Tag: Memories

  • ODDS and ENDS: I Hate Fractions, Breakfast Memories, and I Have a Problem…

    ODDS and ENDS: I Hate Fractions, Breakfast Memories, and I Have a Problem…

    (Three is a magic number…)

    Fractions suck. They have sucked since I was first introduced to them back in 5th grade, and to this day, they are still sucking away. I know that their suckage has continued because my daughter came home with math homework that was nothing but stupid word problem fraction questions. “It takes 1 3/4 cups of flour to make a batch of cookies. Dave wants to make 4 1/8 batches of cookies. If Dave has 8 2/3 cups of flour, how much flour will he have left over after he bakes his cookies?” Honestly, who gives a shit. Why aren’t they teaching kids to convert the fractions to decimals, because the world runs on decimals. Lucky for the kid, she didn’t inherit her father’s useless mathematical mind, and at least can handle it better that I did.

    This morning, as I was waking up the kid, and getting breakfast started, a memory shock-shot into my head. I returned to being four or five years old, sitting at the kitchen table eating Franken Berry cereal, watching my mother in her old yellow robe whisk and glide around the kitchen make school lunches for my brothers. There was a radio on top of the refrigerator that was playing “Fun, Fun, Fun.” I was trying to follow the lyric, but was confused. “What’s a T-bird?” I asked my mom. “It’s a car,” she said. “Why does the dad take it away?” “She got in trouble.” This was all confusing to me.

    I’m addicted to my phone, and it’s becoming a problem. Sure, a little of it has to do with doom scrolling because of all the news of late. Yet, I know that I am spending too much time on my phone. I lost a half hour just now, looking a videos of people signing about how awful musical theatre is. Like, I need to wrap up my writing this morning, and get to my chores… but I had to see if there were any new ICE videos. Now I feel like I am behind, and the day is slipping away. I have to put it down. I have to stop. I have to do better and more constructive things with my time. Like come up with a good button to end this piece…

  • Halloweens of the Past

    The other day, as we were putting together the kid’s costume for Halloween, she asked me, what did I dress up as for Halloween? At first this seemed like such an easy question to answer, and I started to respond that I went as a pirate, a cowboy, a California Raisin, Indiana Jones… and… and then I couldn’t remember. I drew a blank.

    I could remember being a pirate when my family lived in Alabama, which would have made me five. Then I remembered the first Halloween in Texas, a cowboy – real shock there. I know that I did the California Raisin thing in 6th grade because there was a girl I liked and she thought it would be cute if I went as that, which I think shows you how desperate I was to get any female attention. And then Indiana Jones I did in 7th grade to coincide with Last Crusade which had come out that Summer, but it was also my last Halloween because I did feel too old to be out Trick or Treating.

    That leaves a gap in my memory from 1st to 5th grade.

    Now, I remember going Trick or Treating with my friends over those years. I remember the old guy who gave out pennies, and the house that gave out toothbrushes. There was the could that gave apples, and the family that wrapped Bible verses around mini Snickers bars. And there was the family that turned their home into a Haunted House that you could go through. I remember the junior high boys that would throw eggs, toilet paper, and water balloons at people. I remember families being out, and the police driving slowly through our neighborhood, keeping an eye out, making sure it was safe, and trying to catch those boys on their bikes. I remember the years my mom took me and my friends out, and the times my dad took us.

    But nothing when it comes to my costumes from those years. It’s a blank, while also it feels like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but still won’t materialize.

    It’s a very strange feeling to not be able to remember this. Like, I know it was a big deal dressing up, and taking time to figure out my costume. I know my mom would help me put it together… but I just can’t remember.

    Odd…

  • Earworm Wednesday: Bowie

    It’s Mary Hopkin’s singing those “Doo Doo Doo’s” that locks it into my head.

    The song also reminds me of the time when I was driving around Northern California with my then five-year-old daughter, and she thought this was the coolest song, and made me play it over and over in the car.

  • Earworm Wednesday: What the hell is a “Disco Round?”

    I mean, I know it’s referring to a disco floor, but “disco round” is still a weird term.

    Though the song came out in 1978, when I hear it, it makes me think of getting ready for elementray school in the early 80’s. My mom would play the “top 40” radio in the kitchen as she got all of us ready for school. And for whatever reason this song played one morning as I ate Frankenberry cereal, and became lodged in my memory.

  • Summer Camp and Growing Up

    The wife and I got back from dropping the kid off at her all girls Summer camp. It’s a sleep away camp and she loves it. I can honestly say that she looks forward to it all year. When she gets home from camp, we get a month, or maybe two, before she starts talking about how she can’t wait to go back.

    This year, unlike the previous two, the kid wanted me and the wife to come into camp, so she could show us around, and this way, we’d know what she was experiencing, and put a place to the locations she had told us about. You see, the two previous summers, the kid has wanted to go into camp alone, and do it all by herself. We were and still are, all for her independence and if this is the healthy way that she starts to break away from us, we’re all for it. Still hurts a little – we want her to still need us, but the right thing is that she needs to become her own person, independent of us.

    So, this year when she wanted us to come in, we were a tad taken aback. We weren’t going to say no to this invitation, but still a little surprised that the third year in, now she wanted us to see it.

    Growing up in Texas, I barely knew anyone who went to a sleep away Summer camp. There were Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps, but those usually took place over a three-day weekend, and were about getting badges and stuff. Sleep away camp was about having fun, or at least that’s what TV and movies made it look like. Besides, sleep away camp seemed to be something that only happened in the Northeast. Down in Texas, we spent three months sleeping in, watching tv, riding bikes through the neighborhood, and playing until dinner time. Oh, and trying to stay out of trouble.

    So, I was curious what camp is like.

    And what I learned from my daughter was nothing. I could see it dawn on her as we parked the car and started to cross over the river to get to the camp that she had made a mistake bringing us. She got all tense, wouldn’t talk (and our kid loves to talk), and when we did ask her a question, she would only give us one-word answers. She wasn’t behaving like herself. When we got to her tent, a group of her friends came running up to her, and they all started hugging, laughing, and talking about what they had been up to – the kid returned to her normal self. She is a good kid and pulled away from her friends to show us her tent and we helped set up her bed, but the wife and I could feel her was desperate to get back to her friends. So, we gave her a hug and a kiss, told her to have fun, and watched her run off to her friends.

    I still have no idea what the camp is like.

    Which isn’t true, as the councilors and the staff were great and did show us around, and made us feel very welcome. But I didn’t get to see the camp from the kid’s perspective.

    And as the wife and I drove back to New York, I told my her my theory why it was a mistake to bring us into camp. See, I get that kids want to share stuff with their parents, and our kid is no different. But that camp, for the past two years, had just been hers. We had dropped her off, and she crossed that river by herself, and everything we knew about camp, she had to tell us. We stayed on one side, and she got to go to the other. It was her private place that only she knew about, that she had experienced alone – it was her thing, not ours. I think she had her first realization that in life there are some things you don’t want to share. That you want to keep all for yourself.

    That’s true for me. There are things that I have experienced that are mine. That I hold onto and I cherish. They’re not nefarious experiences; they’re just mine, and they make me happy.

    The kid is beginning to build those memories for herself now. Which is good. She’s growing up.