I have a series of well-worn rants about camping that anyone
who knows me is familiar with (and probably sick of). It starts with, I hate
camping. Hate, as my mother always said, is a very strong word. In this case, I
would argue, it’s not strong enough.
I am not a good camper, and I don’t want to be. My idea of
roughing it is a hotel that doesn’t have room service. If by “camping” you mean
a weekend at the Four Seasons, including spa treatments and complimentary all-you-can-drink
champagne, put my name at the top of the list. If “camping” involves any of the
following: tents, woods, bears, insects, lanterns, portable stoves, outdoor
fires, dirt, trees, pay showers or toilets (or, god forbid, peeing in the woods
and not showering at all) or sleeping bags, then you go on without me.
My mother was not a camper, nor her parents before her. I
suppose at some point in our family history there were people who were camping
sorts, mostly because if you go far enough back in history, life itself basically
was camping, but I’m sure given the
choice, they would have said, “Fuck this shit,” and happily moved into a three
bedroom, two bath rambler (I come from a very practical family). But that's one of the things I don’t get about
camping. Human beings have spent thousands of years developing things like indoor
plumbing, leave-in conditioner, and the automatic ice maker just so we wouldn’t
have to live in crude tents with no air conditioning and warm wine. Why abandon
all that our species has worked so hard to achieve and return to what they were
clearly trying to get away from?
Perhaps I just miss what’s supposed to be fun about camping.
I’ve done it, and in my experience it involves packing up everything you need
to survive for a couple of days in your car, driving it out into the wilderness
somewhere far away from the nearest Starbucks or liquor store, unpacking it
all, setting it all up to make it “like home,” hanging out in the woods for a
couple of days with wild animals and bugs (some of whom consider you a menu item), then packing everything back up in your car, driving it
all home, unpacking it all, and washing it because everything that goes into the woods for more than three and a half
minutes gets fucking filthy.
What about any of that is fun?
And when you do go out there, there are so many things that
you leave behind that just can't accompany you. The dish washer. The hot water heater.
The refrigerator. A real mattress. I don’t know about you, but those are pretty
key components of my daily existence.
Some friends of ours recently decided to buy an RV. The
husband and the three boys think there’s nothing more fun than executing the steps I
describe above, while the wife is a bit more lukewarm about it, but she decided
that maybe an RV would make it slightly
more enjoyable (she is such a fucking
optimist). We went with them to the RV show to look around. Every single one of
them was decorated in shades of brown and mauve (the RVs, not the friends). It’s like the people who
choose the finishes for RVs have an endless supply of materials (and taste) from 1975. So
not only do you have to, like, camp, you have to camp with ugliness. I’m
convinced that Hell is not a single fiery inferno, but more like a series of
rooms with different horrific experiences from this earthly life, and you go
from one to another, experiencing them all, for all eternity. The interior of an RV will be one of those rooms.
I have friends who actually own something called a “fifth
wheel” (I’m not entirely clear what this is, and really don’t want to know; I just
know it’s some damned camper thing). She maintains that they’re “not really”
camping because they have a bedroom, bathroom, and full working kitchen. So I have
to ask the obvious question, why fucking
bother? When we went to the RV show, for the right price, there were RVs
with televisions, fireplaces, separate bedrooms, and full bathrooms. If your “camper”
is so much like a home that being in it is like not even leaving home, then don’t. Every year before the “camping
season” begins, my friend has to take stock of this trailer/camper thing and
make sure she has enough things like dish soap, toilet paper, wine glasses (this is a
friend of mine, remember) etc for the trips they’ll take. So she’s basically
replicated her home kitchen in this thing. And they have to own a big ass pick
up truck to pull it. This is so much more bullshit than I’m willing to endure,
all just to go hang out in the dirty, buggy woods, or on some windy beach someplace with a million sand flies for company. She assures me I would adore
it. She has grossly misread the situation.
All of this distaste for the idea of camping stems
from the fact that I am what you would call indoorsy. I love to enjoy the
outdoors. From the indoors. Through the window. Nothing makes me happier than a
beautiful spring or fall day sitting in my house with the windows or French doors
(or both) open. I don’t like being
outside. Outside there are bugs and shit. Inside there are not (and if they
come in, I can squash them. And I do). This rabid desire people have to be out
of doors is just beyond me. If God had intended us to be outside all the time, he wouldn’t
have given us the heat pump. And if God had intended me to camp, he wouldn’t
have given us the concept of not camping.
(The title of this post is taken from Anne Taintor. If you haven't ever seen her stuff, I assume you're new here on planet Earth, but by all means go look around. She's a hoot.)
The Musical Question
A bit more on the subject of music…
The other day I was listening to the 80s station on Pandora when the song “867-5309/Jenny” came on. I remembered hearing years ago that every time that song was played on a radio station back in the day, the people who had that phone number got dozens of calls from people calling to see if 1) it was a real phone number (which it was in some area codes, but not in all), and 2) there was a “Jenny” who answered it (not sure the outcome of this one).
With the advent of internet radio, I’m guessing the people who had that number have long since abandoned it because now that song must come into rotation thousands of times a day. Personally I think it would be hilarious to get a cell phone and request that number, then leave it permanently on voice mail with a message that said, “Hi. This is Jenny. Sorry, I changed my number. No recommendations on who you should turn to. Maybe try your imagination? Good luck!”
I crack myself up.
But I started to really think about the music we listened to. And I had no major philosophical revelations whatsoever. Probably because, let’s face it, a lot of it was complete drivel of one sort or another. “Everybody cut footloose”? What the hell does that even mean? “Every breath you take. Every move you make. Every bond you break. Every step you take. I’ll be watching you.”? Um, hello? Stalker? “Relax, don’t do it, when you want to go to it, relax don’t do it, when you want to come”? Is there a person alive who thinks this song is about anything other than sex? (Hint: It is not about anything other than sex.) And do I even need to bring up “We Built This City”? A song that has been voted the Worst Song Ever Written (maybe more than once)? Of course it came smack out of the 80s.
