MMM, TASTES LIKE NOSTALGIA
Remember this blog in which I reminisced about the cheesy garlic bread that I used to get at Pizza Hut when I was a kid/teen?
I forgot to follow that up with a review of this bread, since you can still get it up here in Canada (according to my mom, it’s no longer on the menu in the States – at least in Moscow).
My review? IT’S FREAKING GREAT
How good does that look? And it tastes exactly like I remember it.
So if you ever used to get this at Pizza Hut and you’re ever up in Canada, try it again? It’ll give you a big nostalgia hit.
A Child’s Thoughts on Future Technology
Yo.
This is something I’ve mentioned in person to people, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned on here. It has to do with a very specific memory I have from when I was seven(-ish) and was living in Troy with my mom.
One evening, I remember looking at our wall-mounted corded phone. I thought about what phones would be in the far-off future (not sure what I considered the “far-off future” at that age, but whatev). I imagined that one day a phone would not only allow you to talk to the person on the other end, but would also allow you to see them. A video phone, if you will.
And that concept did come to fruition, right? We have FaceTime.
But that’s not the interesting thing to me about this prediction.
The image in my head that I had of this futuristic phone? It was still attached to the wall. It still had the corded handset.
My little 7-year-old mind could conceptualize a video phone, but it couldn’t come up with the additional advancements in phone technology. I couldn’t imagine a phone that you could hold in your hand and take with you; instead, I imagined the current iteration of phone tech with a new shiny video screen in it. It was this weird meld of new tech and old.
I’ve just always thought that was interesting.
Anyway.
The Fourth Grade Story: Chapter 1
R U READY FOR THIS NONSENSE?
(Me neither.)
Here is chapter 1, unedited except for footnote comments.
< Preamble
Chapter 1: The Beginning of Chaos
“So if you give me your aluminum cans, I will professionally flatten the aluminum for the canoe and then proceed to weld the parts together to form a double-plated body, a task essential but sadly overlooked by most canoe builders.”
I tried to look interested. Really. The only problem was that I had no idea what Carmel was talking about. I smiled, but inside I was saying, “what?”
Carmel must have noticed, because she looked my direction and said, “To put it plainly, Carla, it means I’ll stick the cans together to make a canoe.”
Oh.
Some kids collect baseball cards. Others collect stuffed animals. My sister, Carmel Fitzgerald, collects Coke cans. She’s a little on the crazy side. Today at lunch, she was trying to get the kids in the lunch room to hand over their cans from the school’s lunch.
“Remember,” she said to us, “the canoe race is three Saturdays from now, so make your contributions today!” She held out a plastic garbage bag.
Carmel is extremely smart, considering she’s only nine years old. She’s already taking high school classes when she should just be beginning third grade. But she’s not just smart—she’s a publicity hog. She’s kind of a mini-celebrity at our school and she enjoys it to the fullest. She likes the things she does to be uniquely her.
“Carmel, why do you want to make a canoe out of Coke cans, anyway?” I asked. “So you can win the award for the most creative canoe?”
“Precisely,” she answered. She then began a big speech about convincing the judges to listen to her. By now, I was beginning to feel just a little bit jealous. And why shouldn’t I? I was the only kid in school who wasn’t smarter than their younger sibling. Well, I was also the only kid in school with thirteen siblings.1
The youngest is Dulcie, a fiery six-year-old who always got her way. Jacob is seven and is obsessed with one of his toys. If anyone messes with it, he goes nuts. Morgan is probably the bossiest person in our family. He’s eight and he even bosses around our parents. He says he wants to be an astronomer, but he’d probably end up just bossing the universe around (“hey, you stars! You’re shining too brightly! Earth! You’re spinning too slowly! Go faster!” Things like that).
My brother Travis is nine, like Carmel. He and she despise one another, but Travis is usually pretty calm for the most part, except when he is forced out of doing something because of one of our other siblings. Carmel, like I said, is nine, and has the longest hair of anyone I know. It’s at least two and a half feet long, and Carmel is only three feet 11 inches tall, so you can imagine how it looks on her. I guess it has something to do with her being a genius. I’m ten and in fourth grade. I think I’m the peacekeeper in the family, since the only person I ever really fight with is Carmel. I like to sit back and watch the volcanoes erupt, if you know what I mean.
Now I come to the archenemies of the family: Helen and Mabel. They’re both eleven, both have short blond hair, are both stubborn, both loathe Carmel, and both want a lot of attention in the house. My mom insists that we try to solve our own problems, but still Mabel and Helen fight.
