I don't know how I haven't mentioned this before, considering my runaway commentaries and total lack of verbal filter. Especially because it's possibly one of the funniest fucking things ever and one of the few fond memories I have of my dad, who is otherwise an emotionally distant abusive fuckbag.
One thing he and I have in common aside from DNA and a surname and impressive unibrow is Bugs Bunny. We both fucking love Bugs. It's one of the few things we can sit down and enjoy together and this was the foundation for one of the few genuinely enjoyable things we did together.
All cartoons have orchestral musical scores, both original and other people's. The National Symphony Orchestra, an otherwise extremely serious classical music organization people aren't generally inclined to associate with frivolity, does a tour called 'Bugs Bunny on Broadway'. It's a live orchestral concert set to a background of classic Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's hilarious. If it's in your area, I highly advise you to go see it. Especially if it's being held at a venue with a liquor license.
The funniest part of the show I went to was the the conductor--remember, of the National freaking Symphony--admitted that he cannot listen to the song 'Ride of the Valkyries' without picturing that Bugs Bunny mock-opera. And hearing 'KILL THE WABBIT, KILL THE WABBIT, KILL THE WABBIT! *bah-dum-dah-dah-DUMM!*'
The same goes for the 'Barber of Seville'. My dad's dad was a particular anti-fan of this one because he hated cartoons but loved classical music and he felt like it was violating a serious piece of music.
There's also a similar orchestral concert that plays the scores from popular video games. It's called 'Video Games Live' but I haven't seen it.
Now I have that song stuck in my head.
Kill the wabbit...
Showing posts with label random memory archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random memory archives. Show all posts
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
half a point
My high school began at 7.15 in the morning and most people were already there by 7am. Not everybody can muster the energy to act like a person that early, so students nodding off in class was something of an epidemic. I'm one of those people whose brain doesn't get out of first gear until lunchtime and I was an absolute fiend for falling asleep during my morning classes. Some teachers took it personally and tried to wake me up, others just let me sleep because they couldn't be fucked to bother.
In chemistry class my junior year I was especially prone to falling asleep, which is probably why I did so badly in it. The teacher generally didn't like it when I did but on one occasion he was so impressed with the position I'd adopted crammed into my little desk that he decided I deserved the nap.
I was sitting with my legs crossed Indian style on the chair, my left elbow propped up on my knee, and my head resting on my left fist. He later told me he was both amused and impressed by the fact that I managed to adopt this position and stay that way while sleeping that he didn't have the heart to try and wake me up.
In chemistry class my junior year I was especially prone to falling asleep, which is probably why I did so badly in it. The teacher generally didn't like it when I did but on one occasion he was so impressed with the position I'd adopted crammed into my little desk that he decided I deserved the nap.
I was sitting with my legs crossed Indian style on the chair, my left elbow propped up on my knee, and my head resting on my left fist. He later told me he was both amused and impressed by the fact that I managed to adopt this position and stay that way while sleeping that he didn't have the heart to try and wake me up.
Monday, March 5, 2012
it had to be done
As much as I live on comedy the way other people live on food and water, I have never been a prankster. I enjoy occasionally watching really clever and well-staged pranks orchestrated by other people (like the annual worldwide mass-public-prank 'No Pants! Subway Ride' and pretty much everything else the Improv Everywhere group does), but I don't get any enjoyment out of doing it myself. Successful pranks are hard work and there isn't a whole lot of room for me to giggle when I'm inevitably stressed by the eight thousand different perfectly-timed and coordinating steps that will ultimately end in essentially a glorified metaphorical prat fall.
And also I'm chickenshit. I'm terrified of getting caught by a less-than-good sport.
But every now and then I'll come across a potential prank that's basically just presenting itself to me in a provocative manner and that I would be an idiot not to do.
Bored in an art class one day in high school, I amused myself with the old 'fake-skin-made-of-dried-Elmer's-glue' on the palm of my hand. I got bored with that so I decided for no real reason to do it on the underside of my forearm right near the elbow. That way I could use my hands while it tried. The glue tried but by then I had found something to do so I didn't peel it off before the bell rang. I just threw my hoodie back on and went to my next class.
In the next class there was a substitute.
I sat in the front row of this class.
This was an opportunity that could not be missed.
I scratched at my elbow through my shirt a bit, like I was annoyed by a persistent itch. I frowned like I was trying to ignore it but was too annoyed by the itching. Eventually I rolled up my sleeve, still prodding at the 'itchy' area and scratching it. Then I carefully picked at the edge of the fake skin, again like I was scratching, and casually peeled it off.
I thought the sub was going to faint or throw up.
She asked me if I wanted to go to the nurse.
I told her no thanks, that it looked like I'd managed to just pick off the afflicted area and I'm sure it won't get gangrene this time.
And also I'm chickenshit. I'm terrified of getting caught by a less-than-good sport.
But every now and then I'll come across a potential prank that's basically just presenting itself to me in a provocative manner and that I would be an idiot not to do.
Bored in an art class one day in high school, I amused myself with the old 'fake-skin-made-of-dried-Elmer's-glue' on the palm of my hand. I got bored with that so I decided for no real reason to do it on the underside of my forearm right near the elbow. That way I could use my hands while it tried. The glue tried but by then I had found something to do so I didn't peel it off before the bell rang. I just threw my hoodie back on and went to my next class.
In the next class there was a substitute.
I sat in the front row of this class.
This was an opportunity that could not be missed.
I scratched at my elbow through my shirt a bit, like I was annoyed by a persistent itch. I frowned like I was trying to ignore it but was too annoyed by the itching. Eventually I rolled up my sleeve, still prodding at the 'itchy' area and scratching it. Then I carefully picked at the edge of the fake skin, again like I was scratching, and casually peeled it off.
I thought the sub was going to faint or throw up.
She asked me if I wanted to go to the nurse.
I told her no thanks, that it looked like I'd managed to just pick off the afflicted area and I'm sure it won't get gangrene this time.
Friday, February 10, 2012
excuse me, are you lost?
Every now and then you might find yourself doing a double-take when you see a person who looks completely out of place in the setting they're currently occupying. It's not like I'm going to suggest that certain people can't go certain places, but seeing something like this is just very visually jarring.
When I was in college, I would sometimes spot an adult student on his way to or from class with his laptop case. That by itself isn't the weird part. The weird part was that he was a Buddhist monk. And I know this because he was wearing the traditional orange-and-yellow monk robes and sandals and his head was shaved.
