Will You Go with Me?

Having a boy/girlfriend in grade school never made any sense to me. It's not like you could really go anywhere, right? I mean, what 10 year-old has access to a car? And even if they did, where would you go? Unless they had a really good allowance or something, then that is the person you want to hold on to. The system of "dating" in grade school usually involved three people- the childhood version of the "threesome." Generally, one person was the middle-man (or woman) to the "would be" daters. This would be the "go-to" person who would generally be the friend of the person who had a crush on a cute boy/cute girl in the class, this designated "go-to" person would walk up to the boy and say "Do you like so-and-so?" (or like my friends in Great Britain would say "So-and-so fancies you."). If he/she answered in the affirmative the next question would be, "Do you want to go with so-and-so?" Now, here is where my question would come into play; "Go where?" Like I said, this is grade school and a 10-year-old takes things pretty literally so you have to be specific. The "Go-to"-er would give me a look of confusion..."Uh...out?" I would reply in my 10-year-old wisdom, "We are already out. OUTSIDE!" Ok, I wasn't quite grasping what was going on here obviously. "Go-to"-er would roll their eyes and reply in a snarky tone "Go out with..be their girlfriend! Geez!" Oh! "Uh..ok...I guess so." The "Go-to"-er would go to said boy and say "She LIKES you likes you so she is your girlfriend now." To which said boy grins shyly at me and runs off to play baseball with the other boys. Ok, so now I was attached. Wasn't he supposed to come running and pledge his undying love and whisk me off my feet? Nope, when you're 10, it means that you have a boyfriend in name only and he just has laid a claim to you even tho' he has no idea what having a "girlfriend" means. 'Course, at that age, I had no idea either. I just know that so-and-so just decided I was cute and wanted to be the only one to tell me. As I went from grade school to middle school, things really didn't get much better. "Dating" was mostly meeting the guy you thought was cute at the roller rink and "couple skating" with him during the slow songs. This generally involved holding the hand of a sweaty pre-pubescent boy and doing your best to not fall down when his skate stopper snagged and he went crashing to the polished wood floor of the rink. High school "dating" meant going to the Friday night dances we had every week and sitting on the chairs with his arm around you because he didn't want to dance; other than the slow dances where he would hold you at arms length by your waist and go in circles until you were dizzy. As soon as the song was over (something like "Almost Paradise" by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson or "I Can't Fight This Feeling" by REO Speedwagon) he would grab your hand and drag you back to your designated chair and plop back down, effectively holding you in place with his arm and daring anyone to brave the possessive look on his face to come talk to you or even breathe the same air you are breathing. When you DIDN'T have a boyfriend you could actually dance with your other friends because, believe it or not guys, girls LIKE to dance. If I wanted to hold a chair down for 4 hours I would have stayed home and watched the telly. College dating...well, for privacy's sake, let's not go there...but let's just say there is a lot more than "dancing" going on.

Anything with wheels...