The identical twins, Craig and Ed, are twelve. They actually get along pretty well for brothers. Both are calm, but love to play pranks on people. Craig is much more creative than Ed, but Ed has all the facts, so they could probably write a book on pranking people if they wanted to.
Henry was born exactly one year before Craig and Ed, which makes him thirteen. He always wanted to be part of Craig and Ed’s duo, and they, surprisingly, seemed to have let him. The oldest, Adelle and Zach, are fifteen. Out of all of us, they seem to be the two who get along the best.
Well, that’s my family. Now back to school. Having ended her speech, Carmel was now holding her garbage bag open to anyone who would donate. Every time someone tossed a can in the bag, she’d say, “Thank you for your contribution. The canoe race is three Saturdays from now. Be sure to arrive at 8 AM sharp and look for the aluminum canoe!”
I sighed. It was going to be a long three weeks. Then the lunch bell rang and we had to struggle through English, math, and science before we got to go out to afternoon recess. Of course, there was Carmel again, campaigning for her cans. Most of my classmates were gathered around her.
The last hour of school passed in a blur and I walked home with Carmel.
“You know,” she said, chewing a gummy bear, “I bet with the right stamina and training, we really could win that award.” She threw another gummy bear up in the air and caught it in her mouth. “We might even win the ‘Most Creative Canoe’ award!”
We rounded the corner, and already I could hear the screams from a house that could be none other than ours. Walking up the front steps, Carmel stayed behind (probably to count the cans). The first thing that happened when I opened the door was that I was hit in the shoulder by a beanbag.
“Hey!” I shouted. I didn’t know who had thrown it, so I picked it up and chucked it at Travis. It hit him on the back and he started screaming. I stepped into the house and my foot came down into an orange origami box.
“Watch it!” said Helen.
“Sorry!” I made my way through Dulcie’s crayons, stepping on a few, passed Mabel’s model robot, accidentally knocking off its head, but finally made my way into my room and sat down on my bed. After a few minutes, I could hear noises from Carmel’s room through the wall, and it took me a second to realize that she was smashing cans for the canoe. I could also hear screaming still coming from Travis. Geez, I thought. I couldn’t have thrown the beanbag that hard. I got up from my bed, threw open my door, and marched into the hallway.
“Travis, I—” But it was not the beanbag he was screaming about. It was much, much worse. Dulcie, Jacob, Travis, Helen, Ed, and Craig were having a screaming contest. Henry was yelling at them to stop, Adelle was practicing for her choir recital, Mabel was practicing her drums, and Zach was rehearsing his death scene for the school play.
“Somebody help!” I yelled into the chaos. That’s when Carmel walked into the room. She had a pencil and a notepad in her hand and, despite her size, somehow managed to yell louder than all the other noise in the room.
“Alright, everybody!” she screamed. “Settle down! It’s time for me to give the assignments!”
Immediately, everyone stopped screaming, yelling, and practicing and gathered around Carmel. The reason everyone quieted down so quickly was because they all knew what the assignments were: they were for the canoe race.
I walked over to Dulcie and sat down beside her. She immediately started to bawl.
“Whaaaaa! Cawla bwoke my cwayons!”
But Jacob, who was in front of us, whirled around quickly and shushed her. “Shh!” he hissed. “I wanna hear my assignment!” Everyone else murmured in agreement, and Dulcie was quick to quiet her wails.
“Okay,” said Carmel, flipping the notepad to the first page. “Who wants to load the canoe into the truck and then position it in the water once we get to the river?” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “Adelle? Zack? Henry? I think you three should do it. You’re the oldest and strongest.”
They agreed. Carmel may be one of the youngest siblings in the family, but even the oldest kids would listen to her when she spoke.
“Alright,” she said, writing down the information. “Now I also need a look-out.” She looked up from the notepad to see if there were any volunteers. “You know,” she said, clarifying. “For the actual race? Someone to look out for upcoming obstacles as we weave down the river, to make sure we don’t crash.”
“Ooh!” said Helen, as if she’d just figured out what a look-out was. “Can I do it?”
“Sure,” replied Carmel. As she was writing this down, our dad came in through the front door and almost stumbled over the lot of us sitting on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t realize I was walking in on a conference!”
“No, daddy,” Dulcie said, crawling over to him and hugging his leg. “We were talking about beanut putter.” I have no idea what made her mention peanut butter, but she never could get those words right.
“Beanut putter?” asked Jacob.