Obviously Buddhist monks are totally entitled to an education--there are probably a lot of perks of having someone with a degree at the temple, I'm sure--and nothing about their beliefs or their religious obligations says they can't use technology or go to school or anything. But surrounded on all sides by typical college students, seeing him never failed to feel really weird. Sometimes I felt like asking him if he was lost. He just looked so out of place.
When I was in college, I would sometimes spot an adult student on his way to or from class with his laptop case. That by itself isn't the weird part. The weird part was that he was a Buddhist monk. And I know this because he was wearing the traditional orange-and-yellow monk robes and sandals and his head was shaved.
Obviously Buddhist monks are totally entitled to an education--there are probably a lot of perks of having someone with a degree at the temple, I'm sure--and nothing about their beliefs or their religious obligations says they can't use technology or go to school or anything. But surrounded on all sides by typical college students, seeing him never failed to feel really weird. Sometimes I felt like asking him if he was lost. He just looked so out of place.
this just seems totally inappropriate...
Random memory time.
I honestly have no idea what planet my parents went to college on because they were in college in the late 70s, right when National Lampoon's 'Animal House' came out and arguably the rebirth of frat house madness and all-around bad behaviour. Yet neither of them knew what beer pong was until a few years ago. At least my dad had been to toga parties. If he hadn't, I would probably have seriously tried to find evidence that neither of them actually ever went to university and may even have been in the country illegally. (Even funnier, my dad was the only guy on his floor who actually knew how to make a serviceable toga out of a bedsheet, so you knew someone was going to throw a toga party when there was a line of half-dressed guys outside Andy's dorm room with an armful of sheets or wearing a failed toga that could look like anything from a wrap dress to a diaper.) It's not that they didn't drink--oh fucking boy, did they drink, as evidenced by the only piece of real sage fatherly advice my dad ever gave me, which I shall repeat here verbatim in hopes of enriching the life of some young person someday:
"Never be drunk and unconscious at a party where there are people drunk and conscious."
Smart man, huh?
Anyway, neither he nor my mom had ever played beer pong and manged to remain totally unaware of it until about five or six years ago when we went to a graduation party thrown by a family friend for their daughter who, many years earlier, used to babysit my brother and me. Since it was just down the street and my parents walked, my dad didn't see any reason not to get totally shit-faced so he spent most of the afternoon playing round after round of beer pong with the guest of honour and her fellow college friends.
Apparently nobody stopped to consider that there might have been something a little inappropriate with a middle-aged man playing a drinking game with the babysitter.
To be honest, I still think it is.
I honestly have no idea what planet my parents went to college on because they were in college in the late 70s, right when National Lampoon's 'Animal House' came out and arguably the rebirth of frat house madness and all-around bad behaviour. Yet neither of them knew what beer pong was until a few years ago. At least my dad had been to toga parties. If he hadn't, I would probably have seriously tried to find evidence that neither of them actually ever went to university and may even have been in the country illegally. (Even funnier, my dad was the only guy on his floor who actually knew how to make a serviceable toga out of a bedsheet, so you knew someone was going to throw a toga party when there was a line of half-dressed guys outside Andy's dorm room with an armful of sheets or wearing a failed toga that could look like anything from a wrap dress to a diaper.) It's not that they didn't drink--oh fucking boy, did they drink, as evidenced by the only piece of real sage fatherly advice my dad ever gave me, which I shall repeat here verbatim in hopes of enriching the life of some young person someday:
"Never be drunk and unconscious at a party where there are people drunk and conscious."
Smart man, huh?
Anyway, neither he nor my mom had ever played beer pong and manged to remain totally unaware of it until about five or six years ago when we went to a graduation party thrown by a family friend for their daughter who, many years earlier, used to babysit my brother and me. Since it was just down the street and my parents walked, my dad didn't see any reason not to get totally shit-faced so he spent most of the afternoon playing round after round of beer pong with the guest of honour and her fellow college friends.
Apparently nobody stopped to consider that there might have been something a little inappropriate with a middle-aged man playing a drinking game with the babysitter.
To be honest, I still think it is.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
endless repetition
I'm not actually completely sure how common this practice is, but a staple feature of my American primary school career was spelling as an academic subject. I don't really recall doing anything like that in England, since I guess we were all expected to learn how to spell words properly on our own just from learning to read them or something. Though I distinctly remember teachers giving all of us a simple handmade 'book' (comprised of sheets of paper folded in half to make the leaves and 'covered' with colour construction paper) which we were instructed to have a teacher or aide write any words we didn't know how to spell. The intention was probably to give us a crude reference book to look up and learn the spellings of words we had trouble spelling.
American schools, or at least the ones I'm aware of, do things differently. They assign students to groups based on their proficiency in language comprehension (I was usually in the highest or second-highest group) and each week each group was presented with a sheet of paper with ten to twenty different words we were supposed to learn. I don't know if this was a school-wide mandate or part of a county or state curriculum or what, but every single week for every single year, teachers gave us exactly the same homework to do with our spelling words. It was so completely repetitious that I remember it even to this day. On Monday we were to write each word three times; Tuesday we were to put them in alphabetical order; on Wednesday we were to use each word in a sentence. Spelling tests were every Friday, so on Thursday we were instructed to study our words even though I never actually did it. At some point I figured out that if I wrote each word three times in alphabetical order, I could kill two birds with one stone and take care of Tuesday's homework on Monday afternoon. (The teachers usually accepted this without hesitation. I'm not sure why, but I guess in the long run it didn't really matter.) There probably isn't anything wrong with this system since obviously I successfully learned how to spell although I gather from all the infuriatingly unreadable Facebook and internet forum posts I've read over the years that I'm in the minority.
I don't know why I wanted to talk about this. It doesn't mean anything to anyone at all, including me.
American schools, or at least the ones I'm aware of, do things differently. They assign students to groups based on their proficiency in language comprehension (I was usually in the highest or second-highest group) and each week each group was presented with a sheet of paper with ten to twenty different words we were supposed to learn. I don't know if this was a school-wide mandate or part of a county or state curriculum or what, but every single week for every single year, teachers gave us exactly the same homework to do with our spelling words. It was so completely repetitious that I remember it even to this day. On Monday we were to write each word three times; Tuesday we were to put them in alphabetical order; on Wednesday we were to use each word in a sentence. Spelling tests were every Friday, so on Thursday we were instructed to study our words even though I never actually did it. At some point I figured out that if I wrote each word three times in alphabetical order, I could kill two birds with one stone and take care of Tuesday's homework on Monday afternoon. (The teachers usually accepted this without hesitation. I'm not sure why, but I guess in the long run it didn't really matter.) There probably isn't anything wrong with this system since obviously I successfully learned how to spell although I gather from all the infuriatingly unreadable Facebook and internet forum posts I've read over the years that I'm in the minority.
