I hope I've learned a thing or two since then

I like corn Chex cereal. I even like all the generic brands of it. Once when I was 10 or 11, I was eating a generic brand - let's call them corn squares - and I came across a good sized beetle in my partially eaten bowl. Dead, covered in corn dust. Did I show my parents or send a letter to the company who made them? No. You don't even want to know what I did. But I'll tell you. I dumped the rest of my bowl down the sink and filled myself a new bowl - from the same box -and ate away happily.

Ew.

What we learn from this story: 10 - 11 year olds are not very wise.

Another time, I was probably 10 or 11 again, I was supposed to mow the lawn. I got the mower ready, started it up, and headed onto the grass going over a big pile of hose. As I was on top of the hose, I realized, hmm, I probably shouldn't be on top of the hose. So I backed off and as I did hose went flying everywhere. My step-dad could not understand how I didn't realize that you don't push the mower over hoses.

What we learn from this story: 10 - 11 year olds don't have much common sense. If you need something done that requires common sense - don't ask someone of this age to do it.

Maybe I was just a rare slow-brained child. Maybe others of you would never do the things I did. If there are such thing as smart 10 year olds, then I sure hope my kids have a little more intelligence than I did.

By the way, I still eat corn Chex. But I have to throw out any pieces that I find in my bowl that have any black on them even if it is just a piece that got a little to close to the heat. You just never know.

The wait is over

I once said that I could name all of my elementary teachers just from memory. And I know that you've waited too long and are dying of excitement now that I am going to do it. Who were they? Tell us! you say. Well here it goes:

Kindergarten: Mrs. Jacobson - happy, kind, loving, (jolly!) the best kind of Kindergarten teacher.

1st grade: Mrs. Pinney - stern, don't remember her ever smiling. I was jealous of everyone who had Miss Nielson. She was so nice and pretty.

2nd: Mrs. Kelly - I remember what she looked like but I don't remember much else about her.

3rd: Mrs. Ball - classmates said her husband's name was Harry. Seriously! It really does start that young. Scary. My daughter's starting 3rd this year.

4th: Mrs. Akagi - she was as tall as some of the students. She wasn't Japanese but her husband was.

5th: Miss Tuft - I was worried once because I lost some certain paper that we all needed, and I told her so she could help me, and she got mad at me for losing it. She made me cry in front of the whole class and I've never forgotten it. She came through the drive-thru (is that how you spell that?) of a bank that I worked for years later. Still single. Still ugly. Yeah, I know that's mean but she was mean first. People who yell at good little girls are ugly inside and out. Plus she really is a homely person. She was looking at me through the window of the bank like she recognized me but I pretended like I had no idea who she was. Ha ha! It felt good. In a bad sort of way.

6th: Mr. Stavros - everyone liked him. he was loud, funny and nice. He called me "Mac" since my last name started with Mc.

I know that some of you might not think of remembering all your elementary teachers' names is a talent, but I do. A talent of memory. A talent of cleverness. A talent of beauty and smarts all rolled into one. Yes. I have that talent.

Personal history. May be boring to persons who are not me.

The earliest memory that I can think of is a time that was so quiet in my house and I was just lying on my stomach on the floor just staring at dust flying through some sun rays that went to the floor. It was so quiet. I am guessing that all the older kids were at school and maybe my little sister Sinika was taking a nap or something so that would make me 4 or 3. I also remember a time when I snuck a cookie and my older sister Michelle chased me around the house for a while to try to put the cookie back. When I was tired out and cornered, I took a bite. She stopped chasing. I was probably about that same age.

I guess that's the earliest I can go. I remember when I was in a neighborhood joyschool preschool and it was at the Lindhart's house two houses away from mine. Everyone was putting their hands in red paint and stamping it onto a paper with a cute little poem about how we will grow up but someday our little handprint will be missed. I know that's what it said because I always saw my next door neighbor Aleesha's hanging on her wall for years later after that and I read it then. Anyway, I wouldn't do the handprint. The teacher said that my mom would really like it. No. She tried several times but, no. I just didn't want to do it. I can remember that so clearly that surely I should have more memories of when I was that age but I guess everything else blends in with my family life and so I can't distiguish how old I was.

