J is for Just A Memory

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

It was September of 1975 and my friend Rose's 15th birthday, and the plan was for Julie, Dana, Rose and me to celebrate by attending a special showing of "Gone With The Wind" at a movie theater across town. 

Since we weren't old enough to drive, my mom agreed to take drive us. She recruited her friend Marilyn to go with her, and we picked up Julie and Dana, who lived in our neighborhood, then off to Rose's house. The Birthday Girl climbed into the car, settled into her seat, and announced, "Today, I am sensuous!" My mom started laughing so hard, I thought she was going to drive into a ditch.

My mom and Marilyn opted to sit elsewhere in the theater while we four girls picked seats nearer the screen. The theater was crowded, and as we found seats and made our way down the row, we spied a couple we knew from school sitting in the back of the theater. They were older than we were and kind of an "it" couple, so we did what any other group of 15 year old girls would do: pulled our mirror-backed keychains out of our purses and spied on them until the show on the screen started.

Once the film began, we forgot about Steve and Carrie in the back of the theater making out and were enthralled with the movie. I had read the book, but seeing the story brought to life on the screen was magical. Happy Birthday, Rose!

Since that night, I have seen "Gone With The Wind" several times on tv, and I even owned a VHS copy of it, but I have no independent recollection of seeing it on the big screen again after Rose's birthday.

Fast forward 48 years to Monday of this week.

I saw an ad for a special showing of "Gone With The Wind" at out local theater (an incredibly crappy theater that had a chance to clean the goo off the floors, fix the seats, and generally spruce the place up during Covid but didn't, so it still has sticky floors and smells like feet) and invited a couple of my co-workers to attend with me. The theater wasn't crowded like the last time I saw the movie; in fact, there weren't more than 15 people in our showing. There was no young couple making out in the back of the theater for us to spy on, the popcorn was disappointing, we were out WAY past our bedtimes to see a four-hour film, the floor was definitely sticky and the place smelled like feet.

But I believe that Scarlett O'Hara still reigns, that watching a movie on your television is no substitute for the big screen, and that Rose is still sensuous!

Rose, the sensuous 15 year old

Julie

Me

I couldn't find Dana's school picture,
so this pic of the two of us will have to do

I is for I'm A Barbie Girl

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood..

I saw the Barbie movie with my daughter. She cried when it was over, so moved was she by the message of empowerment of women. I thought it was a nice movie (and I may or may not have dozed off for part of it, but we did go to a late showing), but my thoughts were very different from my 25 year old daughter's. 

My daughter grew up with the girls-can-be-anything Barbie. The original Barbie, which came out the year before I was born, was a teenage babysitter. I don't remember receiving my first Barbie, but I was probably around 5 when I got her. She had a bouffant hairdo, and my mom found her a whole wardrobe (including a nurse's uniform, complete with navy blue cape) at a garage sale. 

Poor girl. Think of all the time she spent under
the hairdryer to get that look! (not my doll)

Not mine, but the ones I had were just like this.

I got Barbie's little sister Skipper next, followed by my first Barbie with bendable knees. Malibu Barbie, Malibu Francie, and Malibu Skipper came along after that, along with a Stacy doll. Another couple of Skippers joined the group after that. 

Instead of the Barbies all living in their own homes and living their own lives as depicted in the movie, my Barbies were a family, and I played house with them (fyi: NONE of them were named "Barbie;" I renamed every one of them). I also added a few small dolls to be baby sisters, and I logged hundreds of hours playing with all of them. 

Barbie Dream House? I didn't have one. I took the four Barbie cases I owned and set them up in a semi-circle to be an open floor plan house. Barbie Convertible? I WISHED I had one, but it wasn't practical for such a large family anyway, so the larger Barbie case I used as a living room doubled as the family's station wagon.

I longed for a Ken to be the dad, but I didn't have one for a number of Barbie-playing years. I had to pretend Ken was at work, and when I finally received a Malibu Ken, he then had to double as the dad and as the boyfriend to the oldest sister. 

I made their wardrobes by cutting out wraparound skirts with tunic tops made from scrap fabric and tied at the waist with a piece of yarn. Eventually, I figured out how to make pants by hand sewing them, and Ken got a bitchin' new outfit.

And my original Barbie? I put baby powder in her hair and made her the grandma.

