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msfledermaus10 THINGS I MISS FROM CHILDHOOD...
By Ms Mausi
1: Signing my artwork in crayon. The really bright ones. I'd always go for the metallic gold or silver ones if I had them, even though they were *most* disappointing when you actually colored with them. I still have a huge pack of crayons at home for when I get good and stuck on a drawing...
2: Saturday Morning Cartoons. Yeah, I don't watch TV much anymore, but on the rare occasions when I see some Saturday Morning tv, it's usually a bit of a bummer. I start to whine that there's no Road Runner Cartoons on, or that I missed them, and start to rip on the badly-animated faux-manga stuff on tv. "That's a rip from that 1974 show, I forget the name but I remember the show and even had one of the big action figures whith the punchy fist and whatnot, this is such a blatant steal, somebody's gonna pay for strip-mining everybody else's childhoodwauuuuuugh!!!" Then I have to be gently led from the room and kept out of the coffee for the morning...
3: Grebble. Sometimes Mom would get out the really big pot and lots of flour and other mysterious ingredient to make Grebble.
(It's a family recipie for a cakey, doughnutty sort of fry-bread. Think French Quarter beignets, but denser. I have no idea why it's called Grebble.) If I was really good I'd get to help braid the grebbles before she dropped them in the hot oil. They'd keep a hyperactive little kid going for ages...
4: Old-school playgrounds. (Diablo Cody and I share this one.) I remember trampoline things with big rusty springs, at least one of which would be perpetually broken, and when you jumped on it you'd whiplash all around. If you were really good (Like me) you'd keep your balance.
Of course this same playground gave me a splinter in my right thigh that was at least 3 inches long and needed medical attention. But it was still a really good playground...
5: Days off with *nothing* to do. I'd sit around with a book or watch whatever videos were on tv and whatever. I'd get scolded and occasionally booted outside to play with the homicidal little creeps that made up a lot of my neighborhood, but inside or out I'd find the best quiet hidey-holes--up a tree, under a staircase, old abandoned forts or whatever. And just spend the day there, doing whatever my bored little mind could come up with. I taught myself how to coil clay from the clay deposits by one hidey hole, and how to be totally still and watch the world go by around me. I'd play with squirrels. I'd make up spells. I'd do nothing at all.
6: Hawaii. When I was a small imp (as opposed to the large imp I am now) I lived on the Naval base on Oahu from the ages of 3 to 6. It probably wasn't the greatest environment, really--we were really close to a Leper colony, and the jungle outside our back yard was pretty damn dangerous, full of insects and feral cows and broken glass and mongooses (Mongeese?) But I loved Honolulu--I learned how to hula and there were rainbows often from all the rain and lots of plants and big beautiful flower to throw at your friends. Geckos were cool.
7: Hello Kitty Erasers. Yeeeees, they still have them. But they do NOT smell the way they used to!! I keep buying them and snorting them, and the damn things just don't have the same smell I remember from Kindgergarten. (This may be a good thing--what kind of funky carcinogen were we all snuffling in class back then?)
8: Story hour. It's always nice having someone read you a story. MPR's pretty close sometimes, though, if they have a really good fiction segment.
9: My stepdad Kim. He died in a car crash when I was 9. We didn't really get to keep him very long--they hadn't had their first anniversary when he died. I really love my current stepdad, though--he's a super ace guy who works incredibly hard to do the right thing and keep everything together. He's funny and really smart, and I'm glad I'll be seeing more of them soon.
10: Growing up when we only had to worry about nuclear missle blowing us all into oblivion, but we were undoubtably, unquestionably hands-down THE GOOD GUYS. We were!!! No, really, we were the goodies and stuff!!! Now....well, you know, gee....
So there you are...
By Ms Mausi
1: Signing my artwork in crayon. The really bright ones. I'd always go for the metallic gold or silver ones if I had them, even though they were *most* disappointing when you actually colored with them. I still have a huge pack of crayons at home for when I get good and stuck on a drawing...
2: Saturday Morning Cartoons. Yeah, I don't watch TV much anymore, but on the rare occasions when I see some Saturday Morning tv, it's usually a bit of a bummer. I start to whine that there's no Road Runner Cartoons on, or that I missed them, and start to rip on the badly-animated faux-manga stuff on tv. "That's a rip from that 1974 show, I forget the name but I remember the show and even had one of the big action figures whith the punchy fist and whatnot, this is such a blatant steal, somebody's gonna pay for strip-mining everybody else's childhoodwauuuuuugh!!!" Then I have to be gently led from the room and kept out of the coffee for the morning...
3: Grebble. Sometimes Mom would get out the really big pot and lots of flour and other mysterious ingredient to make Grebble.
