childhood
You know what makes for a really scary Halloween?
Finding, amongst one's old mix tapes, recordings from that regrettable stretch of time when one not only pretended to be an obnoxious radio d.j., but also made up a truly idiotic name.
Luckily for all of us, I can't figure out how to post audio clips.
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The growing repertoire of "career" fiascos can be seen here.
Back in the fifth grade, close to a quarter-century ago, my class learned about the Responsibility of Parenthood by carting around egg babies for a couple of weeks.
The numbers declined slowly but steadily. Eggs were dropped, or sat upon, or mislaid. There were some particularly dramatic losses on the playground, and a few (failed) attempts to fool the teacher with unsanctioned replacements.
In short, a bunch of ten-year-old kids did pretty much what you'd expect them to do.
Well, most of them.
I'd been wondering, recently, how accurate my memory was of that time; if I'd actually taken the exercise as super, super seriously as I remembered. Had I really hand-sewn outfits? And converted an old toolbox into a plush, fully decorated mobile nursery? And started up a mini cloth diaper laundry operation at my desk?
Egg babies in their vintage duds. (click on image to enlarge)
Then I found these--still dusted with baby powder--and doubted no more.
(As an aside, it turns out that a foolproof parenting strategy for getting your kids safely into adulthood is to tuck them away, untouched, in a dark attic for 20+ years.)
When I was eight years old, my family lived in rural Italy for a year.
An entire YEAR.
My mom's journal must've been over 1,000 pages by the end.
According to mine, though, only three things happened.
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I have returned from a week in Northern California. There were innumerable noteworthy moments. But the extent of my journal entries?
"monkey ball dream speech"
"cluster shatter"
"California has so many kinds of containers!"
I'd blame the fact that I was sick as a dog the whole time, but clearly there is a precedent for such negligent behavior:
(That upside down teardrop was a nice touch, if I do say so myself.)
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Luckily for me, feeling comfortable making the choice to not participate has never been a problem.
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So...yeah. I would also pretend not to be feeling sick so I wouldn't miss school.
*sigh*
Anyway. If you substitute "webcomic-y blog" for "journal" and "an unexpected vacation to warmer climes" for "IOWA tests," this old entry becomes 1. newly apropos and 2. significantly less nerdy.
Stay tuned for a return to slightly-more-regularly-scheduled postings.
All work by The League of Lost Causes is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
