Tag Archives: Childhood

So…Margaret Thatcher. RIP. And Such.

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Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, passed away yesterday.

You might have heard.

Prepare yourself and go seek a legitimate obit, if that's what you're after.

I am not about to get into a discussion of the late, great Iron Lady's legacy. I am not going to rehash the things she did or did not do, the things one might have wished she did or didn't do. Others have done and will continue to do that, with facts and thought and perspective.

That's just not where I'm going to go with that.

Here is what I'm going to say (you will not have seen it coming unless you also were in Mr. F.'s history class sometime in the '80's. And also, you would have to be similarly pseudo-philosophically inclined and prone to nostalgia, sentiment, and peculiar twists of mind.)

As an unabashed child of the eighties, I will say: nothing, nothing, has made so plain that childhood is dead and said childhood is basically thirty years gone, like the prime of Ms. Margaret Thatcher, the passing of Margaret Thatcher.

(This is not to say we, or anyone like us, is stuck in childhood– just that we, or I, perpetually drop a decade and the fact that our childhood is not twenty but thirty years passed is a constant surprise. Because we– I– still feel somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 to 25. Anywhere between 13-25; they share such bizarre similarities and we– I– have not managed to become somehow fully formed and complete in said thirty [30!] years.)

The 80's have lost their names: Michael Jackson and Whitney have gone. The Iron Curtain crumbled so long ago that teenagers now are shocked it ever existed. Reagan's been gone forever, gone before he was actually gone. Culture has changed so much that the neon and the fashions have come completely back in style. Tiffany went so far out of style she became a reality TV thing– or so I hear from friends and family who ritually enjoy such things. And maybe that is also so far ago that it classifies as “Past.”

But Maggie. Margaret Thatcher. That's the one that seals the deal: the eighties, the innocence of children of the eighties is irrevocably gone.

The eighties to me were many things. And a surprisingly large chunk of them consists of the non-stop doodles of Chris P. If you're in the year 1987, and you are me or someone like me, your days begin with history (social studies) class with Mr. F. Mr. F. has a perpetual white crust around his mouth that you long to remind him of (seriously, Mr. F., check your face before you stand in front of 7th graders: We are very unforgiving and judgmental). Mr. F. will be one of the first and only teachers you encounter before high school to suggest in red-state, Bible Belt Indiana that alternative religions to Christianity have rich and storied histories and equal validity in the world to the stories of and beliefs about Jesus. Mr. F. served in the military but he was never able to be very specific about it, in class and all, and you (the seventh grader) remember that he served and are ashamed you noticed the inevitable white crust and nicotine fumes.

But your days begin with Mr. F. He tells you about Korea (we had a war there, in the fifties), and Hinduism (more people in India believe in it than Christianity and that's really okay). He mentions the Treaty of Verdun and he doesn't make students spit out their gum. He speaks for 55 minutes exactly every morning, 5 days per week, and seldom gives quizzes. He just talks and waves unconcernedly at the chalkboard he would never dream of getting up from his seat and writing on.

And you, you are sitting there in 1987, and you are taking copious, precise notes in pink, purple, or turquoise ink. Occasionally you will check out the megaphone on your Coke watch, the coral reef on your Swatch. Occasionally you will draw a damn good version of Mr. F.'s head on your notes, which are more complete than could be expected from the Lisa Frank notebook (bubble gum machine, very perky, further festooned with Lisa Frank stickers of teddy bears, unicorns, dewy-bubble-eyed and 80's-fantastic.)

But sometimes, you will look over at Chris' messy, paper-everywhere, helter-skelter desk. You will watch him doodling on loose-leaf paper (can't even pull the Trapper Keeper out of his bag and put it on the desk, nope. Too much to ask). You will notice he never– never– takes notes. What he does, all 55 minutes of first period long, is draw.

He draws boxing gloves (Rocky V!). But mostly he draws weaponry. And there's my complete (your complete, if you're like me) pre-90's introduction to foreign policy, on a Mead loose-leaf, wide-rule sheet of ridiculously cheap paper: bomber airplanes, U.S.S.R. sickle-and-hammers, more bombers. The occasional mushroom cloud.

And in a weird way, retrospectively, you've got to hand it to Chris P: the news I saw scattered in the evening between Kate and Allie and My Two Dads was actually very much a story of bombers, the U.S.S.R., and…

Margaret Thatcher.

