Old Memories, New Meaning

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Old Memories, New Meaning

Before I begin the post today I’ll post some thumbnails of some pictures that I added to my gallery tonight after a long walk and talk with my dear Robin on the way home tonight. It’ll all make sense by the end:

Speaking of weirdness, I rememberd quite a few “weird things” I did as a child that felt quite good when I did them and felt even better remembering them. I’m going to chronicle them here once and for all:

  • After Church on sundays, i would take a stack of the bulletins from the back of the church (you know the ones that have all the local ads and the lessons about today’s sermon — that they never actually read?) and I would bring them home with me lay them out in 4 rows of 5 on my floor. Each bulletin represented one of the students in my class. I had a black address book (the old ones with the tabbed yellow dividers) that had 5 1/2 x 8 inch loosleaf inside and I made sure that almost every page had one name on it. A unique name. Last name first, first name last so it was in alpha order. This was my class room. I was Miss Cantave and I was the teacher and I had a new lesson for my class every sunday. This game kept me quite busy – what with grading papers and keeping up with the kids’ well being.
  • We have (still) a large round wall mirror, looks like its’ from the 70’s. Has a White plastic frame around it and is about a yard in diameter. It hangs by a nail on the wall. When I was bored (usually at night) I would take it off the wall and hold it perpendicular to me, so that the mirror part was facing up at the ceiling… so when I would look down into the mirror… I’d see the ceiling. I would use the image in the mirror as if it was my floor. So if there was a fixture on the ceiling, I would step around it (like a lamp or a fan or a door frame or a molding). I would just go back and forth from the living room to the bedroom (mine or my moms) and it would entertain me plenty to have walked on the ceiling at night.
  • My favorite character when I was a little girl was Barbie (I didn’t have any black ones — I had one called Golden Dream Barbie and I used to pretend to be here, but there was no way I was sprouting shoulder length (or longer) blonde hair any minute, so I’d go into the laundry pantry and get a clean yellow or pink towel and drape it on my head. I would stand in the full length mirror and conduct the Barbie talk show. I was your host, Barbie, and I’d have a set of very compelling guests on the show who’s main concern was to tell me how long and flowing my hair was.
  • During the Spidey and Friends show, my brother and I would lay belly flat on the solid wood floor and pretend it was a wall, and we’d climb (slide across the floor) — probably infuriating my mom and grandma but giving our imaginations a wildly good time for all of 5 minutes while commercials were on.
  • I used to have a 13 Inch TV tha thad a glass pane on the front of it (which was detachable for cleaning. (I guess it was an artsy thing). One show I loved more than anything as a young girl was Robotech. I loved the story. I loved the characters. I wished I could have the singing voice and admiration and fame of Minmei and the warrior prowess and adorable giggle of Dana Sterling. I used to watch the shows on VCR over and over and over and over. One day I tried tracing on the glass pane a freeze frame of my favorite characters. I would then take the pane off, take the basic line drawing, sketch it on to onion paper and then color it in accordingly and label every character and hang it on my wall. This too kept me quiet for hours and provided me nothing but joy at my wall of ficticious teen idols.
  • I’m sure it was a nervous reaction but when my mom would leave for her night job (she worked from 6:00 AM – 2:30 PM, would come home and sleep for about 2 hours get up and get ready to go work from 6:00 PM – 12 Midnight), it used to make me terribly sad, so I would hide under the table in the dinette. There were a few panes of cardboard fashioned into the bottom of the table and I would take great fascination and pleasure into taking a pen and poking holes in it. Guess it gave me something else to think about. One day I was down there and my grandmother didn’t notice and had some company over and they all sat at the dinette table. She made a dessert dish called beignets which i LOVED because she made them with bananas and they tasted soooo good! So they were all sitting there eating their beignets and coffee and I was fiending, but I couldn’t let them know that I had been down there all that time and not moved or said a word. I sat there with my head in my hands when my grandmother reached down and handed me one in a napkin. *sigh* It was the best beignet I’d ever tasted.
  • Dominic had an overactive imagination too, and we didn’t have an exorbitent amt of money. We were painfully aware of how hard mom worked and that we didn’t need to nor should we squander her money. So we made do with what we had. My brother would take paper bags from the many shoppings and fashion robot suits for us with little helmets and guns and such so that we could walk around space patrol around the house. A pair of scissors and a little tape went a long way (see picture above)

My favorite toys besides my imagination and my brother were :
My Viewmaster where I would spend hours and hours watching Dumbo and Winnie the Pooh
Our Show’N’Tell that would read us Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Gingerbread man

I am heartily sorry that Nixmary Brown and Lisa Steinberg and the countless others that I don’t know the names of – didn’t have a chance to look back from older age and reminisce about the simpler days… And I’m sorry for the jackasses that should be neutered before they even THINK of giving life. It takes so little have a great childhood and it really lasts forever. My prayers for all their souls.

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