I don't know why I wanted to talk about this. It doesn't mean anything to anyone at all, including me.
Friday, February 3, 2012
not normal
Even though the abuse I suffered growing up wasn't particularly extreme or horrifying, it was still pretty fucked up. It was so fucked up that it spawned what appears to an outsider to be a sweet and affectionate familial gift-giving tradition.
My dad has always given my mom wooden spoons for Christmas. She enjoys cooking, so on the surface it just looks like a man giving his wife a simple but thoughtful gift based on something she likes doing.
The reality is that my dad is just replacing the wooden spoons that were broken over the course of the year from being used to hit me. A wooden spoon is hardly an unbreakable object but it still requires a lot of violent force to break one. That kind of violence was used against me often enough that my dad felt compelled to replace all the spoons that were broken on me.
It's pretty fucking twisted that hitting a kid with enough force to break a wooden spoon spawned a tradition in my house.
My dad has always given my mom wooden spoons for Christmas. She enjoys cooking, so on the surface it just looks like a man giving his wife a simple but thoughtful gift based on something she likes doing.
The reality is that my dad is just replacing the wooden spoons that were broken over the course of the year from being used to hit me. A wooden spoon is hardly an unbreakable object but it still requires a lot of violent force to break one. That kind of violence was used against me often enough that my dad felt compelled to replace all the spoons that were broken on me.
It's pretty fucking twisted that hitting a kid with enough force to break a wooden spoon spawned a tradition in my house.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
mental pictures
I've never been a religious person--even during a short span of my life when I was young and identified as 'Christian', I don't think I really seriously believed in god any more than I believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy--so it doesn't make much sense for me to even have this mental picture. But, have it I do and even though I'm just about as atheist as they come I don't feel a shred of conflict or cognitive dissonance.
Anyway.
Whenever I think of the Judea-Christian god--the only character in the Abrahamic religions not depicted as a person in religious art or statuary; Muhammed gets a body, though not a face--I picture a person in my head. And as long as I can remember, it's always been the same person.
This guy, the priest from the wedding scene in the 1989 Disney 'The Little Mermaid':
Yeah. The little guy in the weird hat and the glasses.
That's what the god of Abraham always looked like in my head. That's how he still looks, even though I don't believe in it.
Anyway.
Whenever I think of the Judea-Christian god--the only character in the Abrahamic religions not depicted as a person in religious art or statuary; Muhammed gets a body, though not a face--I picture a person in my head. And as long as I can remember, it's always been the same person.
This guy, the priest from the wedding scene in the 1989 Disney 'The Little Mermaid':
Yeah. The little guy in the weird hat and the glasses.
That's what the god of Abraham always looked like in my head. That's how he still looks, even though I don't believe in it.
keepsake
I'm not close to anybody in my family. For the most part they're nice enough people--dysfunctional, definitely, but nice enough--but I don't get on famously with any of my relatives because they're just very different people and we don't have much in common. That's how I was with my paternal grandfather, as well, but he was kind of my favourite inasmuch as it makes sense for me to have a favourite. I wasn't any more compatible with him than anybody else, but he was the most interesting of my relatives. He had the weirdest, coolest stories and did some of the strangest things. He once put his dining room table out of commission for almost a whole year by using it to assemble a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco. The only big enough surface besides the floor was the dining room table. When he finished, he mounted it on his ceiling (duh!) and there it stayed until the house was cleaned out.
When I was seventeen he died of pancreatic cancer--I'm the oldest grandkid so I have the most memories of him, and since I was older I got to pick something from his house as a keepsake.
So I chose the unicorn.
My entire life my grandfather had this unfinished cross-stitch replica of a unicorn tapestry. Since it was a printed pattern (where the finished picture is printed right on the fabric and you just have to fill it in with all the colours), the image of the unicorn was always there even though it was only about half finished. It just reminds me of him because it was always up on the wall and I always saw it.
When my dad brought it back to Maryland with him, it wasn't in its frame so I could see it had been dated--he started stitching it in the 70s, ten years before I was even born. My dad even found the rest of the supplies (Gramps wasn't a hoarder or anything so I've no idea why he would have saved them), including the original pattern and thread.
But I couldn't bring myself to finish it. The way it 'should' look to me is unfinished. Completing it would be almost blasphemous.
I do want to put ONE stitch in it though, just so it's properly mine.
When I was seventeen he died of pancreatic cancer--I'm the oldest grandkid so I have the most memories of him, and since I was older I got to pick something from his house as a keepsake.
So I chose the unicorn.
My entire life my grandfather had this unfinished cross-stitch replica of a unicorn tapestry. Since it was a printed pattern (where the finished picture is printed right on the fabric and you just have to fill it in with all the colours), the image of the unicorn was always there even though it was only about half finished. It just reminds me of him because it was always up on the wall and I always saw it.
When my dad brought it back to Maryland with him, it wasn't in its frame so I could see it had been dated--he started stitching it in the 70s, ten years before I was even born. My dad even found the rest of the supplies (Gramps wasn't a hoarder or anything so I've no idea why he would have saved them), including the original pattern and thread.
But I couldn't bring myself to finish it. The way it 'should' look to me is unfinished. Completing it would be almost blasphemous.
I do want to put ONE stitch in it though, just so it's properly mine.
troubled youth
My mom is a teacher. She teaches special education in a middle school, where the students range in age from eleven to fourteen. If you happen to know a lot of teachers like I do, you'll be aware that this age group is incredibly difficult to cope with. They're full of hormones, unlike primary school kids, but unlike high-schoolers aren't compelled to buckle down and behave by the looming prospect of graduation, college, and adulthood. This is bad enough as it is, but on top of that my mom's school also has a very large demographic of students with serious behavioural problems, even in the mainstream population outside the special-ed kids. It basically takes an already difficult age group and makes it worse, resulting in outrageous misbehaviour. Within the first week teaching after being hired, a student threw a chair at one of the other teachers and injured her enough that she needed back surgery.
Over the years I've become pretty desensitized to all but the most extreme stories, but these two stuck out in my mind the most. And they're pretty outrageous--they have to be to grab my attention like this.