Not that Chris P. ever once drew Maggie– he wasn't prone to drawing humans.

But still, she was there, like the (threat of the) mushroom cloud, the boxing glove, Red Dawn, and the Wall-pre-torn-down.

There was anxiety, hidden well by Alf, Rainbow Brite, Coke jerseys, and Guess jeans.

There were evenings of news reports that, weirdly and yet again in retrospect, probably really did come down to Chris P.'s drawings of boxing gloves and Gorbachev's birthmarks.

News reports in which Margaret Thatcher's name was a chronic inclusion.

So, on Monday, it was announced she is gone. She has passed: she was sick and now, she has gone. Stealthily, quietly, in 2013.

And that's when it occurs to you– to me– that time has passed faster than you know. I mean, in your head you're fully aware that it's 2013. You don't generally think of the eighties that much, except in your nostalgia fits, nor the '90's or the aughts. You know it's the day that it is. You go to work. You do the laundry. You read the paper. You worry about the future.

But a lot of the time, you feel uncertain.

Like a 12 year old.

And it occasionally dawns on you that the uncertainty you're feeling is the same uncertainty you've had since the beginning, and that you were really aware of, back in the day of Bonne Bell lipgloss and used clothes you hoped would be disguised by Palmetto jeans miraculously passing as your best and only Christmas Guess (by Georges Marciano) pants.

And then–then– it will dawn on you: my god. That was thirty years ago.

Margaret Thatcher is dead.

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Apropos of Dorothy: A Little Moment in Celebration of Crayons of the Eighties

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Crayola crayons were and are always the best. However, in the eighties:

I was introduced to Prang crayons. My friend Megan had them. At first, I spied them suspiciously: they were not Crayolas. How could they possibly be good?

Alas, crayon snob. Prang crayons of the eighties were waxier, it is true. However, their color was far more saturated than Crayolas ever could be. I learned to love Prang crayons. Sadly, they never came in64 flavors colors. That was the drawback of eighties-era Prang.

And circa 1983, in a house of brown on Loomis Avenue in Colorado Springs, I (we, my sister and I) were introduced to K-Mart brand crayons. Yes, their box and wrappers sucked. They screamed of “generic.” But it would be misguided not to give them a chance. Waxier than Prang, waxier than candles, were the K-Mart brand crayons.

But.

There has never been a prettier color, not in nature, nor in artifice, than a 1983 K-Mart brand crayon in Kelly Green.

No, don’t argue. I win. (Who else would care about Crayons of the Eighties?)

And second place? Prussian blue. Also of the K-Mart persuasion. Crayola had nothing of the like.

Why? Because, seriously, that’s the color God chose when he invented the word, the very concept, of color. (Kelly green, K-Mart brand…I know I meander, but, c’mon. Pay attention.)

Crayola is still–will always be– the grand champion of crayon manufacturers. But K-Mart– well, they’re not so very successful now– but they will always be the ones who gave the most beautiful color to the world.

In 1983.

Quoth the Dorothy, “Nevermore.”

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Once upon a time, there was a babysitter. Her name was Dorothy. She was the babysitter for my sister and I when we were about 5. This was on Webster Street.

Dorothy was nice, although not particularly conversant in “young kid.”

Dorothy served us cream of mushroom soup. Canned. (Again, not particularly conversant in “young kid.”)

Dorothy served us cream of mushroom soup in her kitchen. She had a 50′s style dinette set, oval, formica faux-marble top. The chairs were ripped, felt-lined grey cabbage-rose covered naugahyde. (This is purely incidental. All of the above was the same color as the cream of mushroom soup.)

Dorothy introduced us to the Disney channel. In the 80′s this was not a bad thing. This was a pre-Hannah Montana, pre-The-Suite-Life, pre-tween era when such a thing was actually very, very good.

However.

Dorothy gave us a room, her baby-sitting room. This was the playroom. It contained a toy or two and a tiny, collapsible card table sized appropriately for a four or five year old child. On said table, there was a ceramic Christmas tree. It lit up. That was great (I had never seen the like outside of a nursing home. And it lit up. So: winner).

Also on the table? A huge– I mean, seriously, the thing was massive– container of crayons.

You know what? I could eat the nasty un-kid-friendly cream of mushroom soup all day long. You bet. I could accept the complete and utter lack of cake in that place. (Did I mention? Dorothy didn’t give us any cake.) What I cannot–nay, never– forgive, no matter how kind and sweet Dorothy was (and she was), was the fact that she dumped those crayons into one, gigantic, waxen, Tupperware-encased mess of disorganization.

