Watching him fiddle around with his miniature size modern little marvel of a machine made me smile as I thought back to what my childhood was like... trying to remember my favorite"gadgets" and how I would wait for hours in front of my stereo to hear my favorite song on the radio. I was lucky as I had scored a Sony Cassette Recorder one year for Christmas so my hours of waiting would eventually pay off and the B-97FM Deejays would eventually play my song and I could tape it.... along with all the background noise in my house!!! I always missed the first second or two... and the quality was less than desirable... but it was my "IPOD" and I was a happy girl suffering for days in front of the stereo to make a single "mixed-tape". My children will never know this torture! : )
As I was thinking about the cassette recorder and how much I begged and begged and was over the moon when Santa brought it to me in the late 70's, I was thinking about all the other things that brought me joy during my childhood!
Remembering these make me smile:
I spent the majority of my youth outside. If the weather was good I was outside. I rode my bike everywhere (we could back then with no worries) played basketball and badminton, flipped on the laundry poles as they were my personal gymnastics equipment, and I lived on the tire swing. I could swing for hours - on the inside... on the top... flipped upside down... it didn't matter... I LOVED the tire swing!
I made a million of these potholders... It was my life's mission for a while. I woke up to weave and went to sleep only to dream about weaving... I wonder where all those potholders are???
Skating was IN...I was at the rink pretty much every weekend. I think it was around 6th/7th grade that everyone had skating parties. I remember the "couple skate"... maybe because I was never a couple... wonder if Joe would take me to a skating rink now and skate the couple skate with me? He better makes plans to take me to the hospital shortly after that to get my backside repaired! : )
Always about the music... two of my favorites were KC (forget the Sunshine Band... I was all about KC). And Donny... sweet Donny... I thought he would be my husband one day. I planned it all ... planned the wedding, planned the kids, the house, the car... but alas, Joe found me first! Sorry Donny... you missed out!. 
Holly Hobbie... what needs to be said about Holly Hobbie... I LOVED HER! Anything with that cute faceless image was the bomb in my book! I had the backpack and the lunch box! I was so stylin'! 
This was a dream come true when it showed up under the Christmas tree one year.... The hours I spent spinning and dripping ... and making a complete mess... That was some fabulous art that I created! I wonder how much they would fetch on Ebay? My mom hated this thing! Mainly because she had to clean up after me... but also because I went through paint and paper faster than Jeff Gordan at a Nascar Race!
Oh My Merlin.... I have to stop and smile. How could 11 dots that lit up in 2 colors keep me busy for hours on end? Seriously...hours and hours. And... it caused fights in my house. My brother was always trying to take it away from me! He too was just crazy over the 11 light dots!
This guy needs no introduction... he speaks for himself. I will only say that I became a master (a master of taking the stickers off and repositioning them when I became frustrated!) Yes... I CHEATED! Sorry! 
OK... don't tell my parents about this one.... Wait, I am an adult now. : ) Anyone remember this book... and how it traveled in the underground world of teenage girls... passing from the lucky girls whose moms unknowingly bought it to all of the rest of us drooling to get our hands on the "naughtyness"..... It addressed the issue of menstruation... OH NO! My school censored it... as did all the other schools in the area... so that made it much more of a must read! Funny to think back on how I hid it for the week it was in my possession and my heart would race whenever my mom was in the same room where it was hidden... I was so BAD!
These shoes were the first thing that I begged and pleaded and cried and pouted for... Yo-Yo's. They are actually kind of ugly; however, when my mom finally gave in (toward the end of the fad when she found them for 75% off the already low clearance price) and bought them for me, I wore them with everything... pants, shorts, dresses, skirts, my pajamas.... I was so hot in these shoes! NOT!
OK... don't tell my parents about this one.... Wait, I am an adult now. : ) Anyone remember this book... and how it traveled in the underground world of teenage girls... passing from the lucky girls whose moms unknowingly bought it to all of the rest of us drooling to get our hands on the "naughtyness"..... It addressed the issue of menstruation... OH NO! My school censored it... as did all the other schools in the area... so that made it much more of a must read! Funny to think back on how I hid it for the week it was in my possession and my heart would race whenever my mom was in the same room where it was hidden... I was so BAD!These shoes were the first thing that I begged and pleaded and cried and pouted for... Yo-Yo's. They are actually kind of ugly; however, when my mom finally gave in (toward the end of the fad when she found them for 75% off the already low clearance price) and bought them for me, I wore them with everything... pants, shorts, dresses, skirts, my pajamas.... I was so hot in these shoes! NOT!
I smelled good through my entire childhood thanks to Loves Baby Soft! I saw it at WalMart the other day and had to buy it for Holly (actually more for me... who am I kidding). I waited so impatiently for Holly to get home from school to share this part of my childhood with her... bonding.... serious bonding moment. Problem is... Loves Baby Soft is actually a bit stinky... And the shape of the bottle is pretty revolting when you think about it.