“Yeah,” said Travis. “Like shace spips!”
“And bight lulbs,” said Helen.
“And sop picles!” shouted Mabel.
“Polored censils!” I contributed.
“Kurger Bing!”
“Plothes cin!”
“Flow snake!”2
We kept yelling louder and louder until Carmel got so frustrated with us that she stood on the couch and bellowed, “ranoe cace!!” This once again got our attention and made us calm down. “You guys,” she said, sounding disgusted. “If we keep goofing off like this, we’ll never get this race figured out.” She sighed. “By the way, Dulcie, where did you come up with peanut butter?”
Dulcie looked up at Carmel, then shrugged and muttered, “merlins.” That’s Dulcie-ese for “Martians,” which unfortunately got everyone going again.
“Martians!” yelled Travis, swinging back on his knees and hitting Mabel.
“Hey!” she said, shoving him. “Watch it, you gorilla!”
“Wait,” said Craig, running to the window. “Look! Martians! They’re outside! All different kinds and colors.”
“Are they green?” asked Jacob.
“Yeah!” replied Craig. “And red!”
“And blue?” asked Zach.
“Purple?”
“White!”
“Brown!”
“Turquoise!”
By this point, Carmel was so frustrated that she threw her arms up in the air, exclaimed, “I give up!” and ran to her room. Nobody seemed to notice she was gone. They just kept talking about colorful Martains and making up more words.
I went into the kitchen, grabbed a bag of gummy bears from the snack drawer, and sat at the table to eat them and think about Carmel’s plan. I thought that making an aluminum canoe was really not such a bad idea.
Around 5:00, our mom came home. Right as she walked through the door, she was hit with the usual flood of questions.
“Henry ate all the cookies,” said Zack. “Can you go get some more?”
“I have Girl Scouts tonight, but I can’t find my vest,” said Mabel. “Where is it?”
“Who took my Dynamo Dino?” yelled Jacob from the other room (his Dynamo Dino is a toy he got from our grandma last Christmas. It’s a little plastic stegosaurus with sunglasses, and orange shirt, and a Mohawk. When you press on its foot, it shoots water out of its mouth. He adores it).
“Guys,” my mom said with her infinite patience. “One at a time, one at a time. I’ll help everyone out. Just give me a minute to put my things down. Oh, and wash up for dinner.”
As she was speaking, Adelle, wrapped in a bath towel, came shuffling down the hall. It was clear that she had just gotten out of the shower.
“Alright,” she said angrily. “Where are my clothes?”
The twins and Henry burst out laughing, which only made Adelle angrier.
“Craig,” she cried. “Ed, Henry! I thought you guys were nice.” They kept laughing. “Okay,” said Adelle, clearly even more annoyed than she’d been a moment earlier. “Where did you hide them?”
They stopped laughing. Ed looked over at Henry, who looked over at Craig. Craig ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to look cool.
“Adelle,” he said in his smoothest “cool guy” voice. “We…um…sort of…I don’t know, uh…forgot where we hid them.”
“What!?” yelled Adelle. “I don’t believe it. You hid them yourself, didn’t you? How could you forget where they are?”
“Uh, actually, we got Travis to hide them,” said Craig. I looked over at Travis. So did Adelle.
“Um, I’ll go get ‘em,” Travis said. He ran outside.
“Oh well,” said Adelle, sighing. “I guess I’ll just find some different clothes.”
“Guys!” Mom’s voice came from the kitchen. “Dinner!”
Since our family was so big, our table was the size of a small swimming pool. The two people at the ends practically had to scream across the table if they wanted to hear one another. Once we were all seated, our mom came in carrying a plate with a slimy blob of browninsh-green stuff on it.
“I didn’t feel like cooking tonight,” she said as she set it on the table, “so I made some special casserole from a box.”3
“Yuck,” muttered Morgan.
“I’ll try it!” said Henry. He got himself a big spoonful of the gross-looking casserole and took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully. “Good!” was his conclusion. I figured his judgment was sound, so I scooped myself a bit of the casserole and tasted it. Yuck! It tasted like some sort of dead skunk!
Mabel must have shared my opinion, as she spit her bite out into a napkin and proclaimed, “it tastes like some sort of dead skunk!”
“I like it,” said Henry as he got another spoonful.
“Gross,” Travis proclaimed. He pushed his plate over to Carmel, who had finally emerged from her room for dinner.