I remember my Kindergarten assessment. I was so shy that I wouldn't even talk to the teacher. I guess they kind of need to see what you know during the assessment and see if you can even speak English. Mrs. Jacobsen said that if I didn't talk then I wouldn't be able to come to Kindergarten. But I guess they let me start. On my first day, I went with my next door neighbor, Aleesha. I walked right in with her and sat down next to her on the carpet ready for the first day. The only problem was that she was in the other class. I had just followed her right into her class. When they did roll call, they had each person stand up when their name was called. When they called "Lindsey?" Two girls stood up. Me and another girl. I can still remember her face exactly. We just stared at each other. Her name is Lindsey too? But I'm the only Lindsey. They asked which one had this certain last name and it wasn't me. Soon after, we heard in the next room (there was only a partial wall between the classrooms) the teacher call "Lindsey? Lindsey?" The other Kindergarten teacher took me over and put me into the right class. We had the funnest toys in that class. A little wooden kitchen with little dishes and a stroller with dolls. So fun for playing house. I wonder if the teacher brought in all those toys herself, cause that's not what they have in my kids' Kindergarten nowadays. I'm not sure if it was the first day or one of the next days, I came home so excited saying, "I talked to the teacher!" I remember singing the alphabet and singing the months of the year in that classroom.

I've always been able to remember every teacher that I had in elementary school. I could rattle them off in order whenever called upon to do so. Maybe I'll try and remember something about each grade that I was in for future posts. Stay tuned. Or tune out.

Speaking of scary...

The two scariest movies I have ever seen (and I haven't seen very many) are "Watcher In the Woods" and "The Changeling". I wonder if they just hold that title in my mind because I was pretty young when I first watched them and each time that I watched them later they just reminded me of how scared I was the first time. I have watched them both several times since and maybe that is why I remember them more than, say, Poltergeist which I also watched when I was young and remember that it scared me but I've never watched it again. So maybe these are the two scariest movies that I have ever watched over and over again.

I know I am a baby. Watcher In the Woods is a Disney movie. But it just had that scary woman in it, Bette Davis, and the girl that Jan kept seeing in mirrors, and the creepy things her little sister did. Scared me to bits.

The first time I saw The Changeling I was 11 years old. This is not to be confused with the new movie Changeling that is just coming out. This movie was made in 1980 and it has George C. Scott as the main character. It's about a house that is haunted by a little boy. I was sleeping over with a group of girls at my friend Loralie's house and I swear I had nightmares all night. I didn't sleep well at all and I kept hearing men laughing and talking loudly in the room and I felt like I was awake and I could see them standing by the door. But then I would wake up and realize that it was quiet and everyone else was asleep. How could they sleep?! They were all the same age as me! We were so little to be watching such a scary show! So I would lie there shaking from fear and not being able to fall back asleep. Well, I guess I liked that feeling of fear because every few years during my adolescence I would rent it again and introduce it to a new group of people. Then as an adult I think I rented it thinking, now I am grown up, it probably wasn't that scary, I know what happens in the movie, I know how it ends, I can watch it without getting scared. WRONG! It's just as scary now. The only thing that's different now as an adult is that I understand the plot better. When I would rent it in high school, it just said 'not rated' on the box. I heard recently that now it says 'rated R' . They changed it. I guess they realized that 11 year olds are too young to be watching such things.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

I'm not that strong a skater

You know those sidewalk bridges that go over large roads? I don't know if they're called sky-walks or what. Well there was one that was newly built near where my friend Brynn lived. It feels like I was 16 at the time but, sadly, no. I was 20. Not much of a difference, I know, but I wasn't a teenager anymore. Well, me, Brynn and my cousin Maija thought that those fun long slanted slabs of cement would be really fun to play on with roller blades. So we all got some roller blades and drove on down to the bridge. None of us were experts on roller blades, in fact I probably only used them a few times in my life (on flat ground). So it wasn't as fun as we thought. It was a lot of work to go up the slant. We had to hold on to the fence to help pull us up. Then there was the way down. SCARY!! What were we thinking? Maija went first. There was a blur and some screams. Luckily there was a patch of grass at the bottom. Unluckily, she got grass burns all over her knees. But at least it wasn't cement. Brynn went down (very fast also) without falling if I remember right. And the scaredy cat (me) went down the same way I went up. Hanging on to the fence. There was a church parking lot nearby and we roller bladed around there for a while so that we could get some use out of them. I guess I didn't realize how steep those things were. I thought it would be a gentle coast down a long sidewalk. Maybe it would be funner with a bike cause you'd have brakes and you could go the speed that you want.