At one point in my life my mother told me "I am sorry I ever bought you anything with wheels." What?!? Just because I rode my big wheel down the very steep hill into the driveway at Mach 8, or that I tried building a skate ramp in the basement out of a 2"x8" and a piece of plywood, or that I sat on my skateboard at my cousin Tanya's house and road down the center of the 3rd Street hill, or we took the Barbie Rv down the same hill, does not mean that I shouldn't have anything with wheels. It just means that I would have found one way or another to endanger my life in ways that would scare the living daylights out of my mother. For example...climbing around the ancient sheep shed on the neighbor's farm and building a clubhouse on the platform (a very rickety and dangerous platform that was about 12 feet off the ground, I may add) out of old doors and plywood found in various buildings on the farm, complete with old rusty nails and hinges and such that would surely have given me lockjaw if I had cut myself on one of them. Or...swinging from the haymow rope from the 20 foot platform with the neighbor kids, that could have,at any time, let go and I would have plummeted to the floor ending up with a broken something-or-other. Then there is the horseback riding incident that my friend, Dena, and I tried behind the barn where we decided to see if we could stand on the horse's back while at a full out run. Hey! We started with a walk just to gain balance, so I was cautious! Now as the mother of an 8 year-old son I understand exactly what my mother was saying to me. I apparently have given birth to Marvel character, Matt Murdock or as he is known by his secret identity "Daredevil." It started when he was just 9 months old. He was crawling all over and pulling himself up on chairs and couches and had no fear of falling whatsoever. It was at 9 months that he was standing at the coffee table and turned and walked to me all smiles and fearless. I was terrified. He hasn't sat still since.(I would like to interject here that I had a very cautious and somewhat timid daughter five years prior to Daredevil's birth who never once made me shudder in fear of her falling or doing anything remotely scary other than try to crawl out of her crib once and she fell onto a pillow and cried like she broke a leg. I think that fall scared her off of circus tricks or anything of the sort. It took her until she was 10 to learn to ride a two-wheeler because she was afraid of falling...but I digress...) It was at 15 months he decided to go for a ride in the laundry basket down the stairs. Now, I saw this happening as I was at the bathroom at the top of the stairs, however, did you ever have that feeling of the Six-Million Dollar Man? You know the feeling, the faster you run the slower you go? THAT is what was happening to me. I could see him grab the laundry basket and crawl into it and then start skooching toward the edge of the stairs. I stood rooted to the spot willing my limbs to move but was paralyzed and somewhat intrigued at the scene playing out before me. I was immediately whisked back to my childhood and taking the Radio Flyer down the steep hill between Gramma's house and our house...that ended badly as I overshot the road and went ass-over-teakettle down the embankment and wound up in the cornfield stunned and bruised but not bleeding and broken. I forced my legs to move and I started to yell "N-n-n-n-n-o-o-o-o-o-oooooo!" (like Darth Vader in Star Wars) and I reached for him to only grasp air as he began his descent down the 13 Steps into the foyer. I stood frozen with fear as I watched him lean back in the basket and ride smoothly down to the bottom floor like he was on a kiddie rollercoaster. He landed safely at the bottom; not dumped out and thudding down the steps only to land a bruised and bloody screaming mess at the bottom. He jumped out of the basket with an awestruck look on his face. sort of a "That was aMAZING!" look. "WHOOOAAAA!!!" he said and grabbed the handle as if he was going to come back up and do it again. At this point my husband had come running to the bottom of the stairs, grabs the laundry basket out of his tiny little hands and says "I don't THINK so, Daredevil. You have had enough excitement for one day and Mom and Dad have to go in for a cardiac assesment." Baby boy was not so happy with Dad after that. The one thing that I vowed at that point, was he was never going to have anything with wheels. Ever. He is now the proud owner of a two wheeled bike, roller blades and a Radio Flyer red wagon. Thank God our back yard is flat...