For fun I looked up a list of the Billboard #1 hits from the 80s. Some of the early ones are by artists that, in my mind, are more 70s than 80s. KC and the Sunshine Band, Diana Ross, Olivia Newton John, Chicago. In some cases they also had hits later in the 80s of course, but to my mind they were “70s music.” Maybe because I had a babysitter who adored Chicago, and she was a child of the 70s, just as I was a child of the 80s. Therefore, anything my babysitter liked—Chicago, the Eagles, the Bee Gees—got tucked in the 70s file in my mind, along with the enormously wide ties belonging to my dad, the patchwork evening dress my mom had, and the fire hydrants painted like little men from the colonial era that my city did for the bicentennial celebration in 1976. It is not an original thought that decades “bleed,” and the first two or so years of any decade are really culturally more in step with the decade immediately preceding them.
It also seemed like there were an awful lot of hits that came from movie soundtracks. An Officer and a Gentleman, Purple Rain, Flashdance, Footloose, Ghostbusters, a couple of James Bond movies, St Elmo’s Fire, Dirty Dancing, Cocktail. And we should remember that any song featured in a John Hughes movie was an automatic hit. It’s possible the 90s had just as many movie-song hits, but the 80s just appears to have been overwhelmed with them. Or maybe I’m just more aware of them.
But in the oeuvre of 80s music, one band stands out to me as being the Most 80s of All. Not because they were really my favorite (I don’t think I even owned one of their albums until my husband bought a greatest hits CD in 1997), but because I think they best encapsulate what 80s music was all about. One of their videos was voted Best Music Video of All Time (or something). They were everything we loved about the 80s— neon colors, skinny leather ties, androgynous men that were prettier than most girls. I’m talking, of course, about Duran Duran. These guys were musical gold in the 80s. And somehow they managed to be musical gold, without ever writing a single coherent song.
I have listened to Duran Duran songs thousands of times over the years, and I have yet to hear one that makes a lick of sense. The lyrics sound like they wrote words on pieces of paper, threw them up in the air in a big empty room, and whatever landed face up got used in whatever song they were writing.
Let’s have a lookee at the lyrics from the #1 hit “The Reflex,” shall we? Here’s the first verse, plus the chorus:
The other day I was listening to the 80s station on Pandora when the song “867-5309/Jenny” came on. I remembered hearing years ago that every time that song was played on a radio station back in the day, the people who had that phone number got dozens of calls from people calling to see if 1) it was a real phone number (which it was in some area codes, but not in all), and 2) there was a “Jenny” who answered it (not sure the outcome of this one).
With the advent of internet radio, I’m guessing the people who had that number have long since abandoned it because now that song must come into rotation thousands of times a day. Personally I think it would be hilarious to get a cell phone and request that number, then leave it permanently on voice mail with a message that said, “Hi. This is Jenny. Sorry, I changed my number. No recommendations on who you should turn to. Maybe try your imagination? Good luck!”
I crack myself up.
But I started to really think about the music we listened to. And I had no major philosophical revelations whatsoever. Probably because, let’s face it, a lot of it was complete drivel of one sort or another. “Everybody cut footloose”? What the hell does that even mean? “Every breath you take. Every move you make. Every bond you break. Every step you take. I’ll be watching you.”? Um, hello? Stalker? “Relax, don’t do it, when you want to go to it, relax don’t do it, when you want to come”? Is there a person alive who thinks this song is about anything other than sex? (Hint: It is not about anything other than sex.) And do I even need to bring up “We Built This City”? A song that has been voted the Worst Song Ever Written (maybe more than once)? Of course it came smack out of the 80s.
For fun I looked up a list of the Billboard #1 hits from the 80s. Some of the early ones are by artists that, in my mind, are more 70s than 80s. KC and the Sunshine Band, Diana Ross, Olivia Newton John, Chicago. In some cases they also had hits later in the 80s of course, but to my mind they were “70s music.” Maybe because I had a babysitter who adored Chicago, and she was a child of the 70s, just as I was a child of the 80s. Therefore, anything my babysitter liked—Chicago, the Eagles, the Bee Gees—got tucked in the 70s file in my mind, along with the enormously wide ties belonging to my dad, the patchwork evening dress my mom had, and the fire hydrants painted like little men from the colonial era that my city did for the bicentennial celebration in 1976. It is not an original thought that decades “bleed,” and the first two or so years of any decade are really culturally more in step with the decade immediately preceding them.
It also seemed like there were an awful lot of hits that came from movie soundtracks. An Officer and a Gentleman, Purple Rain, Flashdance, Footloose, Ghostbusters, a couple of James Bond movies, St Elmo’s Fire, Dirty Dancing, Cocktail. And we should remember that any song featured in a John Hughes movie was an automatic hit. It’s possible the 90s had just as many movie-song hits, but the 80s just appears to have been overwhelmed with them. Or maybe I’m just more aware of them.
But in the oeuvre of 80s music, one band stands out to me as being the Most 80s of All. Not because they were really my favorite (I don’t think I even owned one of their albums until my husband bought a greatest hits CD in 1997), but because I think they best encapsulate what 80s music was all about. One of their videos was voted Best Music Video of All Time (or something). They were everything we loved about the 80s— neon colors, skinny leather ties, androgynous men that were prettier than most girls. I’m talking, of course, about Duran Duran. These guys were musical gold in the 80s. And somehow they managed to be musical gold, without ever writing a single coherent song.
I have listened to Duran Duran songs thousands of times over the years, and I have yet to hear one that makes a lick of sense. The lyrics sound like they wrote words on pieces of paper, threw them up in the air in a big empty room, and whatever landed face up got used in whatever song they were writing.
Let’s have a lookee at the lyrics from the #1 hit “The Reflex,” shall we? Here’s the first verse, plus the chorus:
"You've gone too far this
time"
But I'm dancing on the valentine
I tell you somebody's fooling around
With my chances on the dangerline
I'll cross that bridge when I find it
Another day to make my stand
High time is no time for deciding
If I should find a helping hand
So why don't you use it?
Try not to bruise it
Buy time don't lose it
The reflex is an only child he's waiting in the park
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover isn't that bizarre
Every little thing the reflex does
Leaves you answered with a question mark
But I'm dancing on the valentine
I tell you somebody's fooling around
With my chances on the dangerline
I'll cross that bridge when I find it
Another day to make my stand
High time is no time for deciding
If I should find a helping hand
So why don't you use it?
