Saturday, June 19, 2010
5:40 AM
Projectors
We didn't have t'v's in every room in the house back then so this was a very big deal. I could crawl into bed at night and watch a cartoon right there on my wall for as long as the batteries held out. Crazy fun. LOL
*sidenote: My one and only complaint I have about Christmas in our house was that Mom and Dad would buy us lots of toys that required batteries and other things to work. They would buy us one set of batteries for each toy and then once they went down, their Christmas spirit had passed and they were no longer interested in buying more. When I was a kid, I thought batteries cost an arm and a leg based on my parent's unwillingness to purchase them. I figured they must cost at least $10 per battery or something. lol I never will understand how they expected us to play with battery-powered toys throughout the year if they weren't going to replenish our batteries. They were the same way about film (that's why there are almost no pics of us growing up), long distance minutes, HBO, and anything that had to be ordered from the Penney's catalog. I was in college before I realized that the things in the Penney's catalog were priced the same as the things in the stores. I thought you had to be a doctor's kid to afford to order things. LOL Somewhat related is the fact that I also thought the whole world dropped off at the Mc******* city limits until I was in high school because we so rarely ventured beyond that point. I can't tell you how many times someone at school would show up with a pair of shoes, a shirt, etc. that I desperately loved only to break my heart by telling me that they got it at the mall in Tulsa. In my world, the mall in Tulsa might as well have been the moon. There was no way I was ever going to get to go there to shop. I guess that's why I became such a mall rat once I got old enough to make the trek myself. No more shopping in dullsville where they are always a good 10 years behind the times! Besides. I don't want any of my tax money going to support this place than is absolutely necessary.
5:36 AM
Puffer Kite
I never looked at God as a magic genie and I never prayed for toys.......excpet for one, singular moment of misguided weakness. I saw the Puffer kite on Uncle Zeb and fell in love!!!! I just could not live without one so the Friday before we were to go shopping on Saturday, I included a passionate request for a Puffer kite in my bedtime prayers. I still feel guilty about that! LOL That was not normally my m. o. I did get one, which excited me to no end, but I distinctly remember asking God to forgive me, just the same, for being so selfish and for treating Him as though He were my personal wish granter. I never prayed for a toy again after that. LOL
Oh, and the super cool Puffer kite that I just had to have? It got hung in some trees and burst the very first day I flew it. I went back to regular kites after that. Inflatables and tree limbs just don't play well together. LOL
5:34 AM
My First Record Player
Mine was blue, of course, and it had stars all over it because it played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". It was such a sweet toy and that song was one of the very first I ever learned. A few years later, when I got a little older, I tried to make it play real records but it wouldn't cooperate much to my dismay. LOL
5:29 AM
Map of the United States
My Granny Mom (my dad's mom) had like, six billion grandkids, and great-grandkids so in the interest of her sanity and survival, she always kept two things on hand at her house: random toys, and ice cream. Yeah, Granny Mom! And in that small stockpile of random toys was a U.S. map puzzle. That thing survived all of us grandkids for years which is amazing. It wasn't a terribly exciting toy. It was more like an old stand-by kind of toy. Some of the other toys would come and go because they would "accidentally" get taken home by some of my cousins, lol, but the puzzle long remained. We all liked it o.k. but none of us were emotionally invested enough in it to "borrow" it. LOL I didn't spend all that much time over at my grandma's house. She had so many grandchildren that she had trouble remembering who was who and besides that, she wasn't really the doting, huggy-lovey type so for the most part, I only saw her on holidays and then maybe one or two other randomly selected times in any given year. But I loved her because she was my grandma and because my dad loved her so very dearly. The few significant memories I do have of knowing her always come back to me whenever I see a tupperware bowl of ice cream or one of these puzzle maps.
5:25 AM
Transistor Radio
I don't remember what brand my first transistor radio was. I don't even really remember what it looked like except that it was mostly black and the dial was on the side. It had a strap, which, for some reason, added quite a bit of cool factor to it in my 2nd grade mind. It was a birthday present from my parents and I was so proud to have it. We had stereos and other radios in the house but there was just something about having my very own that made me feel as though I had officially entered teendom. 8 years old is teen, right? LOL
5:18 AM
Radio Flyer
You don't have to be a baby boomer to understand the sentimentally-charged radness that is the Radio Flyer. If you grew up anywhere in America, anytime in the 1900's, then you totally get it. I miss you, little red wagon. Wherever you are today, I still heart you madly. And thanks mom, for yet another priceless Christmas toy memory. I adored my wagon.