She once saw a girl showing her tattoo off to her friends--a child too young to even drive a car had somehow found a way to get a tattoo. Since no tattooist in their right MIND would work on anybody under eighteen, it was certainly some cheap and dirty back-alley tattoo artist. Which is not only really illegal but also really, really dangerous. You can get any number of infections or diseases from a dirty tattoo needle. And remember, NONE of the students were any older than fourteen. Not only did she get a tattoo, but obviously her parents were either oblivious and didn't notice or completely apathetic and didn't care. That's insane.
Two or three years ago there was a big to-do in the school involving child protective services and the police. A seventh-grade (twelve years old) boy turned up at school drunk. Not disoriented or discombobulated, but actually over-the-legal-limit-in-adults drunk. He managed to get his hands on some fairly potent alcohol without his parents knowing and brought it to school, where he shared it with another student who also failed a police-administered breath test.
It's astounding how little parental supervision these kids have. There are no words for how fucked up this shit is.
Over the years I've become pretty desensitized to all but the most extreme stories, but these two stuck out in my mind the most. And they're pretty outrageous--they have to be to grab my attention like this.
She once saw a girl showing her tattoo off to her friends--a child too young to even drive a car had somehow found a way to get a tattoo. Since no tattooist in their right MIND would work on anybody under eighteen, it was certainly some cheap and dirty back-alley tattoo artist. Which is not only really illegal but also really, really dangerous. You can get any number of infections or diseases from a dirty tattoo needle. And remember, NONE of the students were any older than fourteen. Not only did she get a tattoo, but obviously her parents were either oblivious and didn't notice or completely apathetic and didn't care. That's insane.
Two or three years ago there was a big to-do in the school involving child protective services and the police. A seventh-grade (twelve years old) boy turned up at school drunk. Not disoriented or discombobulated, but actually over-the-legal-limit-in-adults drunk. He managed to get his hands on some fairly potent alcohol without his parents knowing and brought it to school, where he shared it with another student who also failed a police-administered breath test.
It's astounding how little parental supervision these kids have. There are no words for how fucked up this shit is.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
School vs Reality
I don't really think about it much, but there are a lot of rules and practices that were an unquestioned and integral part of my schooldays that don't apply at all in the real world. In fact, they seem really bizarre in the real world and I don't really even know why they were so important in school. Nobody ever questioned them and most people have probably forgotten them completely by now (unless they're teachers themselves), but when I think about them they just strike me as having no practical relevance.
One of them is being required to answer questions 'in a complete sentence' on assignments and tests. I don't know whether this is universal or not, but it was something I had to do from the time I was old enough to be answering questions that required more than a yes or no. Basically it means that you had to answer by restating the question--so if the question read, 'What a three reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire?', the answer would have to be, 'Three reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire are...' And if you didn't do this, it was marked incorrect even if the answer was right. Which is really dumb, because it doesn't gauge whether or not you've learned the material--getting the question right depended on your ability to consistently comply with an arbitrary 'rule'. This just... doesn't happen in the real world. When someone asks, 'What time is the new Harry Potter playing at the movie theatre?', you don't reply with, 'The movie theatre is showing the new Harry Potter at...' All you do is give them a time.
It's not something most people are inclined to give a lot of thought to, but it's still completely bizarre.
One of them is being required to answer questions 'in a complete sentence' on assignments and tests. I don't know whether this is universal or not, but it was something I had to do from the time I was old enough to be answering questions that required more than a yes or no. Basically it means that you had to answer by restating the question--so if the question read, 'What a three reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire?', the answer would have to be, 'Three reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire are...' And if you didn't do this, it was marked incorrect even if the answer was right. Which is really dumb, because it doesn't gauge whether or not you've learned the material--getting the question right depended on your ability to consistently comply with an arbitrary 'rule'. This just... doesn't happen in the real world. When someone asks, 'What time is the new Harry Potter playing at the movie theatre?', you don't reply with, 'The movie theatre is showing the new Harry Potter at...' All you do is give them a time.
It's not something most people are inclined to give a lot of thought to, but it's still completely bizarre.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
my normal
When you live with something all the time, it becomes normal to you even when it turns out to be really unusual or uncommon. This opens up a clear avenue for a serious discussion on how this skewed perception of normalcy contributes to the perpetual cycle of abuse--or how I don't get psychiatric treatment because to me mental illness is 'normal' and I have no idea what the alternative would even be like. But I can't maintain the requisite level of maturity to have that conversation. I think of seriousness the same way I think of high heels--they're nice to have and wear occasionally if I feel like doing something a little differently, but they're not comfortable and if I do it too much I will probably break my leg.
So instead this is going to be about the minor (and neutral) things that were normal in my life but turned out to be fairly unusual.
All the dinner forks I've seen outside my parent's house have four tines. It's just one of those universally accepted truths of the world--forks have four tines. I don't think I ever saw any other deviation from this 'rule'. But in the cutlery set my parents have and that I grew up using... all the forks had three tines. Since I've never seen such a thing except at home, I assume this is really unusual though not particularly noteworthy.
Both sets of my grandparents got divorced long before I was born, so I grew up knowing all four of my grandparents but they were four separate entities instead of being two couples. The idea of attending a grandparent's 50th anniversary party or anything else that focuses on their long partnership is... completely foreign to me. Grandparents who still liked each other was completely beyond my experience.
It's not really noteworthy now, but in the late 80s and early 90s when I was still quite young, home computers weren't very common since they were expensive and not especially useful. But since my dad is like a computer-guy-hipster (he was programming computers before computers were mainstream!) he would sometimes bring one home on loan to work on it. So for most of my younger years the idea of having a computer in the house was novel to most people but par for the course to me.
My mom put my brother and I in the same places in the back seat of the car our entire lives--him on the left, me on the right. That was how it always was and it was never questioned and neither he nor I ever (seriously, never!) thought to switch. I don't often sit in the back seat of a car anymore, but if I do I sit on the right side--sitting on the left side is so weird for me that it's almost physically uncomfortable, like wearing shoes on the wrong feet.
This one is a little weird because most people aren't even aware something like this is possible, but... my dad sinks in water. I know, human bodies are buoyant--but my dad sinks like a rock without fail and he always has. (Most likely because he's fairly densely muscular in relation to his height.) It was slightly novel to me, actually, since he's still the only person I've ever known who can't float, but never anything more than a mild anomaly. But it's a sufficiently unusual thing that not many people know it can happen at all.
