The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: Asherdan on October 22, 2008, 06:03:23 pm
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(http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--k5m636Zb--/m5dvkzj95cd6xl0k4nnx.gif)
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I too keep books from my childhood.mostly to keep track of how my interests evolved over time. Dinos to psychology to a never ending collection of obsolete economics textbooks that talk about the rise of the keyensian revolution.
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I had a basket full of little plastic animals that my mother threw away when she moved. I still haven't entirely forgiven her.
That was not as traumatic though as the little black plastic hoss that I lost in the snow when I was a kid. I liked it so much, I brought it with me to keep me company while I shoveled snow, and of course I dropped it without noticing and never found it again.
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Hm. I can't really think of what my favorite toys were.
Actually, Duh, it was my Playmobil guys. Hell of mass produced, but so fun.
In retrospect, I was totally just like I am now, in that I spent hours building complicated houses for them out of blocks, digging through all the various accessories to set up their house so that it was really cool (lots of balconies and lofts and gun turrets. usually at once.)
Lots of "the wheels fell off this car, so now it's the flying car that my guy invented, you can't have one unless your guy buys it from my guy" type shenanigans with my little brother. We played with those damn things so much. Oh man.
I have all my old books in my basement in boxes, I haven't looked at them in forever.
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I've kept a few of my little kid books -- mostly Dr. Seuss. I have my original copy of Green Eggs and Ham. I owe that man a lot.
When I was a kid my mother was Women's Editor for the local newspaper. You'd probably call it Features Editor today. She used to get kid's books to review. She got a bunch of Dell Yearling books (http://stores.ebay.com/GET-IT-4-LESS-BOOKS_DELL-YEARLING-BOOKS_W0QQfsubZ18) which I read the hell out of starting in about 2d grade.
I don't really remember favorite little kid toys. I had a stuffed animal called "Cat" that my Aunt made for me (actually a series of stuffed animals) that I slept with. When I was older I had a helicopter on a wire that went around in a circle that I spent hours playing with -- there was a swinging hook on the bottom that you could rescue stuff with. It was great. I'd play with it now if I had one. That sucker ate up D batteries though.
Hell of old school Tonka truck. Steel. Corners. Rock on Tonka Truck. Rock on.
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I don't have anything older than when I was in college, sadly. My folks likely have a lot of it in their attic, but I'm not likely to get ahold of that stuff. Long story.
I was a Construx fan. Like legos, but more scaffoldy, if you get what I'm saying. Plastic bars and joint cubes like dice with prongs, panels that you could pop in, and wheels and motors and belts and a wired remote that you could really make some kickass stuff with. Kind of like erector sets but safer what with the lack of hacksaws and welding, and years before the legos mind machines or whatever they're called were around.
Also: asherdan, I will give you hell of cans for a picture of that mallard-on-wheels you mentioned. I was talking about that with some friends and they were all "wtf you on about" and I couldn't find a pic via google.
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I had Construx. But my problem with both those and legos was that I had to build the things they gave instructions for or had a picture of on the box. I was actually the same way with coloring books. If the pictures were of well known characters I could only color them as they appeared on TV and got really mad if anybody would like color Shaggy's shirt red.
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the joke's on them/me/my mom-- I always ended up building the "set" once, and then dumped all the parts into my big tub.
endless building of forts/castles/space-ships ensued.
for some reason I got really hung up for a really long time on making small-scale spaceships and spaceports. Like, a few tiny blocks put together would be the ship, the spaceport would be a lot of blocks making a tiny building. Individual guys were symbolized by those little things that were supposed to be lights or something, but I always made sure to remind my brother that it wasn't that the GUY was that big, it's just that he was so small that we couldn't really SEE him, so the little dot-piece just stood for him.
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My childhood was defined by always playing with all the toys at once, you know.
Lego villages terrorized by plastic dinosaurs and He-Man coming in to save the day.
GI Joes that would war with MUSCLE creatures one hour and big rubber wrestlers the next in a crudely Swiftian manner.