Try not to bruise it
Buy time don't lose it
The reflex is an only child he's waiting in the park
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover isn't that bizarre
Every little thing the reflex does
Leaves you answered with a question mark
So, immediately three words come to mind. What. The. Fuck. What
the fuck does any of this mean? I have an English literature degree—I spent
eight years (yes, I was slow, what’s your point) combing through the works of
people like Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Chaucer, and Edith Wharton looking for
contextual references, satiric characters, and random symbolism and I can’t
make heads or tails of this. Perhaps I’m not drunk enough (or something). I’m
sure with enough stimulant, I would read this and think, “Of COURSE. It all
makes sense now!” But even then I’m not so sure. Dancing on the valentine? Try
not to bruise it? I say again, what the fuck? And yet, we bought the shit out
of their music, and I listen to it to this day.
Where am I going with this? Nowhere. Weren’t you paying attention earlier? I said
that I hadn’t come up with a single major philosophical revelation because we
listened to what was essentially techno junk food with guitar accompaniment and
a drum solo. But I love 80s music and having The Pet Shop Boys and the Outfield
come up on Pandora back to back (“West End Girls” and “Your Love,”
respectively) can make my whole day. My kids aren’t as charmed by it, but they
don’t have the context for it, either. The horrible school dances, the party
that a certain song reminds me of, the movie song that reminds me of That One
Time at That Theater When That Boy Noticed
Me. My kids will have context for Pharrell Williams' “Happy” and Robin Thicke
singing “Blurred Lines” (God help them, because I suspect that the memories
those conjure up will be of their mother doing an embarrassing butt-seat dance
in the car). But that’s just how it goes, I guess.
At the end of the day it’s still rock ‘n’ roll to me.
Hair Whore
My mother and my grandfather were both in advertising, so I
grew up somewhat suspicious of ads. Companies are not advertising so you can
find products that will help you and make you feel better. They’re advertising
so you’ll buy their products and give them money. They don’t actually give a
damn about your well-being. A cynical statement, perhaps, but it’s a fact that
companies are in business to make money.
Having said that, I am a complete sucker for hair care products and any time I see an ad for one in a magazine or on TV that looks like it may be the solution to all my hair care problems (which are manifold), there’s every chance I’ll go out and buy it. My husband is constantly saying to me, “What did you spend sixty five dollars on at Rite Aid?!?” and when I say, “Hairspray,” he says, “Are you buying it in fifty gallon drums?” Duh, of course not. You can’t get the fifty gallon drum with the non-aerosol sprayer on it. That’s only for refilling. Men are so dumb.
I’m what you could call a hair product whore. I have no loyalty to any brand, tossing one aside as soon as the next shiny pretty comes along promising me smooth, perfect, shampoo commercial hair. I take every recommendation given by my stylist, except the one when she said, “You don’t need to buy any more hair products for like a year!” after I brought everything I currently owned with me to an appointment for her to look through to see what I should keep and what wouldn’t even work for me. Since that appointment I’ve bought a bottle of smoothing spray and a bottle of sea salt spray (which actually have contradictory effects on hair, but it was never my intention to use them at the same time). But every other recommendation I follow to the letter. Shampoo brand? Bought it. Styling product? Got it. New tool (straightening iron, hot rollers, etc.)? I am all over that shit.
And let’s not even talk about editorial content in magazines that describes new ways to deal with hair care problems. Oh screw it, let’s. I get half a dozen beauty magazines—InStyle, People StyleWatch, Lucky, and god knows what else. Every month they have articles on how to get a blowout look without actually getting a blowout, how to make your fine hair look fuller, how to love your straight hair…I could go on and on. And every month I read these articles and scoff. And then, a few days later, I find myself in the bathroom with wet hair thinking, “Well, I’ll try this, but I won’t admit to myself I’m trying it.” Like that negates my trying it, and then if it doesn’t work (or, I should say, when it doesn’t work) I can say, “Well, I didn’t really believe it would work.”
My fundamental problem is that I have no talent for styling hair, compounded by the fact that my hair is challenging to style. I have a lot of hair, but it’s baby fine. It wouldn’t hold a curl on a bet, and it slips out of pins and barrettes in mere seconds. I can flub my way through makeup application (something else for which I have no affinity) because how hard is it to put on some concealer to even out my skin tone (and dear Fate, please, if I’m going to saddled with remnants of my adolescent skin, couldn’t I please have just a little of the metabolism I had at the same time? Not much, just a little. Thanks), swipe a little blush on my cheeks and liner under my eyes, and slap on some mascara. But hair just seems to require more knowledge of what you’re doing. I get good cuts, so that’s not the issue. I just suck at hair.
The Holy Grail of products for me is one that will make my stick straight hair (effortlessly) curly. I’d even settle for a little wavy. I’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff with the word “curl” in either the title or the description of its powers. In addition to being styling challenged, I am also kind of stupid, because in all these years I’ve never really accepted that things that use the word “curl” are generally intended to enhance curl one already has, not magically create curl where none exists.
I turn to styling products in the hope that if I have better ingredients, I’ll end up with a better cake (as it were). But as with making a cake, you can have the best ingredients in the world, but if you combine the eggs and the flour, then pour in sugar and milk, and then add vodka and crushed red pepper flakes, you’re going to end up with inedible slop. And that’s sort of what I have in hair form—all sorts of fancy “ingredients,” some of which aren’t even the right ones for me to use, combined in weird and possibly ineffective ways to make “slop” on my head. Sometimes I wish severe buns covered with sunbonnets would come back into style.
Having said that, I am a complete sucker for hair care products and any time I see an ad for one in a magazine or on TV that looks like it may be the solution to all my hair care problems (which are manifold), there’s every chance I’ll go out and buy it. My husband is constantly saying to me, “What did you spend sixty five dollars on at Rite Aid?!?” and when I say, “Hairspray,” he says, “Are you buying it in fifty gallon drums?” Duh, of course not. You can’t get the fifty gallon drum with the non-aerosol sprayer on it. That’s only for refilling. Men are so dumb.