Modern Technology

We had a black and white 19 inch tv until the antenna (anyone under the age of 30 would have no idea what that is) got hit by lightning and *zzzap!* there went the tv. I remember it so well because I was 4 and it was Halloween. I was watching a Scooby-Doo Halloween Special- I still don't know how it ended... A couple of days later, Dad came home with a brand new 19 inch COLOUR TV! Click! Who KNEW that Carol Burnett was in such a glorious array of colour?!? This was a whole knew foray into the wonderfully mind numbing world of television viewing. Marshall Matt Dillon wore a pink shirt, Miss Kitty had eyeshadow the colour of sapphires, the Hudson Brothers were visited by a colourful Rod Hull and his Emu, Sonny and Cher had eye dazzling glittery costumes that were a briliant array of rainbow colours. I was 5 years old before I knew that The Wizard of Oz was partially in colour. Unfortunately, it made the flying monkeys even scarier than normal black and white... That was the extent of modern technology until I was about 13 or 14. Then came the glorious Video Cassetter Recorder! Ah the VCR!! Now I could watch movies I saw in the theatre a year ago! Mom rented a VCR for us one weekend for $5 and two movies for $2. The VCR itself looked somewhat like a box droid from Star Wars. You would push the eject button and the cassette feed would pop up from the top on well oiled hinges. You would put the cassette into the feed and click the feed back down into the machine and then hit play. Michael J. Fox in "Back to the Future" filled the screen (but first I had to turn the knob to Channel 3 so we could watch it) and the strains of Huey Lewis filled the living room. Next up, Footloose with Kevin Bacon (the original and the best one, in my opinion). We didn't have video games in our house, hence the reason I was not and am not a huge video game fan. Nah, I went to Tanya's house to play their Atari 2600 and Pac-Man and Donkey Kong for that. Back then, if you wanted to get a hold of someone, you called them on the phone. You knkow, a land line. A phone that hung on the wall and had a 12 foot cord attached to it so you were limited to the range in which you could get away from the phone. The phone actually rang in a *brrrriiiiiinggggg* sound (not in some ringtone by Barry Manilow or Donna Summer or some other artist of the time) and was followed by the sound of three people in our house yelling "PHONE!!!!" If no one was home, the phone rang and rang...and then people hung up and tried later. We were not able to leave a message (only rich people had answering machines) nor were we able to text them as to their current whereabouts. Cell phones were not heard of at that time. It all seemed so Star Trek-y that we would be able to talk to someone away from home! It never ceases to amaze me how we managed to do without a lot of the modern ameneties that we have now. How did we exist without cell phones and computers and 90 inch flat screen plasma televisions? We did the best with what we had and we were satisfied... Wouldn't it be great to be like that again some days? ...excuse me...I have to answer my cell...

Valentine's Day Revelries

Ah Valentine's Day...the day when all children decorate the average brown box in glorious shades of red and pink with glittery hearts and Cupids and wait for their friends to drop their Snoopy Valentine's into their mailboxes. Cherry Lollipops, smarties, conversation hearts, heart shaped pink marshmallows and chocolates abound! Nowadays, teachers ask that children send no candy but "healthy snacks" instead. WHAT!?! That is blasphemy!! Valentine's Day is all about the candy people! Even teachers were children once and they received all the sugary nasty sweet treats at one point too. Have they forgotten what it is to be children at Valentine's?!? I mean, that is like getting a "A donation has been made in your name to a local food pantry" card in your stocking at the age of 7 instead of presents!! Now, I understand that todays educators are under pressure to conform to the whole "healthy living" thing. I get that. But it is only one day a year and it is all about moderation. When I was a kid, the more chocolate you got the better your Valentine's Day. You knew your friends liked you when you got a boatload of chocolate. One of my classmates mothers used to make sugar cookies with each student's name on it. They were beautiful, too. Almost too beautiful to eat but eat them we did...and with gusto! Our teachers even gave out candy...sometimes a a regular sized Hershey bar! That's what I am talking about!! I don't know about you, but it is an awful mess to deliver a heart shaped pineapple slice into a kids valentine's box. The other valentine's stick together, and not all kids like pineapple... In middle school and high school we used to send "Candy-Grams" for Valentine's day. this included a heart shaped valentine (that you could write a Valentine's message on) with a lollipop taped to it. You could always tell how many friends you had by the number of "Candy-Grams" you received. At the time they cost 50 cents each. So, for 5 bucks you had 10 friends taken care of! All day long you would see kids walking (or in some cases running) thru the halls with suckers sticking out of their mouths. Of course, my mother's words of "Don't run with something in your mouth!" would pop into my head every time I saw it, but regardless, I was one of the idiots running around with a sucker in my mouth. Oh well. I never fell and jammed it into the back f my throat and choked to death, so hey! So, I sent my son off to school this morning with his Valentine's for his classmates with a sucker taped to them. Yes. I am a rebel. Sue me...