(It's a family recipie for a cakey, doughnutty sort of fry-bread. Think French Quarter beignets, but denser. I have no idea why it's called Grebble.) If I was really good I'd get to help braid the grebbles before she dropped them in the hot oil. They'd keep a hyperactive little kid going for ages...
4: Old-school playgrounds. (Diablo Cody and I share this one.) I remember trampoline things with big rusty springs, at least one of which would be perpetually broken, and when you jumped on it you'd whiplash all around. If you were really good (Like me) you'd keep your balance.
Of course this same playground gave me a splinter in my right thigh that was at least 3 inches long and needed medical attention. But it was still a really good playground...
5: Days off with *nothing* to do. I'd sit around with a book or watch whatever videos were on tv and whatever. I'd get scolded and occasionally booted outside to play with the homicidal little creeps that made up a lot of my neighborhood, but inside or out I'd find the best quiet hidey-holes--up a tree, under a staircase, old abandoned forts or whatever. And just spend the day there, doing whatever my bored little mind could come up with. I taught myself how to coil clay from the clay deposits by one hidey hole, and how to be totally still and watch the world go by around me. I'd play with squirrels. I'd make up spells. I'd do nothing at all.
6: Hawaii. When I was a small imp (as opposed to the large imp I am now) I lived on the Naval base on Oahu from the ages of 3 to 6. It probably wasn't the greatest environment, really--we were really close to a Leper colony, and the jungle outside our back yard was pretty damn dangerous, full of insects and feral cows and broken glass and mongooses (Mongeese?) But I loved Honolulu--I learned how to hula and there were rainbows often from all the rain and lots of plants and big beautiful flower to throw at your friends. Geckos were cool.
7: Hello Kitty Erasers. Yeeeees, they still have them. But they do NOT smell the way they used to!! I keep buying them and snorting them, and the damn things just don't have the same smell I remember from Kindgergarten. (This may be a good thing--what kind of funky carcinogen were we all snuffling in class back then?)
8: Story hour. It's always nice having someone read you a story. MPR's pretty close sometimes, though, if they have a really good fiction segment.
9: My stepdad Kim. He died in a car crash when I was 9. We didn't really get to keep him very long--they hadn't had their first anniversary when he died. I really love my current stepdad, though--he's a super ace guy who works incredibly hard to do the right thing and keep everything together. He's funny and really smart, and I'm glad I'll be seeing more of them soon.
10: Growing up when we only had to worry about nuclear missle blowing us all into oblivion, but we were undoubtably, unquestionably hands-down THE GOOD GUYS. We were!!! No, really, we were the goodies and stuff!!! Now....well, you know, gee....
So there you are...
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 11:32 am (UTC)I guess it doesn't come up in conversation much that I was a tiny hula girl. Mom's got pictures to prove it:D
no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 09:55 pm (UTC)Ooh... Scan! Post!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 09:21 pm (UTC)What's funny is I was thinking the same thing about Saturday morning cartoons. They had something like 2 hours of Warner Bros. stuff every time. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 09:55 pm (UTC)I used to love sniffing the ink on the mimeograhed paper at school.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 10:34 pm (UTC)Shogun robots... i had one too...
no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 11:34 am (UTC)Lepers??
Date: 2005-10-10 05:56 pm (UTC)At that time she would come home one year for every four she was there--she was supposed to use the time to whip up support for the Mission. Before sulfa changed things, she would bring home pictures of lepers in all kinds of dreadful stages. My sisters and I were fascinated. We must have been fairly heartless creatures because we also sang a song (to the tune of one whose name I've forgotten:
"Leeeeprosy! My God I've got leeeeprosy!
There goes my eyeball--into my highball!!"
no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 06:12 pm (UTC)"Grand Central Station: Crossroad of a million lives!"
Now skip ahead several decades. A PBS station in New York was hosting an educational television program about IRS and Tax Returns. It had been an east coast thing, but then they decided to include the midwest, also. My office sent a tape of me doing some program locally and I was invited to come to New York to audition.
Some Regional person went in to sit on the side in case I got in trouble. I was (am) SO unsophisticated! But the PBS person was conducting one of those interviews where she just got me to talk and judged how I might do, from that. It was my first trip to New York--we talked about that--and I found it necessary to tell her about "Grand Central Station." She said "Oh, I watched that, too!" and then she quoted the "Crossroads of a Million Lives" bit so I knew she was telling the truth.
When I left the interview she said she'd contact my office, but then she said to me, "You're good at this, you know." I was ecstatic. I called my office's Public Affairs person and reported this. I told him, "If I die on the plane going home, I'll die knowing that NEW YORK said I was good!!" I didn't die.
I got the spot.