The nerve! As if she didn’t know that crayons belong in their box, in chromatic order, and that periwinkle should never touch melon should never touch sea-green.

But no! Alas, poor Dorothy.

She didn’t know. And that’s why she was the world’s worst babysitter (probably an exaggeration, because she really was kind. Plus she lived on Webster Street, the best street). Dorothy mixed the crayons, the beautiful, amazing, hundreds of crayons. They were thrown helter-skelter, nilly-willy in an un-beautiful heap in a Tupperware container.

The saddest sight my five-year old eyes ever did see.

Thank god she had Disney channel or I might not have made it to age 6.

King Tut, But Not That Tut

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King Tut. He Yells.

A while ago, my mom found a box of papers and cards from when my sister and I were kids (Hi, Mom!). Amongst the fabulousness that was in that box was a picture I had drawn of (ahem) King Tut. I want to make it clear immediately that at the time of that drawing I had zero—explicitly, zero—clue about (a) Egypt (b) King Tut as equaling Tutankhamun, boy pharaoh, or (c) any shred of global historical awareness that might have enabled my mind to associate that (a) belonged to (b). Yes, I feel completely moronic about this and I can remember drawing the thing (in the back of a grey pick-up truck on a move across country from Indiana to Colorado and it was in a notebook with Annie on the cover and I was lying on a red and white checked blanket that was very, very soft) and, more than just remembering the red-orange crayon in my little kid hand, I can even sort of remember what I was thinking about. And it wasn’t Egypt. Clearly. (Let’s just say some rough combination of Hoth, Mongolia, Marco Polo and Genghis Khan; vaguely Asian, vaguely ancient, and very exotic and exciting.)[1] And, just to set the record straight, now that I’m a bona fide grown-up, I have rectified the whole Tut-is-from-ancient-Egypt thing.

I really have. Stop looking at me like that. I know a smirk when I see one.

So the Tut-who-is-not-Tut reminds me of my family and childhood and all that has been wonderful in my life. But today I was at work (run by the Marie Antoinette-Let Them Eat Cake School of Business Administration and Management)[2] and I was half-listening to news and wondering where my concentration has gone of late. And that led to a whole list of things I felt strongly had gone missing. (I am not posting the whole list. I am pretending to have a modicum of pride here, after all, despite the Egypt thing, so I’m not going to just hand you people Michelle’s List of Weaknesses. Make it up for yourself, if you like.) The concentration will come back (the essential Michelle is awkwardly, absurdly concentrated/oblivious/focused). But one thing on that list troubles me with its absence.

Where, oh where, has my imagination gone? Tut-who-is-not-Tut reminded me I did, contrary to popular belief, have one at one time. My imagination was not found in that box of papers. I do not recall the last time I saw it. Is it possible I am too old to need one? No. Nonsense. So if anyone should see my lost imagination (moves slowly, likes treats), please, please return it to me.

Reward: one particularly stunning original artwork titled “King Tut.”

[1] Also, I will not rule out the influence of that extremely scary movie with Goldie Hawn and the white-haired man that takes place during a performance of The Mikado. The headdresses on the performers of the opera were great (I think?) but the movie itself was terrifying. If you ever time-travel back to the early 80’s, please do not let children near this movie because said child/ren will have nightmares involving the white-haired man and stairs for weeks. (Mom, do not feel guilty. You are the best mom ever. You are not responsible for the dreams. In fact, don’t read this footnote. Okay?)

[2] I am grateful for my job. I am grateful for my job. I am grateful for my job. So, just kidding about the whole Marie Antoinette thing. Mostly.

Evaluating the Value of Field Trips in Early Childhood Education

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1.) The Orchard: Lessons learned: a.) The air in autumn smells better than any air anywhere at any other time. (b.) Apples with both green and red in them are the prettiest, followed narrowly by the ones which are yellow and the ones which are yellow-green. This is not subjective. (c.) When visiting an orchard on a field trip in October, each pupil will receive a free pumpkin. This is awesome. (d.) Size and appearance matters; the free pumpkin will result in early introductions to comparative studies on the bus ride home. This will involve tears and disappointment for pupils who choose poorly. Their misshapen, flat-sided, and/or otherwise inferior pumpkins will elicit conversation/derision on the bus ride back to the school. (e.) Decision-making.

