Box of memories

I've been trying to do some organizing and decluttering in our spare bedroom, so I can create a lovely little space where I can force myself back into scrapbooking. (I got really burnt out on it about a year ago, and haven't scrapped since then, but need to get back on track!) Everytime I go through a cleaning spurt like that, I end up tossing a few more memories into the trash. This time, I finally purged the memory box of a stack of graduation cards.

Here are some items that I am still holding onto, some just being sweet nostalgia, and some being a good laugh as I go down memory lane!

Meet Tubby Toes-- (one of) my first teddy bears. TubbyToes was much loved, as is depicted by the Mickey Mouse bandage holding a seam shut. I should sew him up. He actually isn't in the box, he's nestled up in a corner of a cabinet where no one can mess with him!



I took five years of Piano lessons; and came across several of my books. I don't have any of the level ones, and apparently I burned the book of (very difficult) scales that I hated! Notice the lovely selection of sheet music that I've held onto:

My sticker book. I loved this thing. I should get one for Brooke. Do they still make sticker books?

Do they still make scratch-n-sniff stickers? I kid you not, some of the ones in my sticker book still smell!!!! It is crazy!

I'll tell ya what they don't make. These kinds of stickers.... I don't know what they were called but they were filled with a squishy fluidy stuff and you would push on them and they'd ooze colors all around. They were kinda gross though if they popped a leak!

Brooke has been watching "Night at the Museum" and so when she saw this Indian doll she said "Sacajewa!!!" Well, not quite, and I don't have any idea where she came from or who she came from, but she's always been pretty cool. Check out the bead-work on her headband, which carries thru to the necklace, the little skirt thing, etc.

I also have a large box full of pictures. I'm sifting through them and getting rid of a bunch (like pictures of people I don't know on the stage of Amway conventions?!), etc. The spare bedroom currently looks like a bomb went off.

And finally, the creme-de-la-creme. My first pair of glasses. I don't know what my mom and I were thinking.... oh dear God. Apparently I must have thought the little strawberries on the side were cute or something!? I got these in 4th grade, and I'll never ever forget that when I walked into class with them on, Shane Ross said "they make you look smarter" and I started crying. No wonder! Look at these things! I pray that my girls get Matt's vision, but as Brooke was gawking over these things, I informed her that if she does ever have to get glasses, they have much cuter ones now!

As our trip through the memory box comes to an end, I find an email that I rec'd this week to be a fitting addition to this post. Enjoy....

**********
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard
things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to
school Every Morning...... Uphill... Barefoot... In The Snow... BOTH WAYS

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a
bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today:

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napster! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone. Cause -
that's how we rolled, dig?

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal-that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You
had to pick it up and take your chances, Mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids.' Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And, there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on TV! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I'm saying?!! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!