Childhood memory

We had an interesting family living kitty-corner from us when we grew up. The kids were always running wild. Whenever anyone on our street had a yard sale, they would hurry and set up a (cheap) jewelry table in their yard and get in on the action. I remember one time when I was like 6 or 7, I was with my next door neighbor (who lived across from them), and we were sitting on her porch in the summer and the mom and oldest son (maybe around 14 or 15 years old or so at the time) had just come home from the store or something. The son took some things inside and the mom was bringing in something too. Somehow, she fell down on her back. Their driveway was quite steep, kind of like a big bump. And she was a short little ball of a woman. Probably not even 5 feet tall. Anyway, she could not get up. She was rolling back and forth trying to get on her side or something and she started yelling for her son. "Jeffrey!?... Jeffrey!?" My friend and I were just frozen in shock. Her son never came out. Eventually she found a way to roll over and get herself up and then she went inside. Wow, I can still see it so clearly. It was such a strange thing to see as a kid. I had never seen anyone else's mom fall down and not be able to get up. I already thought they were a strange group and that didn't help my opinion at all. I know, I sound mean but this was just my view of when I was a child. They moved away before I was out of elementary school. But that moment is forever imprinted in my memory.

Care Bears and leg warmers

Okay, so even though there are things that I don't think should make a comeback from the 80's there are some that I don't mind if they do. These little Baby Legs leg warmers were so cute, I couldn't pass them up. The Care Bear was a gift for Elli from her grandma Van one Christmas. I love for my kids to have any toys that I loved as a kid like, Care Bears, Cabbage Patch Kids, or Hello Kitty. I don't think Addie's a fan of the moving, talking bear though.

Land of the free

This is kind of long and you really don't have to read it if you don't want to. I just remembered of an incident that happened to me. When I was in Germany, in the spring of 2000, (I was 23) I went to a sandwich place with two girls, sisters, who were in the branch that I went to. We were speaking English, having fun, when I noticed a man staring at me. He looked so angry and disgusted at me. I'm pretty sure he was drunk. It was so scary! I was trying not to notice him and then he started singing some American song, I don't know what it was, probably some commercial or movie or something that he had heard a lot, but he was singing it angrily. The girls with me saw him too, and they were ignoring him with me. Then he started saying kind of quietly, (but loud enough for us to hear) "Ich hasse America!"- I hate America. My face probably went white. I had never heard that before especially from someone just a few steps away from me. The two German girls I was with were brave though and they were just telling him in German that he didn't know what he was talking about. He said, "The only thing good that has come out of America is bubble gum and Coca-Cola." I was sure that I was going to be punished in some way. I started looking around at how many people were eating at the little restaurant and wondering if he would dare do anything with this many witnesses. But my friends just kept talking to him and kind of laughing at him letting him know that he wasn't a threat. One of them had just come back from a mission in Greece so she was kind of used to people not always being so nice. They were saying things to me too that were helping me to calm down, like, "Don't worry about him. He's just jealous." and "He's just drunk." So I was feeling a little bit better. Finally, he left the place, and I sighed a breath of relief that he was gone. It was so unnerving for me, being so naive in the world, to hear that people didn't like America! I thought everyone loved us! The land of opportunity. People come here in droves just to live in this country. I guess that is what we think wherever we live. The girl who was just in Greece told me later that the American missionaries had been moved out of Greece to different missions because the Greeks didn't like American's either and it was enough that they thought the American missionaries were in danger. What was going on!? I started seeing that as Americans, we are so proud. Which is a good thing, I think, to have pride in your country, but around the world they don't like us telling the whole world that we are the best country and we are the smartest and everyone should try to be just like us. We also (I do too sometimes) expect that everyone speaks English when we visit foreign countries. Anyway, I was not suprised at all that no other countries wanted to join us in war with Iraq. They thought that we were forcing our way of life on other countries. But I'm glad that we rid the world of Saddam and I'm glad that we stayed to try to help and build the country back up and I wish we could have found Osama and gotten rid of him too.
So to end this forever long post, it was a real eye-opening experience for this little sheltered girl. Though I do love to visit lots of other countries and there are super nice people who live all around the world, and people who love America all around the world, I will just have pride in my country and love it and it will be my little secret that we live in a wonderful place. I love America!
(I also have pride and love for Finland, but that's a whole other post.)

Childhood faves

I tried adding a playlist here but it wouldn't work so I put it at the bottom of my blog. In this list are some the earliest songs that I remember loving. Probably between ages 5-10 or so. The thing is, I still LOVE hearing them! I'm so excited to get them all together so I can listen to them anytime. Some of them are a little interesting. (Dionne Warwick?) But I really love all of them. Go ahead and listen if you want. (Sorry, you'll have to pause the other player.)
My sister, Sinika and I got a radio for Christmas one year and we were so excited. I can still remember what it looked like: it was a brown rectangle about 12 inches long and maybe 6 inches high. Turny knobs. No tape player, just good ol' AM/FM radio. None of this fancy, cute colored, 3-in-one players like there are today for kids radios. But we still loved it. So these songs that I put in my playlist are totally from hearing them on THIS radio.
When I hear some of these songs, I can totally see me and Sinika in our room with multi-hue yellow carpet playing with our plastic charm necklaces or else cleaning our room for 8 hours straight. Why did it take us that long? I don't know but it would seriously take us an entire Saturday. I remember my idea of cleaning was putting anything small into something bigger. Like a sock, along with any number of small items into a purse or a box.
One year we had a season pass to Super Sliders water park. EVERY time we were there we would hear "Take On Me". So that became "the Super Sliders song".
I loved singing Whitney Houstons "How will I know". I thought I was a pretty good singer back then. I found I was pretty good at memorizing lyrics which I have carried on throughout my life. (I still know a lot of the lyrics to these songs, even without hearing them for years.)
It's amazing what memories music brings back. My music taste has definitely changed over the years but these songs will always be special to me.