“Ew!” she squealed. “Don’t put this revolting concoction in front of me!” she shoved the plate away. It hit Morgan’s glass of milk and a piece of casserole flew through the air and hit him right in the eye.
“Hey!” he yelled. When he thought no one was looking, he picked up his roll and hurled it towards Carmel. She ducked and the roll hit Travis in the ear.
“Ow! Hey!” And that’s how the food fight got into full swing. Helen picked up her roll and threw it at Zack. He dumped the contents of his water glass over Adelle, who picked up her entire piece of casserole and threw it at Henry. By then we were throwing food at anyone who was a good target. Even dad was in on the fight until mom re-entered the room from the kitchen and let out a scream that made us all freeze.
“Who started this?” she cried. Adelle looked at Zack. Zack looked at Henry, then glanced at Ed. Ed looked at Craig. Craig looked at Mabel. Mabel looked at Helen, who looked at me. I looked at Carmel.
“Morgan,” we all said in unison. Mom looked over at Morgan, who sank down in his chair.
“Well,” my mom said to him, sounding both annoyed and angry. “Do you know who’s going to clean all this up?”
He sank lower down into his chair. “You?” he asked timidly.
“No,” said mom.
“Dad?”
“No.”
“Adelle?”
“No!” yelled mom. “You!”
“What?!” said Morgan like he couldn’t believe it. “No way! I didn’t even start it! Carmel did!”
Carmel looked up. “What?” she said. “Are you suggesting that I would stoop to such extremes as to start a food fight?”
“Yes,” said Helen and Mabel in unison.
“Well,” Carmel huffed. “If everyone thinks so lowly of me, then I’m just going to go up to my room.” She got up, took her glass of water, and dumped it over Morgan’s head.
At 8:00, I went over to Carmel’s room and knocked on the door.
“Go away, Morgan,” she said. “If you’re here to terrorize me, I should let you know that I’ve armed my door. If you turn the doorknob even the slightest bit, you’ll meet your worst nightmare.”
I didn’t want to find out what that was, so I stood outside and said, “Carmel, it’s me, Carla.”
There was a pause. “Hold on.”
There was a click, a buzz, a thud, a crash, and then the door opened. “Hi,” she said.
I looked past her. There was a pile of gummy bears on her bed;4 she obviously was sorting them by color. She sat down next to them, took a yellow gummy bear, and bit off its foot.
“You know,” I said. “I didn’t think you started the food fight.”
“Yeah right.” She seemed to be in a trance with the wall.
“Morgan did,” I continued. “And the way he accused you was evil.”
A smile crossed Carmel’s face. “Morgan,” she said, sounding satisfied. She put the rest of the yellow gummy bear in her mouth, picked another one from the pile, threw it into the air, and caught it. She then looked at me, picked up yet another gummy from the pile, and threw it over to me.
“You can have as many of these as you want,” she said as I caught it.
I raised my eyebrows. If there was anything Carmel was exceptionally possessive about, it was her gummy bears. “Why?” I asked.
“Because you just defended me,” she said. “And because of that, you’ll be rewarded with much more than gummy bears later.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I was sure I’d soon find out.
____________________
1. I was heavily inspired by the size of Mallory Pike’s family in The Baby-Sitters Club books. And I think Carmel being a genius comes from Claudia Kishi’s sister, Janine, being a genius. Can you tell what my favorite book series was back then?
2. I remember thinking these were hilarious. I was clearly wrong.
3. That so totally still counts as cooking.
4. Was I pretentious enough to be using semicolons when I was in 4th grade? Apparently.
The Fourth Grade Story: A Preamble
Y’ALL READY TO SEE WHAT KIND OF GARBAGE YOU GET WHEN CLAUDIA CAN’T THINK OF A BLOG POST?????
Hi.
A while back, I promised that I would type up and post a story that I wrote back in 4th grade because nothing’s more embarrassing than having to read old crap that you wrote back when you thought you had talent, right?
And this blog is all about my embarrassing moments, right?
So.
Consider this the “preamble” post I guess.
Background: I don’t know where I got the inspiration for this stupid story, but I remember writing it in a purple journal back in 4th grade. It remains the longest thing I’ve ever written by hand (that is, not typed), which is kind of sad, but also kind of expected, as I learned to type in 7th grade and never looked back when it came to how I wrote up my stories.
I also never came up with a title for it, so I’m calling it “The Fourth Grade Story.” Which I guess is a little bit appropriate because the narrator is a fourth-grader.