I’m what you could call a hair product whore. I have no loyalty to any brand, tossing one aside as soon as the next shiny pretty comes along promising me smooth, perfect, shampoo commercial hair. I take every recommendation given by my stylist, except the one when she said, “You don’t need to buy any more hair products for like a year!” after I brought everything I currently owned with me to an appointment for her to look through to see what I should keep and what wouldn’t even work for me. Since that appointment I’ve bought a bottle of smoothing spray and a bottle of sea salt spray (which actually have contradictory effects on hair, but it was never my intention to use them at the same time). But every other recommendation I follow to the letter. Shampoo brand? Bought it. Styling product? Got it. New tool (straightening iron, hot rollers, etc.)? I am all over that shit.
And let’s not even talk about editorial content in magazines that describes new ways to deal with hair care problems. Oh screw it, let’s. I get half a dozen beauty magazines—InStyle, People StyleWatch, Lucky, and god knows what else. Every month they have articles on how to get a blowout look without actually getting a blowout, how to make your fine hair look fuller, how to love your straight hair…I could go on and on. And every month I read these articles and scoff. And then, a few days later, I find myself in the bathroom with wet hair thinking, “Well, I’ll try this, but I won’t admit to myself I’m trying it.” Like that negates my trying it, and then if it doesn’t work (or, I should say, when it doesn’t work) I can say, “Well, I didn’t really believe it would work.”
My fundamental problem is that I have no talent for styling hair, compounded by the fact that my hair is challenging to style. I have a lot of hair, but it’s baby fine. It wouldn’t hold a curl on a bet, and it slips out of pins and barrettes in mere seconds. I can flub my way through makeup application (something else for which I have no affinity) because how hard is it to put on some concealer to even out my skin tone (and dear Fate, please, if I’m going to saddled with remnants of my adolescent skin, couldn’t I please have just a little of the metabolism I had at the same time? Not much, just a little. Thanks), swipe a little blush on my cheeks and liner under my eyes, and slap on some mascara. But hair just seems to require more knowledge of what you’re doing. I get good cuts, so that’s not the issue. I just suck at hair.
The Holy Grail of products for me is one that will make my stick straight hair (effortlessly) curly. I’d even settle for a little wavy. I’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff with the word “curl” in either the title or the description of its powers. In addition to being styling challenged, I am also kind of stupid, because in all these years I’ve never really accepted that things that use the word “curl” are generally intended to enhance curl one already has, not magically create curl where none exists.
I turn to styling products in the hope that if I have better ingredients, I’ll end up with a better cake (as it were). But as with making a cake, you can have the best ingredients in the world, but if you combine the eggs and the flour, then pour in sugar and milk, and then add vodka and crushed red pepper flakes, you’re going to end up with inedible slop. And that’s sort of what I have in hair form—all sorts of fancy “ingredients,” some of which aren’t even the right ones for me to use, combined in weird and possibly ineffective ways to make “slop” on my head. Sometimes I wish severe buns covered with sunbonnets would come back into style.
Toy Story
A friend was telling me she’d found some old games
at a yard sale a few weeks ago, and was asking me if I had this one or that
one. I started thinking about the toys I
never had. In spite of the fact that I was an only child, there were a number of
really sweet toys that I never got, for reasons that I don’t understand. It’s
possible that my mother didn’t realize I wanted them, and I think that excuse
will cover a couple, but there are a few that I know for a fact I just never
got. And yes, thirty five years later, I am still somewhat bitter. Here is my list of Toys I Never Got And My
Mother Is Just Lucky I Didn’t Grow Up To Be a Psychopath Or Rob Liquor Stores
Because Of My Sadly Deprived Childhood.
Easy Bake Oven
I wanted this thing SO BAD. And this is one I’m pretty sure my mom knew I wanted, but just didn’t want to buy. I think it goes back to a bad experience she had with Baby Alive. For the uninitiated and those who spent their formative years as boys, Baby Alive is (I think they still make a version of it) a doll that you can feed and then, shortly after she eats, she poos and needs a diaper change. Her mouth had some sort of battery powered mechanism that made a “chewing” movement that ingested the food, and then it would go right through her.
The thing was, she only came with maybe four packets of food, and naturally you fed those to her within the first twenty minutes after getting her home from the store. Then you spent the next six weeks nagging your mom to buy Additional Food Packets Sold Separately. And the commercial was on TV often enough that you’d ask, she’d say no (or perhaps hem and haw, if you were still in weeks one through three), and just about the time you’d forgotten about being totally out of food packets, the commercial would come on and the whole cycle would start again. I suspect it was something of a living hell for parents of the time.
All of this is a rather long-winded explanation for why she looked on the Easy Bake Oven as some kind of instrument of Satan. Because of course, it would come with enough mix to make two cakes and two cookies, and then you’d be out and start nagging for Additional Mix Packets Sold Separately. I think in her mind it was just Baby Alive with a light bulb but without diapers.
Lite Brite
“Lite Brite makin’ things with liiiight, outta sight, makin’ things with Lite Brite!” I don’t think my mom really realized I wanted one of these. I don’t recall ever putting it on a Christmas list (of course, I don’t remember ever making a Christmas list, so there’s that), and by the time I got old enough to want it (4th grade) after playing with it at my friend Jill Schultz’s house, I was too old for her to overhear me tell “Santa” it was what I wanted.
She did that, you see—I remember very clearly the year we were at Lord & Taylor looking around the Toy Department (in 1972, in the days when department stores still had Toy Departments) and I saw something called Baby Butterball (don’t ask), who came with a wicker basket and a full wardrobe of precious baby clothes. I think out of guilt over having told me a couple of years earlier that there wasn’t actually a Santa Claus (she couldn’t “lie” to me, was what she always said in later years), she decided to buy exactly what I asked Santa to bring. Not sure I was fooled—I wanted very much to believe in Santa, but I couldn’t quite get over her telling me he didn’t exist. It doesn’t really matter, and it’s off topic, so we’ll move on.
Anyway, I thought the ability to stick pegs in a board with a light bulb behind it and have it look like a duck or a unicorn or Elvis or whatever was just the coolest thing EVAR. But either my mother didn’t agree with me, or she didn’t know I felt this way, because a Lite Brite was never forthcoming.
