79-86...Those Were The Days

Though Mr. Hooper died in 1982, we had a ton of Sesame Street videos that he was in as a kid. I vaguely remember one Christmas video where Grover asked little kids how Santa got down the chimney and then it cut to some figure skater man skating to "Feliz Naidad". I remember that cause years later when I started taking spanish and we learned "Merry Christmas" I had a sudden flashback to that video. Tate and I watched the Sesame Street Christmas video, A Christmas Story and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (but not the one you all watched, this was the one where they did Christmas in July) pretty much all year round. We also watched Annie, Pippi Longstocking and Oliver! a lot...I just realized those are all orphan movies...what were you trying to say MOM?

I remember Mr. Hooper's voice the most clearly.

That was way back when my parents were still married and we lived in the huge house in Wauwatosa. My life is sort of divided into little chunks of time...each one very different from the next...and this was the first one, 1979-1986.

There was a fourth of July party in the park and my mom baked a cake...I know. Mom was a cake baking housefrau back then until she broke free and became an actress. The cakes were in a tent and children would gather like flies trying to stick there dirty little fingers into the red white and blue frostings. There was some sort of parade...and the kids all rode their big wheels in it. I rode my strawberry shortcake bigwheel with the tassles on the handle bars.

In our basement there was a big tv and a huge yellow shelf where Tate and I kept all our toys. We watched Gremlins and ET on HBO...back when the HBO theme song would play "doo doo DOO doo doo, doo doo doo, DOO DOO DOO". We would play until we passed out and my dad would carry us up to bed. I would always pretend to be asleep just so dad would carry me.

Mom always wanted to play "Put the dolls back in their original outfits."

Mom smoked cigarettes and Dad smoked a pipe.

Dad would come home from work and Tate and I would run to the back door and each grab one of his legs and hang on it. Then he would yell, "Sack 'a potatos!!!!" and chase us around until he caught one of us and he'd sling us up over his shoulders then grab the other one and carry us around. "Oh, these sacks of potatos are so heavy!" "We're not potatoes!!!"

And mom was no different, she woud always play "Here comes a big one!" at the beach with us when our family went to visit Papa Nort in South Carolina each year. (That's right, Papa Nort. He left his old crappy car to my cousin in his will. My cousin proudly named the car "The Snort". I think he still has it.) "Here comes a big one" consisted of mom standing in the ocean with me and Tate at her side and shouting "HERE COMES A BIG ONE" whenever a wave came. Then she would grab one of us and throw us into the wave. I remember when I was 22 and packing up to move to LA...we sat on the beach together in Santa Monica and I decided I wanted to live in Chicago instead. Then I turned to Mom and said, "Wana play 'here comes a big one?'"

Crackers were called giggies. Last year on the phone with mom I was eating and she said, "What are you eating?" and I said, "Just some giggies" and she almost cried a little. I guess I will understand that when I have kids who grow up.

Tate tore the head off of Barbie...I didn't know Barbie's head even came off and I was frightened by the little knobby thing on her neck. I was afraid my head could also be easily pulled off so I stayed clear of my brother for a while. I remember taking Barbie down to dad's workshop. He was in there smoking a pipe and organizing his nails or whatever and I said..."Can you put this head back on this girl, daddy?" Which was the first of many, "Can you put this arm back on this doll? Can you put this door back on this toy car?" Nothing at all compared to Tate telling me that rainbow Bright's hair would grow back if I cut it off. Not wanting to risk the prized rainbow bright doll, I cut off all my hair instead. I remember going outside holding my ponytail in my hand while mom was mowing the lawn and saying, "Can you put this hair back on my head, Mommy?"

We had Atari. Plink. Plink.

Sesame Street, back when Snauffalupagus was still "imaginary".

We had royal bue shag carpeting.

I would listen to "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" on vinyl in our sunroom.

Tate had a Garfield stuffed animal that he loved more than anything and anyone. I had a stuffed pig named Molly whose nose squeeked when you pinched it.

I wore tutus as often as possible.

We had a birthday party with a clown in our basement.

I had cabbage patch kids and I kept the names they came with...Diana, Trixie, Ruby-Babette (she was the best one, remember when they changed from having yarn hair to synthetic hair...that was Ruby) Adele and Nelson.

I saved up my allowance and bought Tate a Monkees cassette tape for Christmas one year. Then I took him to the tree before Christmas and pointed to it and said, "That's for you! I bought it myself! It's a Monkees tape!"

Tate had green carpeting in his room and I had blue. I also had flannell sheets with rows of little white sheep on them but every once in a while there would be a black sheep. I would kill to have those now.

Mom would sing us old camp songs or read us books before bed. We liked Shel Silverstein's "The Missing Piece" or "Why Was I Adopted?" or "Bluberries for Sal" or "In the Night Kichen with Mikey" or "Brookie and her Lamb".

Dad called McDonalds "Mickey Dees" or "McDougals" and it was a rare but awesome treat, much like sugar cereal.

Barbie vs Transformers was a popular game in our house. Barbie always won based on size, unless of course transformer flew away. Thanks Matel.

Garbage Pail Kids.

"Garbage Pail Kids" The movie.

Regan banning Garbage Pail Kids.

We did not have a dog. I wonder why? Mom and Dad both had dogs in their second marriages...

For Tate and I it was a time of one brother and one sister. One mom and one dad. One big house with a yard. Neighborhood kids and a milion billion toys. A pretty mom with red hair who drove a Volvo and watched Days of our Lives and a handsome doctor dad.

Anyway, one day I was playing dollhouse in the giant dressing room attached to my giant bedroom and Mom opened the sliding door and came in to tell me that dad was moving to a different house. "Ok." I said. She slid closed the door. And so ended that first chunk of time.

Those are the things I think of when I think of the first five or six years of my life. And this...

Cry Your Eyes Out