Anyway, I’m going to post it chapter by chapter with no edits. Any misspellings, wrong words, terrible dialogue, awful plot…it’s all going to be in there. Just please remember this is something I wrote in FOURTH GRADE, so the quality is going to be absolutely horrible. I’d like to think I’m a better writer now than I was back then, but who knows, haha.
Stay tuned for the first chapter tomorrow!
OH, I’ll also put a list of links to each chapter here in case any of you are masochists and actually want to read this garbage.
BYE!
More Nostalgia. SURPRISED?????
I was watching a YouTube video of someone reviewing a recently-published Disney art book and it made me think of this huge Disney art book I used to have when I was a kid. A little of the good ol’ Googling brought me to Walt Disney’s Treasury of Children’s Classics. There are like four different dust jackets for the different editions, but I know the book itself was red for whatever edition we had. Like this:
(From this eBay listing)
I remember loving the illustrations. As is always the case with nostalgia-triggering items, it’s so tempting to buy this, haha.
Accelerate Your Distain
Did anyone else have to take those Accelerated Reader quiz thingies in junior high (and/or elementary school and/or high school)? For us, these started in sixth grade and went through junior high. We would read a book and then have to take a quiz on it in order for the book to “count” for our English class. I think you had to get like an 85% or something on…I don’t know…15 multiple choice questions in order to “pass.”
I don’t know what reminded me of those things today, but I remember how much I hated them. I always found them very difficult because the multiple choice questions were always about very specific things. That’s fine if you’re reading a relatively short book, but I remember reading Gone with the Wind in 7th grade and having to take one of these AR quizzes on it. That book is 1,000+ pages and the quiz still focused on incredibly specific things. Like…ask me about the major themes or events, not about the color of Rhett’s shirt the first time he met Scarlett.
I much preferred the way we “proved” that we read books in 10th grade. We’d finish a book and our teacher, Mr. Murray, would sit down with us for a short one-on-one conference where we’d very openly and informally discuss the book. I remember doing this with As I Lay Dying and feeling like I got to explain more of what I got out of the book rather than having to demonstrate that I remembered which sibling drilled holes through their mother’s coffin.
Anyway.
Nostalgic Item!
Heyooooooooo so this is totally random, but here is a little music box that I’ve had since I was a kid:
It’s pretty old and beat up now and half the sticker on the back is torn off, but I was able to Google it and found out that it’s an Otagiri music box from the 1970s. While it looks like there are quite a few near-new versions of this out there that you can buy from eBay, Etsy, etc., I wanted to put a recording of mine up here just in case it ever breaks. Plus, it’s super cute. And don’t we always want a super cute topic for a blog post?
Anyway.
You can hear how old it is, hahaha.
I honestly have no idea what the hell this is
So I’m finally trying to work through all those home videos we transferred from the old camcorder tapes a few years ago, right? Currently I’m just going through and making a list of all the things on each tape. Most tapes are the old spring and Christmas plays from St. Mary’s, videos of us opening presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and a good number of videos of me doing my dumb “I’m Stephen Spielberg, look at my amazing movies” stuff from elementary school and junior high.
But at the end of one of the tapes was this audio:
That is obviously me singing, but I don’t have any recollection of singing this (or writing it). I don’t know if I was trying to parody something or if I was just making a dumb “rap” and thought it sounded cool; in a lot of my other videos, if I’m making fake commercials or something like that, I’m parodying something that was on TV at the time (like the “I’m Bob from The Money Tree” or Hot Pockets commercials that were parodied in my “Fifth Grade Movie” thing).
For “context,” the other two things that were on this tape (which was labeled “Christmas Play” – super descriptive) were the St. Mary’s Christmas play/concert from 1999 and the first version of our video report on “Stepping on the Cracks” from fifth grade. So if I recorded this song around the same time as these other parts, I would have been…11 years old?
Sounds about right.
But who actually knows.
I sure screeched a lot, though.
SO SPEAKING OF MALLS…
Let me regale you with an embarrassing moment of mine.
Yes, there are still plenty that I have not yet mentioned in my nearly 19 years of daily blogging.
Sad, huh?
Anyway.
The year was 2000. We had just transitioned into a new millennium. The youngest Gen Z-ers were in preschool. Beanie Babies were beginning to lose the stranglehold they had on the collectible toy market. I was in sixth grade. Malls were still an important part of life and were, arguably, thriving.
Also, the first version of The Sims was released.