Yes, I was wrong

So as you can tell, I've been posting a lot of memories lately. I don't know why, maybe having kids makes me think about when I was a kid or maybe I would be the same way without kids, who knows. It looks like I'm going younger and younger too. 9th grade, 5th grade and now, Sesame Street. Sorry this may be boring to some of you but it's a big deal to me. I remember watching this on Sesame Street with my sister Sinika and my brother Eric. Years later we would try and recite it the correct way and we all said it different and we all thought we were right. Well, here's the proof. Oooh, I love youtube! I'm just finding out that you can find just about ANYTHING you want on youtube. I always thought it was "A loaf of bread, a stick of butta, and a quart of milk". I was wrong. Here you go:

Ah, nostalgia...

One show I wish they still played re-runs of is... Punky Brewster. I know, I know, I remember in 5th grade it was sooo uncool to like that show. I remember it was 5th grade because we had a program one night and we were getting ready for it and 'Mary' said kind of whiningly, "I want to be home so I can watch Punky Brewster!" and 'Loralie' gave a kind of look like, "Wow, she is so childish." and I gave her a look back like, "I know, can you believe she watches that silly show?" but really what I was thinking was, "Note to self: do not let anyone know that you love that show and watch it everyday." Anyway, I always crave watching it. I think about all the fun times they had in their super cool treehouse in the backyard, Cherie and Margo and that boy (?). Some of the things that stick out in my mind are: the very first episode where she climbs into an abandoned apartment and is dancing to "She's a maniac" and Henry finds her and takes her in, the one where Cherie hides in an old refrigerator when playing hide and seek and gets stuck and almost dies. They had a warning at the end of that episode that said, "Never close yourself into a refrigerator or you may not be able to get out and you could die if your temperature gets low enough." or something like that. I was always afraid of the door closing on me after that even though now I realize that nowaday fridges don't lock and you could just push it open easily if you were inside. I also remember the one where Punky needed her first bra. And then I remember when she was possibly going to be adopted by a rich family but she just didn't fit in eating oysters and such. It seemed like the series ended abruptly. Maybe that's why I have issues with it. I didn't ever get my fill on it. I was always wanting more. It seems like they play re-runs of so many shows, why not that one? Do they have it on DVD? I guess I need to check it out. I wonder if they thought they would start a new fashion trend with the bandanas on the legs. It just never took off. Well at least I never saw it. (Except for Halloween.) Maybe in certain schools where crazy fads went in and out really fast. But it just wasn't practical. You had to tie those things in knots and then untie them (not fun) each time you wore them and maybe when you went to the bathroom they would slide down the legs and you would have to readjust them for hours after. Well, I bet the bandana retailers weren't as happy as they would have been had it gone crazy in style. Anyway, if anyone knows about any certain 'box set that would make me happy', let me know.

Embarrassing moment

I remember when I was in 9th grade in English class, my teacher, Mrs. Springer, was curious to know if any of us knew how the Trojan war ended. I raised my hand so fast which now when I think about it, was very rare. I was such a quiet kid growing up. Maybe my teacher realized that I didn't comment much and so she called on me. I very excitedly told her that they built a giant wooden rabbit and hid inside it and the Trojans thought it was a gift and brought it inside the city walls and then at night they came out and attacked from the inside. My teacher was like, "No dear, that was Monty Python." We all laughed (including me) and someone else told about a wooden "horse" that was used. The thing is I really did know it was a horse, I just had watched "The Holy Grail" so much that the rabbit was so familiar to me so that was what came out. As soon as she said 'Monty Python' I realized my mistake but I never said, "Oh yeah, I mean a horse," so I sometimes wonder if my teacher really thought that I really thought that was a true historical fact. Anyway, Mrs. Springer was such a good teacher and has since gotten several "Teacher of the Year" awards. She not only helped me love reading literature more but she gave such interesting tidbits of history that she also started my love for learning history. (But not necessarily from that incident.)