 
Not too shabby.
8. Animals I Like
But, you know, if you are going to dress the part, you really need to act the part. And everyone knew back then that all actresses smoked. I knew that because I watched movies. Yes, all actresses smoked. And so, then, I should too.
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.
photo by Crystal Bennington
photo by Misty Riffee Owens