I didn’t buy The Sims right when it came out because I didn’t know about it. But a few years later, I had my own laptop, a consistent “allowance” (I put it in quotes because I never actually did anything to earn it, haha) from my dad, and knowledge of this wonderful simulation game that sounded like it was right up my alley.
We also had a Toys ‘R’ Us in the Palouse Mall and I knew that this store carried The Sims. I want to say that the game cost something like $50 (I could be totally wrong about this, though), but I neeeeeeded it so I had to save up some allowance over several weeks before having enough to buy it.
If you think I’m shy and socially awkward now, you should have seen me as a preteen. I got nervous talking to anyone about anything, so imagine how anxiety-producing a monetary transaction was.
But I neeeeeeded The Sims, so one Saturday morning, I worked up the courage to go into Toys ‘R’ Us, grab a copy of the game, and march up to the cashier to pay for it. From the moment I walked into the store, my brain was like get this over with get this over with get this over with, so all I wanted to do was pay and flee. But before I could do so, the cashier took a quick look at the game I’d put on the counter and said, “you know this is the Mac version, right?”
Nope.
Nope, I did not know that.
I hadn’t even thought about that. Again, get this over with get this over with get this over with. I just grabbed the first copy of the game I saw so that I could get out of a situation that, according to my 12-year-old brain, was as life-threatening as getting chased by a polar bear.
But because my 12-year-old brain thought this situation was as life-threatening as getting chased by a polar bear, I still just wanted to get this over with get this over with get this over with. So I just nodded, paid for the game, and fled.
And as you can probably guess, I did not want the Mac version. I had a PC. I needed the PC version. But I was too embarrassed and afraid to be like “oh, oops, I’ll grab the correct copy!” and instead just ended up spending $50 on a VERSION OF THE GAME THAT I COULDN’T EVEN PLAY.
I can’t even be mad at Baby Claudia, though, because Current Claudia would probably still do the same thing.
But yeah. I kept the $50 Mac version (I think I ended up giving it to one of my friends at some point) and lived in my humiliation for several more weeks before I was able to save up enough money to BUY THE GAME AGAIN. I also had to wait until that same cashier wasn’t working so that I could avoid ultimate humiliation.
BEING SHY SURE HAS ITS PERKS, DOESN’T IT
Death of the Mall
It’s both interesting and sad that malls are not what they used to be (physically, culturally, or socially).
Those of you around my age (or millennials in general): do you remember the role that the mall played in your childhood/teenagerhood? I was never an “OMG I gotta go to the mall!!!11!!1!!1” type of girl, but it still played an important role in my existence throughout my early life.
I would always spend the weekends at my dad’s place. Our routine – from as far back as I can remember – was always to go to the mall on Saturday mornings. He’d give me $20 and set me free for an hour to wander around the mall and buy whatever I wanted. Books/CDs from Hastings; makeup, notebooks, and pens from Rite Aid; art stuff from Michaels; books from Waldenbooks; earrings from Claire’s; weird miscellaneous nonsense from The Card Farm (I have no idea if anyone remembers that store, but I loved it) – these were frequent purchases, and I enjoyed the “independence” of getting to wander around the mall on my own for an hour.
My dad bought me Beanie Babies from Hallmark (back when they were a thing).
I got my first Tamagotchi at JCPenny.
I bought a copy of The Sims at Toys ‘R’ Us.
I bought my prom dress at Macy’s.
My high school friends and I would wander around the mall when we all wanted to gather.
Hell, when Rob and I were dating in college, we spent a lot of our time at the mall (there were…other reasons for this, but we’re not getting into that right now!).
Malls just don’t seem to be as integrated in kids’/teens’ lives anymore, which is super sad. I guess that goes along with the idea of the “death of third places” thing, which is the decline in public gathering places outside of home or work, but still.
It’s a bit depressing is all.
Monster Energy? NO! MONSTER TRUCKS!
So every once in a while I get these vague memories of a monster truck game that I used to play when I was a kid.
(Because of course I played a monster truck game.)
I’ve always wanted to see if I could figure out exactly what game it was – because, as you may expect, there are a decent number of monster truck games out there, especially from the 90s – but never actually tried to find it.
But I did a bit of internet sleuthing today and I’m pretty sure I found it: Terminal Reality Inc.’s 1996 Monster Truck Madness.
I don’t remember the announcers, but that music is like seared into my brain. I remember I had one save file titled something like “TO THE MOON!!!!!!!” where I just drove off at night in the direction of the moon in the sky.
(Because of course I played a monster truck game but used it to chase a celestial body instead of actually race.)
Anyway.