2.) Kroger: Lessons learned: a.) Each pupil visiting a Kroger (grocery store, for those outside the continental U.S.) will receive a free donut. The donut shall be glazed; it shall be yeast. (b.) The students will be taken upstairs to look out at the store behind the one-way glass mirror. (c.) Kroger has an upstairs. (d.) There is no privacy in a Kroger.

3.) McDonald’s: Lessons learned: a.) McDonald’s does not give free food to pupils. (b.) Birthday parties at McDonald’s include party favors, unlimited orange drink, and one box of McDonaldland cookies per child. (c.) Parents who truly love their children give them birthday parties at McDonald’s. (d.) Even young children are not fooled by McDonald’s, even though the French fries are good.

4.) The Fire Station: Lessons learned: a.) Dalmatians are optional at fire stations. Do not ask to see one; you will be embarrassed. (b.) There really is a pole in the firehouse. Yes, firemen will occasionally use it but they prefer the stairs. (c.) Firemen don’t fight fires every day. (d.) The grass in front of a fire station is greener than grass anywhere else. The grass in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day in the fulsome mists of spring wishes to be fire station grass when it grows up.

Are field trips in early elementary education worthwhile? Yes.

Weekly Reader

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So my first political memory, such as it is, was getting a copy of Weekly Reader as a young kid during the 1980 elections. The cover had big photographs of both Reagan and Carter and nearly as large illustrations of an elephant and a donkey (each star-spangled in red and blue). It seems like there were balloons, too. At any rate, it conveyed very little substance (I’m sure), and tailored to the 6 year old mind, it told only that something exciting was happening and that there would be something called a president and he would be new to the job. Or some such.

But it was my first newspaper. It was my first introduction to politics. And I bought into it: the patriotism, the excitement, the newsiness of it. My juvenile tongue tripped over the larger words and I enjoyed the pictures and I felt like a grown-up carrying it around and talking about the grown-up world.

I remember this so distinctly that I can tell you that while reading my Weekly Reader about the election, I ate oatmeal for breakfast, into which I had dumped hot chocolate, having recently “invented” the trick. (And, yes, dear reader, I was rereading a paper I had received the day before in school. I was that kind of child.)

So besides the distinct memories of papers and patriotism, it all seems a little strange to me now. If nothing else, at the time, I favored the elephant (it reminded me of a well-loved pair of pants), which is so appalling to me now, I wish I were the lying sort so I could say “and of course I liked the donkey picture best.”

Well, with the debt ceiling debacle of the past summer, with Congress an abysmally disheartening entity, and with presidential nomination debates devolving into booing soldiers, cheering executions, and enthusiastic support for death for the uninsured; with a presidential nominee accused of harassment and receiving increased campaign donations following such; when yet another nominee (the caring mother of 5 + 23) states that “self-reliance means if you don’t work, you don’t eat”; when the entire act of running for president appears to be simply just another way to score a book deal, hawk it, and get rich quick…well, I long for the days of my well-loved Weekly Reader, with its assertion that not only did Mr. Reagan enjoy jelly beans, but whichever candidate won, life would be good for American children everywhere because goodness was what politics was all about.

Well, those days are gone, and I can’t help but feel the world of politics could benefit from an image makeover of the Weekly Reader variety. And maybe that’s the purpose of the conditionally imperative flag pins; it’s certainly the purpose of the jingoistic trope of “American exceptionalism” and the perpetual balloons, the petting zoos, the affinities for regional foods when in the region, the red/white/blue necktie and/or power suit. And while I enjoy a good dose of iconography as much as the next liberal arts junkie, well, there was a genuine sense of the “general welfare,” an authentic notion of “the good,” and an innocence (separate from naïveté) behind the symbolism that I think modern politics would do well to rediscover.

Well, while I’m busy here not holding my breath, I suppose I’ll settle for that November 1980 edition of the Weekly Reader, if anyone’s got a copy handy.

The Lake House

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Happy Independence Day!

I sit here, my feet dangling in a fake lake (retention pond) and there are minnows approaching my toes and friends in the house playing cards.

Still, I sit here.

The blog has been neglected of late. Life has pulled some funny twists and though I’ve kept up with my extra-diligent note-taking and have so many things to say (presidential race, Medicare/Medicaid, Afghanistan, Cleopatra’s nose, soul-sucking architecture and urban studies in Indianapolis, et cetera, et cetera)… well, there has been no time, no mental energy to write about them.