5:08 AM
Some of My Faves
Some of the most memorable 45's from my childhood. I remember seeing all of them in my record stack, just like it was yesterday that I sat in my room, listening to them on my little blue record player.
When I was a preschooler, there were a lot of Beatles hits on the radio but my hands-down favorite was this one. When you really think about it, the song was, lyrically speaking, written at age level:Oh yeah I'll tell you somethin'
I think you'll understand
And I'll say that somethin'
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your ha-a-a-a-aaand
I wanna hold your hand
So you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around
That's what it's all about.
But I digress. Again.
My cousin, Pat, forgot and left our first copy of this song in the back dashboard of her mom's car. The sun melted it quite nicely. We eventually replaced it though and that copy lived to experience about a million spins before cassette tapes and Yoko Ono rendered it obsolete. : )
Daydream Believer by the Monkees was the very first record I ever bought for myself, which means it was the very first record that I could put my name on because it was really, truly mine. I bought it with money I received for my 6th birthday. I had been wanting the record for weeks and had memorized what the label looked like so I could check every time we visited Ben Franklin's to make sure they didn't sell out before my special day arrived and I would be able to buy a copy of my own. I guess that's why that red and white Colgems label is still so vivid in my mind. My birthday fell on a Saturday that year so my mom took me downtown bright and early to get my record and spend my other gift money. I got other more expensive presents that day but I'm not sure I loved any of them more than I loved my new Monkees record. DB was my favorite song that year and I wore it out playing it over and over in the months and years afterwards. Besides, I was also madly in love with Davy Jones so I had to have the record because he was, without a doubt, singing that song to me. lol
Indian Lake by the Cowsills actually belonged to my brother but we lived in a fairly small house and he played his music loud so whether I wanted to or not, I listened to whatever he listened to. This is one that I came to love a lot. It takes me back to preschool summers in our house on Madison, when my mom was young and healthy, I was free of school-related self-esteem issues, and the days were ours to breathe in with abandon. The lyrics are kind of silly and the song structure is rather rudimentary but it's very catchy just the same and I can still listen to it over and over when I'm in the mood to just get lost in a song that I don't feel compelled to over analyze. I'm a trained musician but you know, sometimes the fact that a song brings you unexplainable joy is really enough.
We've already discussed the obsession that my best friend Reena and I had with Donny Osmond so I won't go into that whole background again. (You're welcome) But I would be remiss if I did not mention that Puppy Love was my all-time favorite D.O. song and every girl in my class dreamed of being the girl in the story. lol
In my 5th grade year, we had an unusual amount of extra cold, sometimes snowy weather which dictated that the schools hold indoor recess more often than they normally would. Mrs. LeFlore, our homeroom teacher, allowed us to play records during recess to pass the time away, something we loved to do. We all brought our favorite 45's and we had a great time listening to them, dancing, and singing along. Those times were fun, but largely uneventful. That is, except for when Puppy Love was spun. lol
Oh my, did that song ever bring out the drama queen/trying to grow up way too fast/girlfriend wannabe in all of the girls in my 5th grade class! We would sing that song with conVICTION, now! Let me tell you. And sometimes, we'd get so caught up in the pretend drama that we'd even squeeze out a tear or two. LOLOL Yeah. We were THOSE kind of girls. But don't judge us too quickly. From the beginning of time, ALL girls have been "those" kind of girls. Well, except for Reena, who dearly loved the song but just didn't have it in her to get all weepy over a make-believe love affair. That just wasn't her style. She has always been way too rational and mature for her own good. LOL
I also used to sing along to this song in my bedroom and when I did, I would pretend that Donny and I, who were dating (for REALZ, ya'll), wrote the song as a testament and plea to our parents who just didn't understand that in spite of our young age, we were deeply, passionately in love and destined to wed one day. In my retarded fantasy, I was also a famous singer, and Donny, as well as both sets of parents were in the audience watching my performance. He and I cried as I sang this song as an emotional statement to our folks who just didn't understand. At the end of each performance, Donny would leave his seat, come up on the stage, give me a passionate kiss, and then put his arms around me as we both turned to face our parents, all of whom were, by this time, offering a tearful, "now-we-get-it-and-you-have-our-blessing" standing ovation.
Oh, it was quite the dramz, my friends. Quite the dramz.