Never
I think I posted someone’s walkthrough of this game a long time ago, but this is pretty great.
I love how everyone in the comments has clear, concrete memories of playing this game. I do, too. I wish it was on Steam – I’d play it again in a second!
Mo Bounce
Did any of you ever have one of these as a kid? I had the Hop! 66 at some point when I was younger, but I don’t remember exactly when. I loved it, though.
Edit: the weight limits on the 55 and 66 are 200 pounds; I could TOTALLY GET ONE
Relatable
When I was in elementary school, we were allowed to join band once we reached third grade. I played clarinet (at least to start with; other instruments came later!) and the way our band was arranged in the multipurpose room had the clarinets sitting in front of the trumpets.
The trumpets were so loud and the sound was so painful that I had to wear a pair of earplugs during band.
I was made fun of* incessantly for this.
I didn’t stop wearing them because I didn’t want to be in pain, and at least they helped to drown out the ridicule, haha.
But yeah. I wish Baby Claudia could have the same “I no longer give a shit about what other people think of me” attitude as Current Claudia, at least when it comes to clothing choices and wearing a mask.
I don’t care what anyone thinks about my wearing a mask.
Anyway.
*I was made fun of for a lot of things, honestly, but this is one I really remember. This and that one time I wore shorts to school and a kid in the grade above us told me that my legs were ugly and hairy and I never wore shorts again; THANKS, RANDOM ASSHOLE KID
Nostalgia: Video Game Edition
So I don’t know what made me think of this random game from my childhood today, but does anyone else remember playing OutNumbered!? It was part of the Super Solvers series and was a game that had you do math puzzles and calculations to find pieces of a code. It took me a while to find because I couldn’t remember the name of it, haha, but it looks like you can play it online!
That’s some early 90s graphics and music, for sure.
Edit: Oh my god, I remember this one, too.
Edit again: This is from the same company that did the Oregon Trail? Nice.
Is the toast brave, too? Or is bravery not transferable that way?
YO so I found The Brave Little Toaster the other day on YouTube and have already watched it like seven times.
(I’m not going to link it here because it seems like every vid I link to gets taken down and WE’RE NOT HAVING THAT FOR THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER)
Mom, I know I traumatized you by watching this so many times when I was a kid, but it really is a good movie, haha. I get that “City of Light” song stuck in my head more often than I care to admit.
I had such a crush on that lamp when I was a kid, haha.
ANYWAY. Here’s said “City of Light” song so YOU can get it stuck in YOUR head, too!
SPIN IT
It’s SPIN DOCTOR!!!
Or at least a demo of it.
I used to play this all the time when I was a kid (before we switched to PC, haha). I remember playing this a lot when we lived in Troy, so…first and second grade?
Does anyone else remember this?
What’s a sound that is carved into your memory forever?
Because mine’s this:
My mom watched a LOT of Braves games when I was a kid and the chop chant just brings me right back to when I was in first grade.
It’s pretty wild.
Random Things I Miss from Childhood and Teenagerhood
- The Pizza Hut Book-It! program
- Birthday parties where the whole class was invited and we got goodie bags of cheap and amazing trinkets
- Holding birthday parties at the University Inn where we’d get a poolside room (and I’d get to give out goodie bags of cheap and amazing trinkets)
- My dad’s condo
- Going to my dad’s on the weekend (except for going to church, haha, and only after about age 13)
- Going to my dad’s after school during junior high and being an absolute nuisance in the Yahoo! chatrooms
- Pre-2006 internet
- Trolling the hell out of people on Yahoo! Chat
- Fruitopia
- Opening presents at my mom’s on Christmas Eve and opening presents at my dad’s on Christmas
- Doing all my dumb artsy “films” with my mom’s camcorder
Want to see what I looked like in grade school?
Of course you don’t!
But this is my blog so I’m going to post the nonsense that I want. And if you still decide to read this drivel, that’s on you, bro.
Anyway.
Sometime back in the Stone Age, my grandma cross-stitched this little picture-holder thingy that was designed to house one of each of my school pictures from first grade all the way up to 12th grade.
Here it is:
Comments:
- I was the Mullet Queen up through third grade. You’re not a 90s kid if you’re not a Mullet Queen (or Mullet King) at some point, I guess.
- I LOVED that shirt I was wearing in my 4th grade pic.
- I also loved that one from my 7th grade pic. It had these big bell-bottom sleeves on it.
- That shirt from the 12th grade pic was great, too. I still have it, but it’s pretty shredded up now.