Spirograph
“I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it, the things I can do with my spirograph!” (One could perhaps argue that the reason I wanted some of these things was just because they had catchy jingles that stayed with me, but I’d retort that one would be wrong—this was cool shit.)This is another one that I think may fall into the she just didn’t realize I wanted it category. But damn I loved this thing. Really cool random spirals and arcs. I even have a memory of straight sided shapes in addition to circles. My neighbors, Peter and Laura Albert had one, and I used to play with it all the time. Laura Albert was also allowed to wear jeans under her skirts, which my mother thought was dumb (“Wear one or the other”) so naturally I thought she was pretty damned lucky.
Barbie Dream House
I loved Barbies and I adored playing with them. I would act out scenes from books I was reading with them as the characters. I had some small doll furniture that I’d use, and then I also had carrying cases that doubled as a bedroom with a closet. Ultimately I was given an RV/camper thing that was so big (three feet long) that until I was in 8th grade and it was given away (yes, 8th grade—so what?) I had to include it in the furniture placement plans I drew up every time I decided to rearrange my room (which was about every three months).
But did I get the Barbie Dream House? The four level town house with the real working (manual) elevator? That came with all sorts of cool furniture? That Tamar Holley had and I did not? (Spoiler: I didn’t.) Was I and am I bitter? Hell yes. This does not go on the she didn’t know I wanted it list. She knew perfectly well, and since she bought me the RV/camper thing that took up as much (if not more) room, and couldn’t have cost much less, I really don’t know what the logic was for getting that and not the Dream House. It’s not even possible to ask the question, since my mom passed away over 20 years ago, but believe me, if she were still here, it would be really high on my list of things to get straightened out.
Sit ‘n’ Spin
This one I’m actually not bitter about anymore. In retrospect it was sort of a lame-o toy. It consisted of a round platform with a post that stuck up out of the center (all molded plastic, of course). I think it had some optical illusion spiral sticker thing on the platform, which of course didn’t show when you were using it, because the method was that you sat on it with your legs sticking out in front of you, and spun the top of the post and it would rotate the platform and you’d spin around. Sort of a personal merry-go-round, if you will.
So if I ever decide to knock off a gas station, I think I’ll leave this one out of my conversation with my attorney prior to the trial. Besides, he’ll probably be horrified enough to hear of about the Barbie Dream House that he won’t need any more to work with. Might include the Easy Bake Oven for the sympathy angle.
Big Wheel
Again, there was no question that I wanted this. I longed to go speeding down the sidewalk, and then, just inches before jumping the curb and being hurled into the oncoming traffic, I would reach down and yank up on the lever to be thrown into an uncontrolled spin that would send me flying backwards into the oncoming traffic.
In retrospect, maybe I see why I never got one of these.
So that’s the sad story of the toys that I never got. Of course for every one of these that I didn’t get, I had a hundred that I did. I had Perfection (which I loved because it didn’t require a second person to compete against to make it fun and since I was an only child, someone to compete against couldn’t be assumed); a ton of Barbies and clothes for them; a doll house; and a house, barn, and town for those Fisher-Price people with no arms. I wasn’t really that deprived--hell, I wasn't deprived at all. But I’m still bitter about that Barbie Dream House.
Epilogue: In my 40s I received both a Lite Brite and an Easy Bake Oven. That was only a couple of years before it was announced that Easy Bake Ovens would be going out of production because you can’t make a cake (even a small, crappy cake) with an energy efficient light bulb. My husband bought it for me at a yard sale. The Lite Brite was a gift from a friend who was cleaning out, knew of my pathetic childhood without one, and my continued longing (and bitterness), and sent it out to me so my children would have to find something else to bitch about in 35 years.
Easy Bake Oven
I wanted this thing SO BAD. And this is one I’m pretty sure my mom knew I wanted, but just didn’t want to buy. I think it goes back to a bad experience she had with Baby Alive. For the uninitiated and those who spent their formative years as boys, Baby Alive is (I think they still make a version of it) a doll that you can feed and then, shortly after she eats, she poos and needs a diaper change. Her mouth had some sort of battery powered mechanism that made a “chewing” movement that ingested the food, and then it would go right through her.
The thing was, she only came with maybe four packets of food, and naturally you fed those to her within the first twenty minutes after getting her home from the store. Then you spent the next six weeks nagging your mom to buy Additional Food Packets Sold Separately. And the commercial was on TV often enough that you’d ask, she’d say no (or perhaps hem and haw, if you were still in weeks one through three), and just about the time you’d forgotten about being totally out of food packets, the commercial would come on and the whole cycle would start again. I suspect it was something of a living hell for parents of the time.
All of this is a rather long-winded explanation for why she looked on the Easy Bake Oven as some kind of instrument of Satan. Because of course, it would come with enough mix to make two cakes and two cookies, and then you’d be out and start nagging for Additional Mix Packets Sold Separately. I think in her mind it was just Baby Alive with a light bulb but without diapers.
Lite Brite
“Lite Brite makin’ things with liiiight, outta sight, makin’ things with Lite Brite!” I don’t think my mom really realized I wanted one of these. I don’t recall ever putting it on a Christmas list (of course, I don’t remember ever making a Christmas list, so there’s that), and by the time I got old enough to want it (4th grade) after playing with it at my friend Jill Schultz’s house, I was too old for her to overhear me tell “Santa” it was what I wanted.
She did that, you see—I remember very clearly the year we were at Lord & Taylor looking around the Toy Department (in 1972, in the days when department stores still had Toy Departments) and I saw something called Baby Butterball (don’t ask), who came with a wicker basket and a full wardrobe of precious baby clothes. I think out of guilt over having told me a couple of years earlier that there wasn’t actually a Santa Claus (she couldn’t “lie” to me, was what she always said in later years), she decided to buy exactly what I asked Santa to bring. Not sure I was fooled—I wanted very much to believe in Santa, but I couldn’t quite get over her telling me he didn’t exist. It doesn’t really matter, and it’s off topic, so we’ll move on.
Anyway, I thought the ability to stick pegs in a board with a light bulb behind it and have it look like a duck or a unicorn or Elvis or whatever was just the coolest thing EVAR. But either my mother didn’t agree with me, or she didn’t know I felt this way, because a Lite Brite was never forthcoming.