My parents happened to be born in the same year so they were always the same age. For some reason this just became so completely, immutably normal to me that it genuinely came as a surprise when I found out that other people's parents usually had at least a few years between them. And to be honest I still sometimes have to remind myself that my parents are definitely the minority in this case because it still strikes me as ever so slightly unusual that few couples are the same age.
------
And that's all I could think of tonight. The problem with identifying the 'normals' that are uncommon or unusual to most other people is that, until you learn otherwise, you never think of any part of your life as being anything but mundane. For all I know, I could be sitting on a treasure trove of bizarreness without realizing it because I don't know what 'normal' is for anyone but me. As much as we all like to think we're capable of changing our own perspective, no matter how hard you try you can't experience 'normal' the way anyone else does.
So instead this is going to be about the minor (and neutral) things that were normal in my life but turned out to be fairly unusual.
All the dinner forks I've seen outside my parent's house have four tines. It's just one of those universally accepted truths of the world--forks have four tines. I don't think I ever saw any other deviation from this 'rule'. But in the cutlery set my parents have and that I grew up using... all the forks had three tines. Since I've never seen such a thing except at home, I assume this is really unusual though not particularly noteworthy.
Both sets of my grandparents got divorced long before I was born, so I grew up knowing all four of my grandparents but they were four separate entities instead of being two couples. The idea of attending a grandparent's 50th anniversary party or anything else that focuses on their long partnership is... completely foreign to me. Grandparents who still liked each other was completely beyond my experience.
It's not really noteworthy now, but in the late 80s and early 90s when I was still quite young, home computers weren't very common since they were expensive and not especially useful. But since my dad is like a computer-guy-hipster (he was programming computers before computers were mainstream!) he would sometimes bring one home on loan to work on it. So for most of my younger years the idea of having a computer in the house was novel to most people but par for the course to me.
My mom put my brother and I in the same places in the back seat of the car our entire lives--him on the left, me on the right. That was how it always was and it was never questioned and neither he nor I ever (seriously, never!) thought to switch. I don't often sit in the back seat of a car anymore, but if I do I sit on the right side--sitting on the left side is so weird for me that it's almost physically uncomfortable, like wearing shoes on the wrong feet.
This one is a little weird because most people aren't even aware something like this is possible, but... my dad sinks in water. I know, human bodies are buoyant--but my dad sinks like a rock without fail and he always has. (Most likely because he's fairly densely muscular in relation to his height.) It was slightly novel to me, actually, since he's still the only person I've ever known who can't float, but never anything more than a mild anomaly. But it's a sufficiently unusual thing that not many people know it can happen at all.
My parents happened to be born in the same year so they were always the same age. For some reason this just became so completely, immutably normal to me that it genuinely came as a surprise when I found out that other people's parents usually had at least a few years between them. And to be honest I still sometimes have to remind myself that my parents are definitely the minority in this case because it still strikes me as ever so slightly unusual that few couples are the same age.
------
And that's all I could think of tonight. The problem with identifying the 'normals' that are uncommon or unusual to most other people is that, until you learn otherwise, you never think of any part of your life as being anything but mundane. For all I know, I could be sitting on a treasure trove of bizarreness without realizing it because I don't know what 'normal' is for anyone but me. As much as we all like to think we're capable of changing our own perspective, no matter how hard you try you can't experience 'normal' the way anyone else does.
Friday, January 13, 2012
...why?
True story:
My dad used to work for an international aerospace and engineering company, and him being away for weeks at a time for temporary duty in other countries (and possibly on other planets, too) was a fairly common occurrence. It was his practice to bring an empty suitcase with him on the trip and bring it home full of weird or unusual souvenirs, which he would then keep and give to friends and family as silly gifts over the next few years.
Which is how he came home with a stack of kangaroo testicles from Australia.
To be honest, I didn't know that's what they were until years later. On his first trip to Australia he came home with a large stack of these small light brown leather drawstring pouches just slightly bigger than a ping-pong ball. My dad used his for a change pouch (and still does) and the label on their packages said 'Lucky Pouch'. Which in retrospect is way more inappropriately hilarious than it has any right to be. I don't remember how the subject came up but I do know I was almost out of high school before I was informed--I couldn't figure it out for myself--that the reason they were naturally bulbous in shape was because they were made from tanned kangaroo testicles.
I really wish I was making this up. I don't even know which is weirder: that people make change pouches out of kangaroo balls, or that they keep doing it because people like my dad buy them. Oh well. If nothing else they make really unique gifts, I guess.
Also true: before going on some outing one day he decided he wasn't going to need change for anything so he opted to leave the change pouch at home and just use what he had in his wallet instead. Without thinking about what he was saying, he proceeded to inform my mother of his plans by saying, "Oh, I think I'll just leave my scrotum at home today."
And that's the story of how I ruptured my appendix.
My dad used to work for an international aerospace and engineering company, and him being away for weeks at a time for temporary duty in other countries (and possibly on other planets, too) was a fairly common occurrence. It was his practice to bring an empty suitcase with him on the trip and bring it home full of weird or unusual souvenirs, which he would then keep and give to friends and family as silly gifts over the next few years.
Which is how he came home with a stack of kangaroo testicles from Australia.
To be honest, I didn't know that's what they were until years later. On his first trip to Australia he came home with a large stack of these small light brown leather drawstring pouches just slightly bigger than a ping-pong ball. My dad used his for a change pouch (and still does) and the label on their packages said 'Lucky Pouch'. Which in retrospect is way more inappropriately hilarious than it has any right to be. I don't remember how the subject came up but I do know I was almost out of high school before I was informed--I couldn't figure it out for myself--that the reason they were naturally bulbous in shape was because they were made from tanned kangaroo testicles.
I really wish I was making this up. I don't even know which is weirder: that people make change pouches out of kangaroo balls, or that they keep doing it because people like my dad buy them. Oh well. If nothing else they make really unique gifts, I guess.
Also true: before going on some outing one day he decided he wasn't going to need change for anything so he opted to leave the change pouch at home and just use what he had in his wallet instead. Without thinking about what he was saying, he proceeded to inform my mother of his plans by saying, "Oh, I think I'll just leave my scrotum at home today."
And that's the story of how I ruptured my appendix.
Monday, January 9, 2012
unrelated
First, I need to seriously filter my posting or find a venue more appropriate to a more or less constant stream-of-consciousness style of writing. Unfortunately I am way too long-winded for Twitter.
