But Call Me Betsy

I don't know if it's a product of being an only child, or if it's like some genetic sensitivity thing, but when I was little, I had this affinity to stuffed animals, but also to other inanimate objects, basically believing that even the bathtub had feelings and would feel neglected if you didn't use it or at least pat it reassuringly on occasion. But my stuff animals, because they were, you know, shaped like animals, all got names and I worried about them a lot--you know, like the fairness of who should get to be in the bed each night. I won't go so far as to claim that my toys were on a rotational basis, but I'm sure that it crossed my mind to dole out the affection in an equal way. I didn't necessarily feel the same about dolls, because dolls could be just this side of creepy. One second, they were little girls that you took care of, and the next second, they could be possessed by demons and try to kill you. I must have seen any early film starring Karen B...

Luke would like me to write about the time the USA beat out the Russian in an ice hockey shoot out, and they played this song that goes, "Oh, say, O'Shea," but I don't even know what he's talking about.  I don't watch the Olympics, for a couple of reasons, but the main one is that I don't like competitions. I think this comes from being an only child. I never really played a lot of board games as a kid, and I remember being disappointed whenever anyone gave me one.  Because other than my pretend friend or my mom, who was I supposed to be playing Sorry with? Or Clue, for God's sake? I have never once played Monopoly and I don't think I missed anything. The game Operation made me nervous because of the buzzer and Shoots and Ladders seemed too babyish by the time I saw it. So, I never learned how to play board games, and I wasn't athletic at all growing up, so I also never competed in any sports. As a result, I'm not drawn to watching spor...

Doing projects on the planets with Saturn being the hardest planet to draw. Christmas pageants after hours at school and how totally different school seemed at nighttime. Making clay vases in art class that tipped over under their own weight. Book reports done the night before and trying to make the illustrations really large to take up extra space. Playing Ghosts in the Graveyard in the dark in someone's yard. Slumber parties. Making long fingernails out of Scotch tape. Candy cigarettes (do they even still make those)? Spelling bees. Getting in trouble at school and feeling like it's going to go on your permanent record for the rest of your life: "Frankly, we'd hire you in a second if it weren't for that nasty business about your behavior at a certain spelling bee." Drawing princesses and trying to find ways to avoid drawing the hands and feet like perhaps having the hands clasped behind the back and the feet hidden by a giant hoop skirt. Making ...

My new routine includes me trying to do a few sit-ups and spaghetti-arm push ups every morning in the little tiny room/closet that houses my old journals. That's really all that it can fit--two bookshelves and a wooden Buddha statue. But it qualifies this house as a three bedroom, so that's fine with me. Better resale value. My reward for this physical toil is to read a few pages of one of the journals when I finish--usually, I find something funny that I'd forgotten, and on occasion, I find some writing that I like. This is what I found today. It's a list of ten things about being a kid that I got from reading Lynda Barry's The Greatsest of Marlys: 1. Brown paper lunch bags with your name written on them. 2. Orange marshmellow peanuts, usually given to you by old people who have had them around for decades. 3. Bangs cut too short from giving yourself a haircut with your mom's sewing scissors. 4. Ripley's Believe It or Not --how the stories were someti...

Leigh Ann and I were talking today about being dorky kids. She reminded me of the story I once told her from when I was little and I used to wear red tights on my head because I thought that they looked like braids. I really wanted long hair, and preferably hair like Laura Ingalls (this was a common theme in my childhood--wanting to be Laura Ingalls), so I thought that tights made a foolproof substitution until my hair (always cut pretty short) grew. I reasoned that the seam down the center looked like a hair part. I tied bows toward the end, just above the feet. Here is what I looked like: Pretty smart, huh?

My mom recently mailed me a bunch of old photographs that I need to scan and send back to her. Here is one--I'm about 5 or 6. This is at my grandpa and grandma's house in Nebraska, where we used to live. I do not know what I am holding. A beer pong? Grandma looks crabby in the background, but that's probably mostly because she never liked getting her picture done. It does look as though she's recently been to the beauty parlor to get her hair shaped into its Sunday best. We looked at more houses yesterday and saw one or two with this same paneling on the walls as shown in the photo. Only really one old person house, and it was well-maintained. The houses all start to look the same after awhile. Stairs to the left, narrow hallways, three bedrooms in a row upstairs. Saw one house I like a lot, but I'm not going to mention anything about it because I don't want to jinx it. Jeanne showed me a great house with lots of original detail--little built in cupboards and gl...

Hey, this job as a writer requires quite a lot of writing! It makes it difficult to feel motivated to update my blog, and to finish the article I need to write for Maven magazine. Nonetheless, I was thinking the other day about weird moments or characters on TV that freaked me out at an early age. These would be all from shows I saw between the ages of 3-6. I hope this post will never be used by some undergrad under duress searching for an argument against kids watching TV for a rhetorical paper due the next morning at a.m. Anyway: 1. Cookie Monster. I was always scared of the Cookie Monster, in part because he was so out of control (my cousin Charlie was terrified of the Count. You could make him cry by just saying, "V-one, Two, Tree!"). I remember a dream I had when I was really little where the Cookie Monster actually gobbled me up. I remember being swallowed down his black throat. It didn't hurt, and was, in fact, mildly pleasant. Still, I didn't like his goog...