Spirograph
“I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it, the things I can do with my spirograph!” (One could perhaps argue that the reason I wanted some of these things was just because they had catchy jingles that stayed with me, but I’d retort that one would be wrong—this was cool shit.)This is another one that I think may fall into the she just didn’t realize I wanted it category. But damn I loved this thing. Really cool random spirals and arcs. I even have a memory of straight sided shapes in addition to circles. My neighbors, Peter and Laura Albert had one, and I used to play with it all the time. Laura Albert was also allowed to wear jeans under her skirts, which my mother thought was dumb (“Wear one or the other”) so naturally I thought she was pretty damned lucky.
Barbie Dream House
I loved Barbies and I adored playing with them. I would act out scenes from books I was reading with them as the characters. I had some small doll furniture that I’d use, and then I also had carrying cases that doubled as a bedroom with a closet. Ultimately I was given an RV/camper thing that was so big (three feet long) that until I was in 8th grade and it was given away (yes, 8th grade—so what?) I had to include it in the furniture placement plans I drew up every time I decided to rearrange my room (which was about every three months).
But did I get the Barbie Dream House? The four level town house with the real working (manual) elevator? That came with all sorts of cool furniture? That Tamar Holley had and I did not? (Spoiler: I didn’t.) Was I and am I bitter? Hell yes. This does not go on the she didn’t know I wanted it list. She knew perfectly well, and since she bought me the RV/camper thing that took up as much (if not more) room, and couldn’t have cost much less, I really don’t know what the logic was for getting that and not the Dream House. It’s not even possible to ask the question, since my mom passed away over 20 years ago, but believe me, if she were still here, it would be really high on my list of things to get straightened out.
Sit ‘n’ Spin
This one I’m actually not bitter about anymore. In retrospect it was sort of a lame-o toy. It consisted of a round platform with a post that stuck up out of the center (all molded plastic, of course). I think it had some optical illusion spiral sticker thing on the platform, which of course didn’t show when you were using it, because the method was that you sat on it with your legs sticking out in front of you, and spun the top of the post and it would rotate the platform and you’d spin around. Sort of a personal merry-go-round, if you will.
So if I ever decide to knock off a gas station, I think I’ll leave this one out of my conversation with my attorney prior to the trial. Besides, he’ll probably be horrified enough to hear of about the Barbie Dream House that he won’t need any more to work with. Might include the Easy Bake Oven for the sympathy angle.
Big Wheel
Again, there was no question that I wanted this. I longed to go speeding down the sidewalk, and then, just inches before jumping the curb and being hurled into the oncoming traffic, I would reach down and yank up on the lever to be thrown into an uncontrolled spin that would send me flying backwards into the oncoming traffic.
In retrospect, maybe I see why I never got one of these.
So that’s the sad story of the toys that I never got. Of course for every one of these that I didn’t get, I had a hundred that I did. I had Perfection (which I loved because it didn’t require a second person to compete against to make it fun and since I was an only child, someone to compete against couldn’t be assumed); a ton of Barbies and clothes for them; a doll house; and a house, barn, and town for those Fisher-Price people with no arms. I wasn’t really that deprived--hell, I wasn't deprived at all. But I’m still bitter about that Barbie Dream House.
Epilogue: In my 40s I received both a Lite Brite and an Easy Bake Oven. That was only a couple of years before it was announced that Easy Bake Ovens would be going out of production because you can’t make a cake (even a small, crappy cake) with an energy efficient light bulb. My husband bought it for me at a yard sale. The Lite Brite was a gift from a friend who was cleaning out, knew of my pathetic childhood without one, and my continued longing (and bitterness), and sent it out to me so my children would have to find something else to bitch about in 35 years.
Seasons Change
If you have children, you have a slightly different take on
the passage of seasons than people without children. I don’t necessarily mean things
like back to school shopping and having to buy three hundred glue sticks, or
planning vacations around Spring Break and that sort of thing, although those
sorts of things are undeniably part of parenting. What I mean is that the
seasons as we parents know them are aligned with the seasons of non-parent
adults, but that we think of them a bit differently. As with real seasons,
although the calendar defines them as beginning and ending on certain days,
their true length is determined by the climate in which you live.
First up is Summer. Summer is the same to a parent as it is
to a non-parent, for the most part. Summer starts in about mid-June, and ends
when everyone goes back to school in August or September (depending on your
school district). For parents, there’s a bit more stress about what to do with the
kids for a couple of months, but mostly there’s little difference. We all spend
July and August wishing we could have two months off of work, and talking
amongst ourselves about the fact that year-round school isn’t such a bad idea.
Once summer ends, we come to the season that a parent thinks
of as “I left my coat at school.” If you don’t have a child, this is the season
you know as “Fall.” This is when it’s cool enough in the mornings that one
needs a coat or jacket, but by afternoon the sun has warmed things up to the
point that it no outerwear is necessary. Thus children, who have little ability
to apply the rules taught by even the most recent events of history, or to
think and plan ahead (in this case, that it was chilly this morning, and that
tomorrow morning it will quite likely be chilly again) leave the coat hanging
on the hook in the classroom. Only the next morning, when—surprise!—there’s a nip
in the air, and Mom asks after the jacket they had the day before do they think
that it might have been a good idea to grab it. This will continue until necessity
(which is to say, the outdoor temperature) dictates they put it on when they
leave school to go home.
This season is followed closely by
“Where-are-the-gloves-you-wore-yesterday-I-don’t-know-I-lost-them.” Non-parents
call this season “Winter.” It begins when it actually gets cold enough that
kids stop forgetting their coats (which, as I mentioned, happens when it’s cold
enough at the end of the day that self-preservation forces them to remember to
wear the coat home), and ends a really, really long time later. Depending on
where you live, you could spend upwards of six or seven months having the same
conversation every morning about the gloves or mittens from the previous day
and where they might be. Parents invest significant percentages of their income
in gloves and mittens. In fact, as a parent of four children, I estimate that
my investment in gloves to date is roughly that of the GNP of Belgium (which is
almost as much as I’ve spent on Pokemon cards). And my oldest is only eleven.