Abby watches Wizard of Oz on occasion... fast forwarding through all the bad parts (that would be witch and flying monkey parts). She will just ask to watch it out of the blue. Not a problem as we own both the DVD (about 67cents in Indonesia) and the VCR Tape. Easy Easy to watch what you want - when you want to. I try to explain to my kids about the excitement that surrounded the once a year showing of The Wizard of Oz when I was a child. It would always be on a Sunday night and we would always watch... No matter what was on any other channel (remember there were only 4 back then ~if you counted PBS! Try explaining that to your teenage children and watch their faces contort! ) It was an EVENT in my house... in my childhood! 
I was never hungry as a child because I always had this.... Chef Boyardee Lasagna... in a can... Lasagna in a can???? My hubbies Italian ancestors would cringe! : ) But seriously, I could eat this stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner when I was a kid.... They still make it - unfortunately, it has lost it's charm ... but I still LOVE sphagettios!
OK.... this is a great movie! I loved it then and still love it today! Confession... I also like Grease 2 - please don't hold it against me! Michele Pfiefer has never been better. Here portrayal of a pink lady was worthy of an Oscar... and Michael... with his foreign accent... I was crushing!!!
I was never hungry as a child because I always had this.... Chef Boyardee Lasagna... in a can... Lasagna in a can???? My hubbies Italian ancestors would cringe! : ) But seriously, I could eat this stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner when I was a kid.... They still make it - unfortunately, it has lost it's charm ... but I still LOVE sphagettios! OK.... this is a great movie! I loved it then and still love it today! Confession... I also like Grease 2 - please don't hold it against me! Michele Pfiefer has never been better. Here portrayal of a pink lady was worthy of an Oscar... and Michael... with his foreign accent... I was crushing!!!
When I was a senior in High School, I was chosen for a very special class. It was an introduction to computers. My school had received a gift of 4 Radio Shack TRS-80s. There was a ceremony and everything!!! I worked so hard for an entire year to get my computer to make a monochromatic smiley face ... "IF X, Then Y" . It is amazing to think how far we have come! The Ipod that fits neatly into Joey's hand (actually his hand is so big that about 3 Ipods could fit) has a gazillion** times more power and a gazillion times more memory than this cutting edge machine!
Had to add this as it is the only thing that I really really wanted that I never had... can you believe the nerve of my parent's for not giving into my every whim and desire? I can't! This might be the cause of all of my underlying personality issues... Could be!!! I could just see myself (like the Brady Bunch kids that had a Pogo Stick) jumping and jumping and jumping. I knew I could be good enough to go to the Olympics... but my parents just did not understand. It is like unrequited love...
Did I miss anything? Let me know what your favorite was when you were a kid ... before IPODs!
** Gazillion... a term that means much more than billions or Even trillions... as in "If the current stimulus plan passes in the Senate, we are going to leave our children a Gazillion dollars in debt".
4 comments:
I never comment, but I just had to about this post! I totally remember taking the stickers off my rubicks cube (they are making a comeback, by the way - my 6th grade students are bringing them to school). I had a Merlin, was IN LOVE with Holly Hobbie (had a lunchbox, even), and made a TON of potholders. I still use some of the ones I made as a kid in my own kitchen! They are as ugly as sin and I caught my husband trying to throw them out one day and I totally went off! They work better than any storebought potholder I have ever gotten. Anyway, loved this post!
This is the BEST post! My response will be LONG!
Oh, the cassette recorder! missing the first few seconds, the background sound effects that still to this day I expect when I hear certain songs!
Oh, Merlin, how I loved thee! And Pong. Rollerskating loved; the snowball not so much. I was too shy to ask a boy to skate. Eek!
The Judy Blume book cracked me up! My sister found mine and I about DIED! Can you believe that was about the worst thing we'd seen or read at that age? No Yo-Yo's for me. I was a clogs girl.
And I'm a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan. I have a whole collection of memorabelia but know the movie is way to scary for AnLi. So I pulled out my soundtrack and we've been dancing to that almost every day. Ding Dong the Witch is Dead is by far the favorite!
I seriously loved this post, as you can tell by my response! How life was so simple then - bikes, four channels, not having so much stuff b/c we shopped at actual supermarkets and not super stores where I pick up needless items OFTEN!
Thank you for making my day! I loved my childhood and I hope my children do, too.
One more thing - the easiest way to cheat the Rubiks is to gunk some Vaseline between the little cubes, pop them out and put them back together. Did it on a regular basis. :)
What a great post! I never got asked to couple skate either, not even once. But I did have a very cool Goody brown swirly comb in my back pocket. I don't think I ever used the comb on my hair though. But boy did I look cool!!
I had a Merlin too, but I really loved my Simon!!
I remember reading that Judy Blume book. Yep, it was circulated underground in Texas too!!
I liked KC and the Sunshine Band, but I really loved John Travolta! I remember when Saturday Night Fever came out in a PG version and my friend's mom took us to see it. Then we had to have her explain a couple of the adult parts to us. Wow! Did we feel grown up!!
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