I wish I had my Barbies to show you, but they met an unfortunate end in the Great Sewer Pipe Break in my parents' basement many years ago. Here's what survived:

The living room/station wagon

Ken in his double-knit, houndstooth leisure suit.
Eat your heart out, Ryan Gosling!

I also found this book (it was never in the basement so it is in pristine condition!):

The inside cover of the book, inscribed to me
from my Grandma, who passed away in 1968
when I was seven years old.

My daughter and I may have played Barbies completely differently, but for each of us, they were just what we needed at the time.

H is for Hey, I Could Have Used This For "G" But I Forgot I Had It

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

High school (and college) girls don't carry purses anymore. All they seem to use are tiny wallets that attach to their keychains for their driver's license and a debit card, and I see these and wonder, "Where do they keep their gum?"

We were gum chewers when I was in school. It was forbidden, which is probably why it was so desirable, and teachers made you spit it in the trash can if they caught you with it. You learned to tuck it away in your mouth and talk with it there without getting busted, and we didn't hesitate to swallow it if necessary (where, contrary to popular belief, it did NOT stay in our stomachs for seven years). There was no such thing as sugar-free gum, and I'm sure we got plenty of cavities that were directly related to gum chewing.

Gum came five sticks to a pack, but at some point in the mid-1970s, the companies made larger packs with about 15 sticks to a pack. Each stick was tucked into a piece of foil that folded over the ends and then wrapped with a paper wrapper, and those paper wrappers were saved to make ART! 

Behold, the gum wrapper chain:

Each link is made from one gum wrapper.

The chain, coiled like this, is about 4 inches across

Close up

Closer up....

Lewis for scale. He really really really wanted to
keep this for his own, but I didn't save it for 45 
years for him to destroy it in one night, so sorry, Lew.

The wrappers are folded and slipped together to interlock them into the chain. I can't explain it, but give me some gum wrappers, and I can still make one.

You were supposed to make your gum wrapper chain as long as your boyfriend. I measured mine just now and it is 6'2".

I did not even have a boyfriend.

With the changes in packaging over the years, you'd be hard-put these days to make a gum wrapper chain that is as tall as your boyfriend (unless your boyfriend is Lewis). 

Should I continue to keep this little gem for posterity? Nah, but I'm going to anyway!

G is for Games

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember, which, in retrospect, is quite interesting, since I spent most of my school career trying to figure out how to get OUT of going to class. But my mom was a teacher before she got married, and my grandma was a teacher in a one-room school, and since the only careers for women that I was aware of was teacher, nurse, or secretary, I went with teacher.

I would carefully place my plethora of dolls into rows on the floor of my parents' bedroom (I had a really tiny bedroom that didn't have room for an entire classroom in it, even with dolls; it barely held a twin bed, a dresser, and a chest of drawers), short ones in the front, tall ones in the back. I taught them lessons, read books to them, made little math worksheets that I then answered and graded. Remember in my post "B is for Becky With The Good Hair" I told how I would beg my brother to play dolls with me? He would sometimes agree to play school, name himself Principal, then shut himself up in his room/office, never to be seen or heard from again.

I  majored in Elementary Education in college, of course, and after the general education requirements were fulfilled, my schedule was filled with classes like Music for Elementary Teachers, Art for Elementary Teachers, Movement for Elementary Teachers. It was assumed we were all going to teach in rural schools with no support staff and it was imperative that we could lead children in song while playing a recorder, make collages, and do the polka.

We also took methods classes, such as Math for Elementary Teachers, Physics for Elementary Teachers, Reading for Elementary Teachers (sense a pattern here?). We did group projects. We did individual projects. We learned how to write detailed lesson plans, which I never had to write again in my entire teaching career and were a monumental waste of time, as were the group projects. And playing the recorder.

And then there were the games. Every methods class professor assigned a project where we had to make games to enhance unit objectives. Folder games were big at the time; you used a regular ol' file folder and library pockets and construction paper to make some kind of literacy or math game that was self-checking. The thought was students who finished their work early could take one of these games to their desks and play quietly until the rest of the class was finished. Hahahahahahaaaahahaaaaaaa. Another favorite assignment by professors who obviously hadn't set foot inside an elementary classroom since they WERE in elementary school was to make a board game. I'm not even kidding here. A BOARD game, with game pieces and cards and spinners or dice.

