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5 Childhood Memories:
1. Picking out a brand new, pink, rubber ball for our dog when we got her. I really had high hopes for her, but despite our best efforts she never did fetch. She preferred a deep tissue massage to any toy we would offer her.
2. Playing "kitty cat" in the playground with a group of friends, where one was the designated "owner" of all of us "cats". I really wasn't expecting her to put pebbles in all of our mouths when she was giving us our "vitamins"!
3. Trying to re-gift the new Mary Poppins VCR I had gotten for Christmas to my dad. Didn't look remotely interesting from the cover.
4. Riding in the Tilt-A-Whirl over and over again at various theme parks with my cousins. Each time we'd fine-tune our seating formula for maximum spinning.
10 Tag Questions:
1. Was there a particular game that you played with your siblings all the time?
We always had the fiercest "Game of Life" tournaments at the yearly family reunions with the cousins. There was a great deal of rule "customizing" and new quirks we added to our playing style, too.
2. Did you have a special toy/item that you dragged around everywhere you went?
I had a slew of dearly beloved stuffed animals that I sort of rotated through taking on tours of the outside world. Even though there definitely was an elite circle of favorites (not naming any names here), I tried very hard to give each his due attention. Sadly, there was frequently quite the waiting list for said tours, since it was a very, very densely populated collection.
3. What was a movie/ TV show that you were obsessed with as a child?
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| And "Quigley's Village". |
Skinnamarink TV and Blues Clues (and Wishbone, and Zaboomafoo!) were probably our favorite shows (The songs from Skinnamarink still give me the warm fuzzies). But I'm always surprised, going back through various Pinterest "Nostalgia" boards, just how many other shows I still remember. I absolutely loved the part of Pappy Land where he would draw an entire picture out of a single swipe or doodle. My dad thought Pappy was a little nuts, though. ^^
4. Did you have an imaginary friend?
I had make-believe interactions with my reflection in the glass of the freezer section at the grocery store. "She" was sort of trapped in another reality, and the freezer acted as a sort of gateway somehow.
5. What did you want to be when you grew up?A dog-groomer. Always wanted to work with dogs. ^^
6. Who was president when you were born?
Pass? For privacy reasons. Though it's probably not that hard to guess. :P
7. Any song associated with your childhood?
Shake My Sillies Out, or The More We Get Together, sung by Raffi; Or anything by Raffi, for that matter. Anytime we came to visit, our cousins were driven up the wall by my continuously played Raffi VCR. There were serious drawbacks to a visit from cousin Ruby.
(On second thought, the Raffi VCR probably should have been my answer to #3. Ah well.)
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| THIS also scared the living daylights out of me. Even the kids on the cover look nervous. |
8. Something that scared you as a child?
In all seriousness here....*ahem* I was deathly afraid of Santa Claus. I was so terrified at the idea of a strange man crawling into our house, eating our food, and leaving mysterious objects that my mom had to tell me he wasn't real. Leprechauns also. My aunt scarred me for life in regard to leprechauns and their sneaky habits of pinching you when you weren't looking. I was looking behind me for a good while after that.
9. What’s the food that you like now but back then just wouldn’t eat?
There really wasn't anything I wouldn't eat. My dad's vegetables always taste magical. The smell of bleach always repelled me though. Mom would scrub her hands and wash them over and over, but my sensitive nose would somehow always pick up whatever trace amount she missed.
10. Was there any Christmas or birthday gift that you really, really wanted and went crazy about?
One of the sillier things ever to cross my wishlist was a toothbrush they had an infomercial for..(yeah, a toothbrush).. that claimed to "make brushing your teeth fun!". I was a firm believer in their claim, even though I never got that toothbrush with all the lights and moving pieces.
Found an old commercial. Feast your eyes on this wonder of the modern age:
That's right. For only $39.95 (plush shipping and handling) you can finally enjoy brushing your teeth! You can even brush your teeth in the dark! I was putty in their hands.
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I'm sure practically everybody that answered that tag had a fondness for Mister Rogers, Putt Putt, Freddi Fish, and knew what the Big Comfy Couch was. We definitely come from different backgrounds, and continue to go about our lives in very different manners. But somewhere along the way, mainstream media found it's way into our wee psyches in the form of children's TV, to practically the same effect no matter the family history or belief. We all loved them and still get the warm fuzzies to one extent or another when we see them today.
It's neat to see how much our childhoods actually have in common. And even though it makes for a fantastic blog party we can all gush over, it just reminds me more and more of how much the mainstream media can shape us and our emotional leanings. We'll always remember and strongly identify with our childhoods: the lessons learned, the songs sung, the people and characters loved. And some very smart people up in the media of today are quite aware of it, and work to make sure that they will be the ones to dictate what the kiddos of today will remember tomorrow. It's no wonder political activists and other figures show up on kids TV with such regularity. The warm-fuzzies are powerful forces that stem from our earliest emotional and cognitive threads; control them, and you might just have the beginnings of a political majority.
Now, I don't mean to sound like some sort of paranoid conspiracy theorist or anything. But I definitely think the nostalgia factor is something that shouldn't be ignored. What goes into our heads as our minds are just beginning to form is most likely going to stick. For better or worse. And as our culture becomes more and more polarized, it'll become invaluable to be increasingly aware of what we feed our minds, and the minds of our munchkins.
We'll see how that goes.
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