Finally, after months and months of the glove purchase-wear-lose-purchase-wear-lose
cycle that is Winter, it starts to warm slightly. The sun is a bit higher
overhead, things like crocuses and snowdrops may bloom. Even if you don’t
notice these things, as a parent you will know the season is changing because
of a phenomenon that I think of as Wearing Shorts Inappropriately. As soon as
it’s even remotely warm (read: when a grown up could stand to be outside for
more than sixty seconds—but less than ninety seconds—fully clothed, but without
a coat on), children come traipsing downstairs wearing shorts instead of long
pants. As a responsible parent, you say, “You can’t wear those—it’s only
supposed to be forty today. Go put on long pants.” And then, if you have my
children, they employ the guilt whine. This is when they say, “But I don’t have any long pants,” in a tone that is
both complaining and accusatory. They don’t have any long pants because you,
neglectful parent, have failed to purchase them any. They are Practically
Unclothed. And as a result, they were forced
to pull out these shorts that you’re now giving them a hard time about wearing.
You…big meanie. So you go out and buy
them two or three pairs of long pants instead of buying more mittens.
Once it gets a little warmer, there’s another brief period
of “I left my coat at school” before everyone gets out for summer vacation and
it’s warm and all you want to do is take two months off and not have to worry
about coats, gloves, or improperly implemented shorts. In retrospect, maybe
year round schooling isn’t such a good idea. At least I get two months when I don’t
have to stress about the correctness of or deficiency in my children’s
wardrobes.
Tons of DIY Inspirational Country Wedding Elf on the Shelf Nail Polish ideas! lol
I’ve been spending some time on Pinterest lately. I've been on Pinterest for a couple of years now, so it's not like this was my first rodeo. Pinterest is a wonderful source of inspiration, and a great way to keep track of cool things from the internet. However, Pinterest has a problem I associate with theme parks, fairs and New Year’s eve in Times Square—if things are open to the public, generally far too much of the public shows up for it. And as we all know, the public is often stupid.
For instance, I was looking over the Holiday & Events board type. The things people pin in this category range from astonishing to moronic and back again. Craft ideas that clearly will not work without a license to Photoshop. Recipes that sound not only disgusting, but downright lethal (heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips and vanilla to make “hot chocolate”? Just typing that raised my cholesterol 10 points and gave me three cavities). Crafts that are just dumb—never in the history of ever has anyone looked a toilet paper tube painted white with a hat stuck on it and said, “What a darling snowman!” No, they looked at it and thought, “That looks like a toilet paper tube painted white with a hat on it.” Cakes so elaborate that they require a degree in Pastry from Le Cordon Bleu and a Fine Arts degree from Parsons to create. And then there’s what I call The Tacky, which should be a board type all its own. Rolls of Charmin lined up on the back of the toilet with evergreen branches stuck in them. A wreath made out of sawed off beer cans. Ideas that just scream, “We have a broken washer and dryer on our front porch!”
This has led me to feel that prior to being given access to Pinterest, potential pinners should be required to take a survey that reveals the type of pins they will be contributing. Depending on the outcome of this survey, they may be provisioned for a separate instance of Pinterest. One reserved for complete morons. Below is my proposed survey:
Instructions: For each question, please choose all that apply.
Bathroom humor
Cute overload
Anything that says "ehrmegherd" on it
"Stay calm and whatever" posters
Stills from movies that have the lines the character was saying in that scene typed under them
6) Choose the word to complete the following sentence:
"If ________ too short to reach the shelf, use a stool."
a) your
b) you're
If you selected any under #1-5 and/or picked a) for #6, you are an idiot and must pin on the OTHER Pinterest, where people who have taste, good senses of humor, and a reasonable grasp of English language, spelling, punctuation, and syntax don't have to see your annoying crap.
I really think this approach would go a long way toward improving Pinterest, and will not be the least bit offended if Pinterest appropriates my idea.
For instance, I was looking over the Holiday & Events board type. The things people pin in this category range from astonishing to moronic and back again. Craft ideas that clearly will not work without a license to Photoshop. Recipes that sound not only disgusting, but downright lethal (heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips and vanilla to make “hot chocolate”? Just typing that raised my cholesterol 10 points and gave me three cavities). Crafts that are just dumb—never in the history of ever has anyone looked a toilet paper tube painted white with a hat stuck on it and said, “What a darling snowman!” No, they looked at it and thought, “That looks like a toilet paper tube painted white with a hat on it.” Cakes so elaborate that they require a degree in Pastry from Le Cordon Bleu and a Fine Arts degree from Parsons to create. And then there’s what I call The Tacky, which should be a board type all its own. Rolls of Charmin lined up on the back of the toilet with evergreen branches stuck in them. A wreath made out of sawed off beer cans. Ideas that just scream, “We have a broken washer and dryer on our front porch!”
This has led me to feel that prior to being given access to Pinterest, potential pinners should be required to take a survey that reveals the type of pins they will be contributing. Depending on the outcome of this survey, they may be provisioned for a separate instance of Pinterest. One reserved for complete morons. Below is my proposed survey:
Instructions: For each question, please choose all that apply.
1) Do you regularly use the following when you write?
lol
ROTFLMAO
Best X EVER!
So stinkin' cute!
Totes adorbs
2) Will you use the following labels to describe images?
My Style
For my wedding one day
Someday when I have kids
When we have [stairs, a porch, an extra bedroom, etc] I WILL do this!
Tons of Elf on the Shelf ideas
3) Are you inclined to pin any of the following?
Pictures of cute puppies or kittens
Recipes made with "just three ingredients!"
Recipes made with candy bars, refrigerated crescent rolls, or Hershey's Kisses
Inspirational sayings
Pictures of heavily Photoshopped people in workout gear with a label that reads, "Motivation!"
4) Please indicate which of the following types of pins it might interest you to see on Pinterest:
Creative nail polish ideas
Anything explicitly labeled "DIY"
Crafts that use cutouts of the human hand in creative and unusual ways
Anything "country"
Elf on the Shelf ideas
5) Mark all those you find amusing:lol
ROTFLMAO
Best X EVER!
So stinkin' cute!
Totes adorbs
2) Will you use the following labels to describe images?
My Style
For my wedding one day
Someday when I have kids
When we have [stairs, a porch, an extra bedroom, etc] I WILL do this!
Tons of Elf on the Shelf ideas
3) Are you inclined to pin any of the following?