- I look really stupid in my 8th grade pic, but that’s my favorite background out of all of them.
- I actually look really stupid in all of these, but 8th through 12th grade are the worst.
- WHY DID I HAVE SO MUCH HAIR IN 5th GRADE? WHO LET IT DO THAT???
- My hair in 11th grade is…obeying the laws of physics? How?
Ew.
‘Twas Brillig
(Blog post is 100% unrelated to Jabberwocky, sorry)
A core memory of mine is watching the Schoolhouse Rock multiplication songs back when we lived in Troy (first grade through third grade, I think). We had a VHS tape of them.
If you click on the title of that vid, it should take you to a playlist of all of them.
I still sing that “3, 6, 9…12, 15, 18…21, 24, 27…30” whenever I’m multiplying by three, haha.
Eight and Zero are ones I remember very well, too.
We had another Schoolhouse Rock VHS, but I can’t remember what it was.
A Bad Thing I Did: Elementary School Edition
So this is something I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone, but for whatever the hell reason, this whole incident popped into my memory the other day and now I want to see if this was just me being a little bag of garbage or if “just be cruel for no reason” is a relatively universal thing that little kids experience once or twice.
(Note: no death or physical cruelty or anything like that. I just, uh, mentally traumatized my dad, haha.)
ANYWAY.
So this was sometime in elementary school…not sure when…but I know it was elementary school because I was friends with K* and we weren’t really friends beyond elementary school.
So K comes over to my dad’s condo some weekend and we’re hanging out in my room doing whatever the hell elementary school kids did in the mid-90s. At some point, we get this brilliant idea to “prank” my dad. How? We were each going to write him a letter telling him what a horrible dad he was and how nobody liked him and that everything he ever did was wrong. Then we were going to give him the letters and see what his reaction was.
Why did we think this was a good idea? I DON’T KNOW. How did we even come up with this stupid idea? I DON’T KNOW.
But we did it. I don’t remember exactly what my thought process was during all of this. My dad and I have never been super close and our relationship has been awkward and somewhat strained at times, but it certainly has never been bad and I’ve certainly never thought he was a horrible father.
But I put all sorts of nasty things in that letter. That I remember. I told him I didn’t love him and that I’d never loved him and that I hated coming over to his house on the weekends and that if I could have anyone else as a dad it would be so much better.
Like…sentences of this stuff.
AND THEN WE FOLDED UP THE LETTERS AND GAVE THEM TO HIM.
After doing so, we scampered back upstairs, thinking that we’d get some sort of hilarious reaction out of him. When nothing happened for like 15 minutes, I ventured back down the stairs and asked, “hey dad, did you read those letters?”
He’d been busy with something when we’d put the letters on the table and he was still busy with said something, so he just muttered, “yeah” and left it at that.
Thinking back on this situation, it’s obvious that he hadn’t actually read them yet ‘cause he’d been so busy, but my little idiot kid mind was like “okay cool, he already read them and had no reaction – everything’s fine!” So I went back upstairs, reported this to K, and then we just kept on playing.
But yeah, turns out he hadn’t read them yet.
Because when he DID read them, he stormed upstairs and confronted us, very VERY upset about it all.
I’m like 99% sure I was just thinking that this would be a hilarious joke and that my dad would know I was kidding about all that stuff, which is why I wrote such horrible things. But he did NOT see it as a joke at all. That was probably the most upset I’d ever seen him.
I remember him calling K’s mom to come take her home; I remember him talking to my mom about it; I remember some sort of discussion of punishment, but I don’t know if I ever actually got punished.
I don’t even know if I apologized for it. I probably did, but I don’t remember doing so.
It was just a prank, bruh.
God I’m a horrible person.
*Obviously just their initial
A Plan
Howdy, y’all!
(I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on here before, but if I have, I’m sorry.)
Back in 4th grade, I wrote a really horrible (quality horrible, not topic horrible) story in a spiral notebook. It was the longest thing I’d written by that point, and back in like 8th grade I transcribed it into a different notebook because 1) the original one was in pencil and was starting to fade and 2) my handwriting in 4th grade was terrible. I still have the 8th grade copy:
(It’s starting to fall apart now too, haha)
I was thinking of typing it up at some point, so my new plan is to type it up chapter by chapter and maybe put each chapter up here as I get them ready, sort of like a little serialization thing. It’ll be like Charles Dickens, except, you know, terrible.
That will also force me to get the damn thing typed up, at least.
Eigenblogger 