Unrelated: when I was really young (no idea how old but no older than about three because I don't remember my brother being around yet) my mother made a costume for a skit being done at my day-care centre. It was for 'Hey Diddle Diddle' and the costume was a tinfoil spoon. I distinctly recall being disappointed that it wasn't for me, even though if it was I would probably earnestly desire the destruction of all photos of me wearing it.
Also unrelated: why does Blogspot randomly delete or drop words on me? It makes it look like I'm borderline illiterate...
Really, really unrelated: MC Escher paintings are trippy. MC Escher paintings reproduced in three dimensions with Legos make me wonder for the future of mankind. And are even trippier.
Unrelated: when I was really young (no idea how old but no older than about three because I don't remember my brother being around yet) my mother made a costume for a skit being done at my day-care centre. It was for 'Hey Diddle Diddle' and the costume was a tinfoil spoon. I distinctly recall being disappointed that it wasn't for me, even though if it was I would probably earnestly desire the destruction of all photos of me wearing it.
Also unrelated: why does Blogspot randomly delete or drop words on me? It makes it look like I'm borderline illiterate...
Really, really unrelated: MC Escher paintings are trippy. MC Escher paintings reproduced in three dimensions with Legos make me wonder for the future of mankind. And are even trippier.
eccentric vs absentminded
I'm not excessively eccentric but I have my moments. Most of the time I think I count as 'quirky' but a few of my behaviours have nothing to do with being strange and everything to do with being absentminded.
I habitually mismatch my earrings, shoes, and socks. To me a successful day is one in which I manage to wear two of the same shoes. More than once I have mismatched my shoes and failed to notice until I took them off. I don't do things like this because I want to be different--I do them because I'm absentminded and wearing two of the same of something might as well be rocket science. I have five ear piercings so each ear takes two and a half pairs of earrings--dealing with that many finicky small pieces of jewellery and keeping track of them can be difficult. So can getting dressed at 5.30 in the morning if you don't happen to be a morning person--finding two matching socks or shoes or earrings in a dark room requires more mental acuity than I can well spare before lunchtime. (Actually it requires more than I can muster even on a good day, but I don't like to admit to that.)
In the end I kept doing all of it because I got used to it and kind of liked being seen as a little on the eccentric side and I let everyone think that's why I started in the first place--no one needs to know that I fail at life on such a basic level, right?
I habitually mismatch my earrings, shoes, and socks. To me a successful day is one in which I manage to wear two of the same shoes. More than once I have mismatched my shoes and failed to notice until I took them off. I don't do things like this because I want to be different--I do them because I'm absentminded and wearing two of the same of something might as well be rocket science. I have five ear piercings so each ear takes two and a half pairs of earrings--dealing with that many finicky small pieces of jewellery and keeping track of them can be difficult. So can getting dressed at 5.30 in the morning if you don't happen to be a morning person--finding two matching socks or shoes or earrings in a dark room requires more mental acuity than I can well spare before lunchtime. (Actually it requires more than I can muster even on a good day, but I don't like to admit to that.)
In the end I kept doing all of it because I got used to it and kind of liked being seen as a little on the eccentric side and I let everyone think that's why I started in the first place--no one needs to know that I fail at life on such a basic level, right?
dogs, bad music, and very stupid people
I've dog-sat for most of my life so I've met a lot of dogs. I've never met a dog quite like Loki. Loki belonged to a neighbour and I babysat him since he was a puppy but he had some weird habits. For one thing, he never sat on a sofa--not on the seat like a normal dog, even when you put him there--but instead preferred the arms or the backs. He was never around cats or anything that might explain where he learned this, he just did it. I used to try and keep him off there but he seemed pretty comfortable with himself and never fell off so eventually I just left him to it.
He would also 'chase' animals on TV. Just animals, not people, so I know he wasn't attracted to the movement like other dogs I've known who like watching TV and don't care what's on the screen. It had to be live-action video of real animals--not people, not animation. It wasn't even that he liked the sound, either, since it didn't matter if it was spoken narration, soundtrack, real sound, or muted. The rest of the time he couldn't be fucked to care that the TV was even on at all, but as soon as there were animals on the screen--whoosh!!--he was off. This is him trying to catch some monkeys off the National Geographic channel a few years ago. He never seemed particularly bothered that he couldn't catch anything--the eternal optimism of dogs, I guess.
I used to live right near Washington DC and any time I went there during a standard US school year (between August and June), there would always be busloads of school groups from out of state on field trips. They could be any age from ten to eighteen and on one particular occasion I was weaving my way past a group of high school seniors on a school trip. I listened to one group's conversation since at that age kids have no volume control and it went like this:
Girl: Where are we?
Boy: Washington DC, duh!
Girl: No I mean, like, what part of it?
Boy: This is the National Mall.
Girl: No way, it's not! It can't be!
Boy: ...why not? Look at the map.
Girl: So, wait... you mean the National Mall isn't, like, a mall?
I used to think that joke only existed in comic routines. To this day everybody in my family thinks I made it up because nobody could be that stupid. Another boy in the group made a comment for which I hope he is rewarded in the afterlife with cocaine and hookers:
"No, but the grass is 20% off!"
I have no clue where they came from but I strongly suspect it was the sort of place that has lead in the drinking water.
And, finally:
I have few strong feelings about music preferences. It's one of the last available types of socially acceptable open hatred and discrimination, so I never tell anyone what I like or listen to--but still don't have any really strong opinions about it. One thing I have never done is develop an inexplicable, intense, violent hatred of a particular singer based solely on their music. Even when it was played to death on the radio and everyone was singing it and talking about it and I was sick of it.
Until now!
People think that British singer/songwriter Adele is the greatest female music artist since, well, ever. It seems like it's required by law for her songs to be played on every radio station at least twice an hour so no matter where I am or what time it is, one of her songs will pop up on the radio. The songs themselves I'm just not fond of--I don't like them at all but it would go no further than a desire to change the station to avoid them were it not for their complete cultural pervasiveness. They are played and talked about and requested over and over and over and over again, all day, every day, without pause.
And for this reason, I FUCKING HATE HER MUSIC.
I can't stand it. It makes my blood boil. Every time I hear those chords or the lyrics I am completely overwhelmed with an uncontrollable urge to commit a violent homicide. I hate the music, I hate the lyrics, I hate her fucking raspy emphysemic voice, and I hate the way everyone thinks she's so freaking awesome. The intensity of my hatred cannot get any greater. If it does it will collapse upon itself and create a dense singularity from which even light cannot escape.
I fucking hate Adele.