And so, as I sit with my feet in lord-knows-what, I will share this (a personal entry, when I never intended this blog to be personal):

My grandparents had a lake house once upon a time. It was a quiet lake– more pontoons than speedboats, a quiet place. I don’t even know that speedboats were allowed, frankly. If one could combine Hemingway’s “clean, well-lighted place” and Woolf’s “room of one’s own” with a fresh-smelling lake, that is the place. There was a gigantic sun-porch, screened from the mosquitos; the yard behind was shady. The lake was over-grown with lily-pads and water vegetation and the air smelled of fish and lake and worms and summer. And grace.

There was a stone fireplace inside. I felt certain that fireplace in the cottage was built for me, waiting for me to be adult enough to light it for myself. There were small bedrooms, a tiny shower, a kitchen where I ate many a peanut butter sandwich. And now that I am old enough to long for such a place it is gone, gone, gone.

My grandfather passed away early, very young, at only 51 or 52. A not uncommon story; a far too-common story. The lake house was sold. And year, after year, after year, as surely as I have missed my beloved grandfather, I have missed that lake house, its quiet rules, its fishy smell, its possibilities.

I long for my grandfather, so many years after his passing. I smell him; his coats in the closet in an ancient (so I thought) house smelled of him: Aqua Velva (or was it Afta? Cool blue) and goodness, leather buttons, heavily-varnished and glossy dark wood doors with metal ovular door knobs. I smell his morning breakfasts, still mingled with his after-shave, and always it is 5:30 in the morning, sunlight streaming in, on him, his glass of Tang and his bowl of All-Bran. He was quiet, he was smart. He was funny and unfailingly kind. My grandmother still tells stories of him doing cartwheels on the yard at the lake house, not too long before that final diagnosis of cancer, not too long before he was gone. I miss him. My heart, in fact, frequently breaks at the thought that I never got to know him as the fully-grown me, the one not too self-absorbed in that whole business of growing up to ask him who he really was. I wish I had known. And in moments of trial, if intercessors there be (I know not), I pray to him as much as to anyone: Lead the way, my Papaw. I still miss you. I wish I had known you better. Please ask god to send help for x, y, z.

And too, I pray for that lake house. For fireworks on the Fourth of July followed by chocolate Sprites and cheeseburgers at the Streamliner, sweet sleep in the cottage, and sausages and bacon in the morning when the grass is still wet and the air smells of magic, sunscreen, fish, and possibilities.

It’s been a foul month, this June 2011: bad news for loved ones and a job that prevents me from living, prevents me from writing, from reading, from thinking, from feeling like myself or being good for or to those I love so much. And so I dream, I ache for that lake house. How I long to trundle that cat of mine, the laptop, a staggeringly heavy pile of books to that lake house. I’d light a fire in the stone fireplace at night, at day I would split time between that sunporch and the dock, dangling my feet in mossy, lily-pad waters. I’d think. I’d find perspective. I’d find my way.

I would write the kind of stuff I’ve longed to write all along, on this, my poor forsaken blog. I’d read. I’d daydream. I’d be a better person, I’m just sure, at the lake house, with memories of Papaw, and my quiet little lake. Heck, I might even find a way to make sense of it all, the bad news, the past, the loss of my grandfather, the way I’ve squandered my soul on worry. The lake house was really that special. But it just can’t be. So, here: I share this with you, the 5 or so people who have checked out this blog. I soak my feet in the retention pond (oh, suburbia, you cunning wench!) where the neighborhood children both fish and pee (I’ve seen it). And there is something in it that approximates the dock, so long as my mental eye is kind and squints a bit. I have friends in the house, playing cards, and they are kind and I am grateful. And my family is only a phone call away, tied strongly by heartstrings, blood, and a sense of humor that is peculiarly our own. I live in the U.S., where it is a national holiday and I am, at heart, a Patriot.

I long for the lake house. But it’s not bad to be here. Bless us. Bless those fighting for us. Bless the lake house, my family, and oh, oh, oh, my sweet Papaw. And bless the possibilites that come when one’s feet are in water and summer is here and evening falls. Perhaps there will someday be time to write the stuff I mean to write, to learn, to love, to study, to make a difference.

And, even if not, there is still water. And memory. And the smell of Aqua Velva, sunscreen, and lake.

Happy Fourth of July.