Pictures of cute puppies or kittens
Recipes made with "just three ingredients!"
Recipes made with candy bars, refrigerated crescent rolls, or Hershey's Kisses
Inspirational sayings
Pictures of heavily Photoshopped people in workout gear with a label that reads, "Motivation!"
4) Please indicate which of the following types of pins it might interest you to see on Pinterest:
Creative nail polish ideas
Anything explicitly labeled "DIY"
Crafts that use cutouts of the human hand in creative and unusual ways
Anything "country"
Elf on the Shelf ideas
Bathroom humor
Cute overload
Anything that says "ehrmegherd" on it
"Stay calm and whatever" posters
Stills from movies that have the lines the character was saying in that scene typed under them
6) Choose the word to complete the following sentence:
"If ________ too short to reach the shelf, use a stool."
a) your
b) you're
If you selected any under #1-5 and/or picked a) for #6, you are an idiot and must pin on the OTHER Pinterest, where people who have taste, good senses of humor, and a reasonable grasp of English language, spelling, punctuation, and syntax don't have to see your annoying crap.
I really think this approach would go a long way toward improving Pinterest, and will not be the least bit offended if Pinterest appropriates my idea.
Halloween. Boo.
I know plenty of people disagree with me, but Halloween
leaves me cold. Costumes, trick or treat, blah blah whatever. For the sake of
my children, I try my best to hide this lack of enthusiasm. I buy fake spiders
and plastic skeletons. I even throw a Halloween party, complete with pumpkin
flinging trebuchet every year (my husband, who does like Halloween, built the
trebuchet himself. I don't like Halloween, but even I have to admit that a life size trebuchet that can fling a pumpkin 300' is pretty badass).
My complete lack of interest is probably partly, if not
entirely, fed by my own childhood experiences. My mom was a total washout in
the costume department. I remember being about five things when I was a kid,
all of them lame. The year I was seven it was so bad that I didn’t even have a
costume, per se. She pulled out a blue tartan kilt and cape she’d bought me
during a previous summer vacation to Bermuda and said, “There. You’re Mary,
Queen of Scots.” Because I was kind of a weird kid, I knew who that was (sort
of), but seriously—what the fuck?
The last year I recall actually even trick or treating at
all was the year I was in 7th grade. All the girls in my class
(about 7 of us) spent the night at someone’s house and we didn’t so much go trick
or treating, as go out and see what kind of trouble we could get in. Being the
kind of kid I was, that wasn’t much, as it turned out. About the only thing of
note that happened was when we were spraying Silly String on the playground at
the local elementary school, and a flashlight beam came out of nowhere and
pinned us. The guy behind it said, “Stop—police.” And my friend Sarah—for
reasons that she has never been able to articulate—shot back, “Who you jivin’?”
and the cop replied, “I ain’t jivin’.” Oh shit.
Turned out they were looking for kids who were actually
tagging with spray paint. When they saw that all we had was Silly String, and
that we had no idea who the spray painters were, and hadn’t seen them, they let
us go. And that was pretty much the end of my career as a juvenile delinquent.
I was able to all but ignore Halloween from about 1982 until
fairly recently. About the only thing I’d do was give out candy (and hey,
seventh grade boys—here’s a tip: don’t go out in the same outfit you wore to school,
ring doorbells and hold out your bag for candy with a disaffected grunt. Show a
little spirit and put some effort into it, or you can just get your candy from
someone else’s house; you won’t be getting any of my Snickers Fun Size, you
little assholes. If you’re too embarrassed to say it, you’re too old to do it),
and possibly attend the occasional adult Halloween party. I’m not a complete
toad—I’d dress up. I remember one year I went as a teenager, which necessitated
me buying the first copy of Seventeen magazine I’d had since I was seventeen. You know, to see what the
kids were wearing.
But then I started having my own kids, and of course they
wanted in on this free candy thing, so I was forced to participate again. This
time I went to the other extreme, and started making all their costumes from
scratch.
Let me tell you about that. Making a costume from scratch
sounds awesome and supportive and dedicated. In reality it is stupid and
expensive and stressful. One year I made my four kids’ costumes and ended up
spending over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS on the fabric, patterns, notions, what have
you. Six hundred bucks! And I was making shit like Pokemon. I had two kids who
wanted to be Pokemon that year, but of course they didn’t want to be the one
they actually sell the pattern for (his name is Pikachu, if you care, or if you
have an eight year old boy and it therefore means something to you). They
wanted to be these other bizarre ones that look like lizards and shit, and for
which of course you can’t just go out
and buy a pattern. So not only did I have to make them, I had to make them up. Three years in a row I spent the
weekend before Halloween in tears, swearing to God we weren’t going to do this
again next year (so I was a little slow in actually doing it).
So this year we did buy costumes. Now I see part of the
benefit of not buying them costumes.
When I’m making them, they can’t possibly wear them until they’re done (which
was usually October 30th at 10:30 p.m.). This year they’ve had them
for two weeks, and already they’ve wanted to wear them to about six different
places. Mean, mean Mommy refuses to allow this. Know why? I’ll tell you—it’s
because if I let them wear them to the zoo, the park, the grocery store, and
every other place they wanted to wear them for the 30 days prior to Halloween,
at 3 p.m. on October 31st, they would announce that they were bored
with whatever costume they’d been wearing for the last month, and that they
wanted to be, “something else.” This would cause me to lose my grip on what’s
left of my precious, fragile sanity.
So clearly this is a no win situation. I either stress
myself out emotionally and financially, or I spend a month being stressed out
because I have to keep refusing to allow them to go to every event dressed as a
wizard or Dead Man Rocking (a sort of zombie rock star—don’t ask) because
they’d get bored and/or ruin the costume and then have nothing to wear on
Halloween proper. About the only thing I can do at this point is just wait
until they claim to be too old for such foolishness. Which should take about
six more years.
I know when my kids are grown up, there are things I will
miss—I already miss that my daughter no longer refers biscuits as “bistiks,”
and that one of my twins no longer has that adorable baby lisp that caused him
to say things like “fwosting” instead of “frosting.” But I refuse to miss the
mayhem around Halloween. I’ve been over it for about thirty six years now.
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