I have never in my life developed a hatred this strong of a total stranger who is not at least responsible for something I find extremely objectionable--like the man who shot George Tiller or former President Bush. But goddammit, I hate Adele with every molecule in my body. There is not a single solitary proton within me that doesn't hate her. I have damn near broken my radio because of how hard I hit the scan button when her fucking songs come on. Her death cannot come soon enough for my liking.
I have never met her, I know nothing about her, I've never heard or read any interviews with her, and I don't really even know what she looks like. But fucking fuck, based completely on her overhyped and overplayed songs I hate her so much I wish she would fall off the fucking planet.
He would also 'chase' animals on TV. Just animals, not people, so I know he wasn't attracted to the movement like other dogs I've known who like watching TV and don't care what's on the screen. It had to be live-action video of real animals--not people, not animation. It wasn't even that he liked the sound, either, since it didn't matter if it was spoken narration, soundtrack, real sound, or muted. The rest of the time he couldn't be fucked to care that the TV was even on at all, but as soon as there were animals on the screen--whoosh!!--he was off. This is him trying to catch some monkeys off the National Geographic channel a few years ago. He never seemed particularly bothered that he couldn't catch anything--the eternal optimism of dogs, I guess.
I used to live right near Washington DC and any time I went there during a standard US school year (between August and June), there would always be busloads of school groups from out of state on field trips. They could be any age from ten to eighteen and on one particular occasion I was weaving my way past a group of high school seniors on a school trip. I listened to one group's conversation since at that age kids have no volume control and it went like this:
Girl: Where are we?
Boy: Washington DC, duh!
Girl: No I mean, like, what part of it?
Boy: This is the National Mall.
Girl: No way, it's not! It can't be!
Boy: ...why not? Look at the map.
Girl: So, wait... you mean the National Mall isn't, like, a mall?
I used to think that joke only existed in comic routines. To this day everybody in my family thinks I made it up because nobody could be that stupid. Another boy in the group made a comment for which I hope he is rewarded in the afterlife with cocaine and hookers:
"No, but the grass is 20% off!"
I have no clue where they came from but I strongly suspect it was the sort of place that has lead in the drinking water.
And, finally:
I have few strong feelings about music preferences. It's one of the last available types of socially acceptable open hatred and discrimination, so I never tell anyone what I like or listen to--but still don't have any really strong opinions about it. One thing I have never done is develop an inexplicable, intense, violent hatred of a particular singer based solely on their music. Even when it was played to death on the radio and everyone was singing it and talking about it and I was sick of it.
Until now!
People think that British singer/songwriter Adele is the greatest female music artist since, well, ever. It seems like it's required by law for her songs to be played on every radio station at least twice an hour so no matter where I am or what time it is, one of her songs will pop up on the radio. The songs themselves I'm just not fond of--I don't like them at all but it would go no further than a desire to change the station to avoid them were it not for their complete cultural pervasiveness. They are played and talked about and requested over and over and over and over again, all day, every day, without pause.
And for this reason, I FUCKING HATE HER MUSIC.
I can't stand it. It makes my blood boil. Every time I hear those chords or the lyrics I am completely overwhelmed with an uncontrollable urge to commit a violent homicide. I hate the music, I hate the lyrics, I hate her fucking raspy emphysemic voice, and I hate the way everyone thinks she's so freaking awesome. The intensity of my hatred cannot get any greater. If it does it will collapse upon itself and create a dense singularity from which even light cannot escape.
I fucking hate Adele.
I have never in my life developed a hatred this strong of a total stranger who is not at least responsible for something I find extremely objectionable--like the man who shot George Tiller or former President Bush. But goddammit, I hate Adele with every molecule in my body. There is not a single solitary proton within me that doesn't hate her. I have damn near broken my radio because of how hard I hit the scan button when her fucking songs come on. Her death cannot come soon enough for my liking.
I have never met her, I know nothing about her, I've never heard or read any interviews with her, and I don't really even know what she looks like. But fucking fuck, based completely on her overhyped and overplayed songs I hate her so much I wish she would fall off the fucking planet.
Friday, January 6, 2012
the signs
(2 Jan, 2012)
Another good reason I would make a truly atrocious parent:
I have no maternal instinct. I never have. I have never possessed a single molecule of parental love.
Also, there were signs that not only was I NOT INTERESTED in being a mommy, I was probably pretty alarmingly poorly suited to the whole business. And not just that I didn't like playing with babydolls, either--a lot of girls don't like doing that--but I honestly had no idea HOW to play with a baby doll despite having grown up around people with babies and having friends who played with baby dolls. I usually just ended up pretending the doll was something more interesting and amusing, like a dog or an airplane. If harangued into a game of 'house', I would invariably elect to be the Daddy so I could 'go to work' and leave the area and have an excuse not to participate. Sometimes I'd mix it up a bit and want to be the dog. (Also, like other girls, we were in the habit of 'playing' the characters from our favourite movies and I would always elect to be the male characters while the girls fought over being the female characters. I always noticed that the guys had more fun and got to do shit like break into castles and swing on ropes.)
Come on, stop that, I think by now we've established that I was never anywhere NEAR normal at any point in my life.
I think I only ever owned one baby doll my whole life and my parents took it away from me because I had more fun drawing all over it with a pen than I did actually playing with it. For some reason, I distinctly remember that the doll was a male doll and had a penis--this was more than twenty years ago and I swear to fuck my baby doll had a penis. No idea why I remember that so vividly.
Because I had been given baby dolls, I was also given accessories and among these was, quite naturally, a toy pram.
The pram was used to mow down my enemies and run over the enemy toys.
I've been vocal about my dislike of children and disinterest in having any for almost longer than I've been physically capable of producing them. My parents, while not especially happy about it, were never really argumentative. I guess by that point it just sealed the deal--they were probably pretty sure by then that I wasn't mother-material if I was going to do things like draw on my children and use their prams to run people down.
Good call, mom.
I have no maternal instinct. I never have. I have never possessed a single molecule of parental love.
Also, there were signs that not only was I NOT INTERESTED in being a mommy, I was probably pretty alarmingly poorly suited to the whole business. And not just that I didn't like playing with babydolls, either--a lot of girls don't like doing that--but I honestly had no idea HOW to play with a baby doll despite having grown up around people with babies and having friends who played with baby dolls. I usually just ended up pretending the doll was something more interesting and amusing, like a dog or an airplane. If harangued into a game of 'house', I would invariably elect to be the Daddy so I could 'go to work' and leave the area and have an excuse not to participate. Sometimes I'd mix it up a bit and want to be the dog. (Also, like other girls, we were in the habit of 'playing' the characters from our favourite movies and I would always elect to be the male characters while the girls fought over being the female characters. I always noticed that the guys had more fun and got to do shit like break into castles and swing on ropes.)