The Sounds of Music

Recently I was doing a little channel surfing and came across one of the best musicals ever, The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. As a kid I was absolutely fascinated with this musical. In fact, I will say it, I wanted to be Maria Von Trapp. Not in the sense that she was a postulate nun, but I wanted to sing like her and galavant about a spacious estate in Austria caring for 7 children and teaching them to sing like nightingales much to their father's chagrin. Then I realized, I was 9 and all likelihood that would not happen ever to a girl from a very small village in Wisconsin. So, instead, I took up the reins of "Director" and made my ever-present cousin, Tanya, my Big Sister, Amy and Baby Sister become the stars of our own production of The Sound of Music. Amy (of course) was always Liesl (the suffering 16-going-on-17 year-old), Baby Sister was Gretel (she was only 3 and didn't have any lines much) and Tanya was Brigitta (not that she was very thrilled with being a secondary character) but she would also pick up lines for Louisa, Friedrich, Kurt and Marta if needs be. She was a very talented actress. I, of course, would be Maria. I knew all her lines and the words to the songs by heart. (So I was being Kevin Kostner directing AND starring in the main role...sue me.) We would put the record on the hi-fi and start singing along with it, the song bursting out of us like an overfilled balloon. We were positively magnificent. When we would go to my Aunt and Uncle's farm, they had the perfect place to perform. They had the neatest addition to their house that had a red carpeted stairway that we would practice "So Long, Farewell" on. Here, I would step in to play multiple roles so the song would play out correctly, like you do. We decided that after much practice and perfecting our roles, we would perform for Aunt and Uncle, Mom and Dad and Gramma and Grampa S. We were quite certain that some movie mogul would be innocently driving by and hear us singing and burst into the house to offer us an exclusive movie deal. (Because, there are so many rogue movie moguls roving about rural West Central Wisconsin...) So, the hour of our performance had come...and...Baby Sister backs out. She didn't like people watching her. Ok. Fine. We can work around the Gretel parts. Then, Big Sister backs out, mainly because at 11 years of age, she would feel a little foolish singing along to a record in front of people- never mind it was family and we had to listen to her sing along to her radio at the top of her lungs in her room- and she had an image to protect. Ok, well, this performance was in a downward spiral and obviously was going to close before it even opened. So, here are two people, trying to play the roles of approximately 15 people (don't forget the nuns in "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" and Reverend Mother in "Climb Every Mountain" and of course, Rolf in "Sixteen Going on Seventeen"). Seriously, if I had to take on Liesl how was Tanya going to lift me during that song? Well, needless to say, much to the disappointment of our audience we had to close the curtains on our production of "The Sound of Music." My dreams of being an Academy Award winning Actress and Director shattered, I took my record off the hi-fi and went to the back bedroom and put on "Climb Every Mountain" to practice for my next career choice... Opera Singer.