While cleaning out closets upstairs, I pulled out a large plastic bag from the back of one. It was behind some old clothes in the far back, and when I looked in the bag, I found these:

This is a phonics game for identifying beginning sounds. Now that I read the game rules,
it's not a horrible.

Visual discrimination activity. Each envelope had felt shapes and the objective was to replicate each picture on the flannel board. It would have taken them about 30 seconds to mix up every single piece, losing at least one in the process, and shove all of the pieces into one envelope.

They were in pristine condition because I never, not ever used these in my classroom. Because even in the 1980s, kids were savvy and weren't impressed with anything homemade other than cookies.

Now, you would think some 40 years later that professors would no longer require elementary ed majors to make homemade educational games or write lesson plans, wouldn't you? But from working at a university child development center that employs college students to be teacher assistants, many of them elementary ed majors, I can state that yes, they still make them write detailed lesson plans that they will never do again once they start teaching AND they have to make stupid games that will most likely end up in the back of a closet and forgotten about.

Quick Ten Things Because I'm Sleepy

I'm sooo sleepy, so this is going to be a quick Ten Things of Thankful:

1. It was warm enough at the end of the week that we were able to play outside barefoot.

2. Raisin Bran. I'm on such a Raisin Bran kick (why, I have no idea), and I've had it nearly every morning this week. Surely, it's good for me.

3. I'm a fourth of the way through the A to Z Challenge and I'm still on top of it. My theme is treasures from my childhood I found in my parents' house, and you should read my posts from it.

4. I had a long telephone conversation with my childhood friend Abbie. We haven't seen each other in over 12 years, but we are hoping to remedy that.

5. Bad news: the varmint in the attic is back. Good news: his days are numbered.

6. I wore flip flops to school last week for the first time this year.

7. We enjoyed watching the University of Iowa women's basketball team beat LSU to go on to the Championship game.

8. We enjoyed watching the University of Iowa women's basketball team play University of South Carolina for the NCAA Division 1 championship even though they lost.

9. I saw a bald eagle flying over our lake house yesterday afternoon. He was pretty high up, but the sun glints off that white head and tail and once you see that, you know it's an eagle. I watched this one chase a Canada goose out of his air space!

It's blurry, but you can see the white
head and tail feathers.

10. The weekend went fast, but I don't have any evening meetings or obligations all week, so I can get home, write my A to Z post, and go to bed early every night! Note: CAN and WILL are two different things....

Done! If you're where you will be able to view the eclipse tomorrow, be safe! We will have 95% obscuration (not my words), so it should be pretty cool.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

F is for Friends

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I don't know how universal this is, but every year, in the early fall, the traveling school photographers descend on nearly every school in the US. (I touched on this subject in last year's A to Z Challenge and you can read "D is for Dimples" here if you would like.) 

They aren't great photos, but they are a priceless record of the latest trends in hair styles and fashion.

I vividly remember that when the photo packets arrived at school and were handed out, we could hardly WAIT to cut out the small photos intended for sharing with friends and start trading. 

I think you know what I found in the closet.

Not all of the photos I found were dated, so I had to use the backdrop and color saturation to figure out the school year as best I could, and even that was a crap shoot. After way too much effort sorting and re-sorting the pictures, I decided to lump them together into three groups: elementary school, junior high, and high school, although the high school group might also include some 9th grade pictures, and while 9th grade is ordinarily part of a high school, in our school district it was part of the junior high. I did the best with the tools* I had to work with (as in relying only on my memory). 

Elementary School photos that range from second grade to sixth grade. My second
grade photo is in this group. Can you find it?

Junior High. I'm in here one time.

High School. Maybe some 9th grade/junior high. Three photos of me are in this group.

There is so much history with the faces in these photos. I grew up going to school AND church with some of these friends, and our parents were also friends. Some were classmates as well as neighbors. And then, there are those special few that you have never stopped knowing, all these many (MANY, like maybe 46 since we graduated) years, those ride-or-die friends that you know will always have your back (looking at you, Jan and Abbie). 

Let's face it, a group of people who survived crooked bangs cut by our moms and huge collars on our shirts will be friends forever. How could we not be? And I would be remiss if I didn't give a little shout out to Facebook for its part in helping us stay in contact with each other.

E is for Eek, I'm Old!

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

Just going to put this here and hobble away on my walker....