Come on, stop that, I think by now we've established that I was never anywhere NEAR normal at any point in my life.
I think I only ever owned one baby doll my whole life and my parents took it away from me because I had more fun drawing all over it with a pen than I did actually playing with it. For some reason, I distinctly remember that the doll was a male doll and had a penis--this was more than twenty years ago and I swear to fuck my baby doll had a penis. No idea why I remember that so vividly.
Because I had been given baby dolls, I was also given accessories and among these was, quite naturally, a toy pram.
The pram was used to mow down my enemies and run over the enemy toys.
I've been vocal about my dislike of children and disinterest in having any for almost longer than I've been physically capable of producing them. My parents, while not especially happy about it, were never really argumentative. I guess by that point it just sealed the deal--they were probably pretty sure by then that I wasn't mother-material if I was going to do things like draw on my children and use their prams to run people down.
Good call, mom.
I Plurubus Grinchum
(17 Dec. 2011)
Weird random memory time: my high school offered only French and Spanish as foreign language credits (required to graduate), but also offered Latin as an elective. (Supposedly learning Latin helped on the 'Verbal' section of the old SAT--which is actually largely complete crap because, although the grammatical and sentence structures of English are taken from Latin, the words themselves are mostly German or French in origin.)
So naturally, in order to help the students taking the Latin course, they designated a small portion of the school library for... Latin books. And I don't mean textbooks or material originally published in Latin--though they did have them--but contemporary books translated into it. Among them were 'The Giving Tree' and 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. I remember the word 'Grinch' was changed to 'Grinchus'.
I just thought it was a bit funny, even though it does make a lot of sense to teach a new language through familiar material.
So naturally, in order to help the students taking the Latin course, they designated a small portion of the school library for... Latin books. And I don't mean textbooks or material originally published in Latin--though they did have them--but contemporary books translated into it. Among them were 'The Giving Tree' and 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. I remember the word 'Grinch' was changed to 'Grinchus'.
I just thought it was a bit funny, even though it does make a lot of sense to teach a new language through familiar material.
lost and found
(16 Dec. 2011)
Never mind social networking, research, multi-user gaming, convenient shopping, and entertainment media.
What makes the internet so freaking awesome is that, given the right prompting, it will find information on pretty much ANYTHING you've EVER heard of--even when you have very few details on it. Speaking personally, few things irritate me more than having an answer on the tip of my tongue but being completely unable to access the memory in full. You know you'll recognize it as soon as you see it, but you can't dredge up enough information from the depths of dead memories to find it.
As is my habit, I remembered something from Way Back When (TM) for no reason today. I probably haven't seen or thought about this book in about fifteen years. I have NO idea what brought it up in my mind but I suddenly remembered a book I used to like as a kid and I could only remember a little bit of it and didn't know what the title was. I knew it was out there somewhere but I didn't remember many details about it--at least, not enough to run a successful Google search the first few times. I remembered it was about a princess who rode a motorbike and scared princes away by being awesome. I FINALLY managed to figure out what it was and as soon as I saw the title my reaction was, "OH YEAH, OF COURSE!!"
The book was Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole. I remember it being a popular book when I was little but it seems quite unknown in the US. Anyone from the UK remember it?
What makes the internet so freaking awesome is that, given the right prompting, it will find information on pretty much ANYTHING you've EVER heard of--even when you have very few details on it. Speaking personally, few things irritate me more than having an answer on the tip of my tongue but being completely unable to access the memory in full. You know you'll recognize it as soon as you see it, but you can't dredge up enough information from the depths of dead memories to find it.
As is my habit, I remembered something from Way Back When (TM) for no reason today. I probably haven't seen or thought about this book in about fifteen years. I have NO idea what brought it up in my mind but I suddenly remembered a book I used to like as a kid and I could only remember a little bit of it and didn't know what the title was. I knew it was out there somewhere but I didn't remember many details about it--at least, not enough to run a successful Google search the first few times. I remembered it was about a princess who rode a motorbike and scared princes away by being awesome. I FINALLY managed to figure out what it was and as soon as I saw the title my reaction was, "OH YEAH, OF COURSE!!"
The book was Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole. I remember it being a popular book when I was little but it seems quite unknown in the US. Anyone from the UK remember it?
the follies of youth
(16 Dec. 2011)
I know I like to rip on people for doing silly and weird things in the name of current fashion and fads--like getting plastic surgery to physically alter their bodies or wearing a head-full of other people's hair, or all those people who paid extortionate prices for Beanie Babies in 1995 thinking they would be worth millions one day--but I'm actually kind of a hypocrite.
Around the same time Beanie Babies were popular, another (but ultimately less rampant--adults never got caught up in this) was digital pets. Tomogatchi, Giga Pets, and Nano Pets were the most popular but at its peak there were probably a good dozen or so brands and even more individual 'types' of digital pet available. Schools are in the habit of barring students from bringing fad item to school--they did this recently with Silly Bandz and years ago with Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards--and my school was no different and prohibited children from bringing virtual pets to school. I was actually really upset about it, because I'd become quite attached to my little digital critters. Virtual pets required constant attention and would 'die' if their needs went unmet for long periods of time and I was pretty heartbroken that my T-rex (yeah, it was a dinosaur) would die of neglect while I was at school.
So--and this is embarrassing to admit--I actually offered to PAY MY MOTHER to look after it for me while I wasn't there.
Pretty silly, huh?
Around the same time Beanie Babies were popular, another (but ultimately less rampant--adults never got caught up in this) was digital pets. Tomogatchi, Giga Pets, and Nano Pets were the most popular but at its peak there were probably a good dozen or so brands and even more individual 'types' of digital pet available. Schools are in the habit of barring students from bringing fad item to school--they did this recently with Silly Bandz and years ago with Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards--and my school was no different and prohibited children from bringing virtual pets to school. I was actually really upset about it, because I'd become quite attached to my little digital critters. Virtual pets required constant attention and would 'die' if their needs went unmet for long periods of time and I was pretty heartbroken that my T-rex (yeah, it was a dinosaur) would die of neglect while I was at school.
So--and this is embarrassing to admit--I actually offered to PAY MY MOTHER to look after it for me while I wasn't there.
Pretty silly, huh?
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