When I was Little ... (thanks twitter)

I never, ever thought I would end up on twitter.  I avoided that shit like opening an account was guaranteed to lead to herpes contraction.  Then I started blogging and learned that blogging and tweeting basically go hand in hand now-a-days.  Who knew? Not me.  I still buy compact discs, for fuck’s sake.  You’re welcome from me and the twelve other folks that are keeping you alive, music industry.

At any rate, I was doing my “twitter duty” for the day, and stumbled upon the following hash tag: #WhenIWasLittle. I noticed the hash as the bloggess had tweeted about being little and playing the hot lava game until her dad got pissed off.  Then she shared that she now plays this game with her daughter until that poor bastard Victor becomes irate.  I used to love this game, but did not enjoy it so much when my fifteen and sixteen year old former high school students thought this was a fun game to play in class. The fuck, kids.  That game needs to stay at home.  It’s meant for linoleum floors and pissing off mothers, not making your high school English teacher want to lose her shit when she’s trying to talk about the Tom Robinson trial or Hemingway’s code heroes.

So I started tweeting about my own memories from childhood and some of my favorite games of youth. I could have gone on for days and lost a lot of followers, so I decided to just make my list here because folks are less likely to unfriend me –  you know, because no one will read this post. It’s okay. I forgive you.  Oh, you’re still here?  I love you so much. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.

When I was little … we didn’t have toy Jeeps to play in.  I thought about buying my daughter one for her birthday this year.  I was all pumped about the possibility of a Dora the Explorer Jeep, and then I actually looked at the price. $460!! That’s cray-cray.  We could probably only sell my husband’s car for $500 right now.  I should admit, though, that his car has over 220,000 miles on it and is affectionately referred to as “the death mobile.”  Regardless, we didn’t have any fancy toys, but we didn’t need them.  We used laundry baskets for transport.  My siblings and I loved pushing each other around in baskets until my mom had to replace too many and lost her shit with us.

When I was little … I wanted to be Rainbow Brite when I grew up.  I thought she was so damn cute.  I would say I turned out pretty close … or not.  I’m quite certain I could come up with some parallels.  I, too, fought off the King of Shadows (my lurky ex-husband).  And I’m basically a wonderful source of lightness and beauty.  I make the world magical.  

When I was little … I believed that Barbie’s hair would grow back just the same as human hair did.  Turns out that this was not true.  My sister cried a lot, and my mom yelled a lot.  Then I tried telling them I did it on purpose because Roxette was really popular at the time and that woman had short blonde hair, so I was just making Barbie hip.  That did not work either.  There was still crying and yelling.

When I was little … I would have craft sales in my bedroom and invite the neighborhood kids over to buy all the shit I made for their pocket change.  I did make some fairly decent friendship bracelets, but I also made a lot of lovely “dolls” from empty toilet paper rolls, drawn on marker faces, and scrap pieces of fabric.  You could buy a toilet paper roll doll for only 50 cents.  I can’t believe I had friends.

When I was little … I used to line up all my dolls and stuffed animals and give performances.  I would sing at the top of my lungs.  This was usually to Madonna songs, although I was also highly fond of my Barbie and the Rockers cassette tape.  I still know some of the lyrics … “When I wear pink, yeah, that’s my shade. When I wear pink, I got it made.  My earrings flash, my diamonds shine.  I’m looking good and feeling fine.”  That song is called “Dressing Up,” and no, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me either and why I remember this kind of shit.  At any rate, they were a very attentive audience that appreciated my vocals far more than my husband currently does.

Okay. Confession: Uhm … my college roommate and I also performed this song together, and gave performances to our friends on a black mat we placed in the living room.  Two of our other favorite songs to perform were “Black Cat” by Janet Jackson and “Open up Your Heart (and let the sunshine in)” from an episode of The Flintstones.  Oh yeah – of course we had choreography. We ruled.

When I was little … I thought my family was normal.  Then I would repeat some of the things my parents said or did, and I generally did not receive my anticipated amused reaction.  For example, my mother used to always joke that we were “licking butts” when we ate chocolate pudding and had it around our lips.  When I said this to a friend in front of her parents, her mother was not amused.  I had just assumed all moms called eating chocolate pudding butt licking.  It  wasn’t found funny, either, when I was snacking on brownies at a friend’s house, rolled mine up into a thin strip, dropped it on the floor, pretended it was cat shit, and then said, “look, a turd” before picking it up and happily consuming it.  I thought that shit was straight hilarious when my dad did it.  Again, who knew?