Kool-Aid Stands and low traffic areas

Admit it, at least once in your youth you had a Kool-Aid stand. However, having a Kool-Aid stand in the country was not such an easy task. As usual, my cousin, Tanya, was visiting for the summer and we decided we wanted to have a Kool-aid stand to make some pocket money. (I mean, what kid at the ages of 9 and 6 didn't need a few bucks for whatever?) We had visions of becoming young entrepeneurs and being able to afford everything we wanted. Our own swimming pool, clothes and all the candy we could eat. Who didn't dream of all the wonderful things one-hundred bucks could buy?!? So, we decided on a strategy. This generally was a discussion on which kind of kool-aid to make and who was in charge of the sign and who was in charge of the money. These would be the titles of Product Specialist, Marketing Manager and CFO, repsectively. I was put in charge of making the Kool-aid. Cherry packet, scoop of sugar (this was before the world became health concious and actually put a crap-ton of sugar in everything) and water. Well...my job is done. Tanya was put in charge of the sign. She had some pretty fantastic artistic abilities and we left it up to her discretion. Giant piece of tag board, Crayola markers and concentration. Her completed sign was a masterpiece "NICE REFRESHING CHERRY KOOL-AID- 25 cents!" I think that will get attention. Big sister was put in charge of the money. She found a box to put it in. Done. So, grabbing some plastic cups, we loaded the Kool-Aid and the money box and the sign into the Radio Flyer wagon and headed down the quarter-mile to the end of our lane and set up shop (as it were) and waited for our customers to come pouring in. and waited.....and waited....and waited....(did I mention it was a humid 85 degrees outside that day?) Heck! We have been here 15 minutes and hadn't had one single car stop for our delicious, ice-cold beverage yet. We would wave our sign when cars went by, but no one even gave us a second glance. This was much more difficult than we thought. WE had better try a new strategy because this one certainly wasn't working for us. Suddenly, we saw a milk truck heading in our direction. Ok, this guy has been sitting in a hot truck all day and I am sure he will want a drink. Let's wave our sign and see if he stops. We started waving our sign and jumping up and down so he saw us. Uh-oh...he was going to drive by. He rounded the corner and started driving by. In a burst of PR genius, Tanya screams out at the passing truck "HALF PRICE!!" The truck slams on his brakes and comes to a screeching halt. A mustachioed face with thick lenses, sticks his head out the window, "How much?" With a toothy grin, Tanya blurts out, "25 cents, but we are having a sale! For you 10 cents!" (which I don't think is exactly half price, but how do you charge 12 1/2 cents for something?) The guy disappears back into the truck apparently to grab some money, "Got change for a dollar?" (Change?!? We didn't have any change, we were relying on people paying exact price with their own change.) Tanya grins, "I can run back to the house, Mister, if you don't mind waiting!" The bespectacled gentleman peers at us thru his thick lenses, his blue eyes twinkling, "Nah, you girls look pretty warm and you deserve a little extra for your time on this hot day. Keep the change!" I hand our customer his glass of Kool-Aid, thank him and wave as he drives off. We pocket our dollar and then look at each other. In silent agreement we start packing up our stuff and make the long trek back to the house with our measly dollar, dreams of amazing gifts we could buy shattered. However, that single milk truck driver taught us a valuable lesson that day...never carry change, you will get more than the price you are asking.

Snow Day and the Undeniable truth

Ah! Snow days! We LIVED for snow days when I was a kid. If there was even a HINT of snow we were glued to the evening news to see what the weatherman was saying for our area. Please please PLEASE let it be at least a foot of snow. Enough that they would have the schools cancel because the buses couldn't get thru the ridges and valleys. Now, I know it is impossible to wake up a 9 year old during the week but if there was a possibility of a snow day? Then we were up when Mom and Dad got up at 6 just so we could hear the weather report... "Here are the list of schools cancelled and or delayed...Ithaca- cancelled, Kickapoo- cancelled, North Crawford- Cancelled...(come on Richland Center!!)...Richland Center...CANCELLED." YES!!!!! Immediately, we would run and get dressed and get ready to go out to brave the storm and untouched snow with our sleds. Never mind it was 10 below and the wind chill was -25. It was a DAY OFF FROM SCHOOL!! We could not waste a single moment! There were drifts to be dug into to make forts out of, hills to slide down, ramps to be made! Come on people we have work to do! As we got older we would pray for snow days just so we could watch soap operas and game shows and sit around and eat junk all day. It was very important to find out if Victor and Nikki were going to get back together or if Beth and Phillip were going to the prom together. I mean, this was as important as our own lives! Only far more glamourous. Then when we got into high school it was a day for talking on the phone to your friends for hours and the inevitable chores that Mom would leave for us. (Admit it, you waited until about 2 hours before Mom came home to actually start them. That way the Pine-Sol would still be smelling on the freshly mopped floor when she came in.) When college came, there was no such thing as snow days. College very rarely closed for anything and the professors left it up to your own judgement if it was safe to come to class or not. Generally, if you were paying for college like I was, you tried to go because dang....it was a waste of money to claim a snow day when you were 20 years old. Besides, you had that quiz today that the professor would not allow a make-up on if you missed. Then you graduate college and get a real job. There are NO snow days at work. None. They don't close down because of a little snow. WHAT!!?!??! I want to be a kid again....