And so on. Toys we got at garage sales and we'd have to come up with the storyline for them on the fly, thrown into the larger mix.
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My mom held on to a few toys from my childhood, which are now in our possession and played with by our kids. When they're not playing with Barbies and other modern plastic crap. I don't recall specific toys that were favorites. When I got a little older, we played hell of wiffle ball when the weather allowed, and had hell of snowball fights when the weather went the other direction.
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Childhood wasn't comfortable for me, so perhaps it's no surprise that my most beloved childhood object was my comfort blanket, Blankie.
Blankie was flannel, and by the time I was old enough to remember anything, Blankie was already faded to the point where it was hard to decipher what the original printed patter on the flannel was, but it was white cloth with blue and pink somethings printed on it and a few small holes that grew as time passed. I would press the soft flannel-y surface of Blankie to my face, smell it, kiss it, and sleep with it between my cheek and the pillow folded neatly into a square of about 6 x 6 inches. Sometimes I would cling to it, or hold it in my arms, but in bed, Blankie was always with me.
Blankie slowly disintegrate over time, to the point where when I was around 12 years old, Blankie was a grayish matted clump of strips of fabric, about the size of a softball, tangled and knotted together like a tumour. I would sometimes untwist a strand of Blankie, flatten it out and somehow this would assure me that this was still Blankie although horrible and altered. Even then Blankie smelled just right and felt just right against my skin. At puberty, I kept this bundle of shredded fabric under my pillow, but sometimes I would draw out this clump of knots and thread and hold it so close. Blankie was probably my only comfort in life until I moved away from home.
Blankie had sopped up twenty years of tears when I moved out, and naturally came with me and lived under my pillow in more than one apartment. I had boys in my bed who were never the wiser that this disgusting, filthy clump of cloth - often with strands of my own long hair tangled in it - lived just under our heads, under the cushions. These boys were assholes, who would have never understood Blankie to be anything other than trash, and who never knew me or were allowed to know me well enough to have seen this vulnerable, tangled up part of me.
Then I became an actor, and there I was in front of everyone, invited to flaunt my vulnerability and hurt - hold it out for everyone to see like stigmata. I once heard an artist refer to her craft as having joined the cult of beautiful pain, and that has always struck me as true. There I was, beautiful and dying, with a cast of other beautiful dying people around me. We would have these false families, strut the stage, then end the production and our relationships and start all over again in an endless cycle of once-removed life. I was drinking too much and doing too many drugs, and numb, numb, numb. Sometimes, I would come home, dazed, intoxicated and anesthetized against in the loneliness of my life, and I would lift up my pillow and be shocked, horrified to see Blankie there, an ugly reminder of my hurt and my need for comfort. I would be angry at Blankie, angry at my need of Blankie, disgusted, but unable to rid myself of this thing. I would pick at it, maybe even pull out a piece barely hanging on and throw the piece away, then put the pillow back down to cover it, and forget all over again that Blankie was there.
I met a boy. Not like the others. Because he wasn't like the others, I didn't know what to do with him. This boy who wasn't an asshole. This boy was not of my world - he wasn't a member of the cult of beautiful pain, he had a regular job and a regular family. He was not a part of my world at all. I was pretty sure I didn't like this boy at all, but being numb, and him being persistant, he just kept coming around. I threw a huge party on New Year's Eve. I didn't bother to invite this boy to the party until the very last minute, because he wasn't part of this world of miserable people. I called him though, mostly for social decorum, and left a voice mail "saying come if you want" and assuming he wouldn't come at all. The party was intense, I was drunk and high early on. There was a Ouija board, and people were in the shower with their clothes on and people started showing up who I didn't know. Another knock, only it was the boy. The boy had never seen these friends of mine, never mind seen my drunk and high, and I was confident as I can only be when so far gone. I introduced him around and eventyally brought him into my bedroom and closed the door. The party was going on without us, more and more of the people I knew were gone, more and more strangers where showing up. In my bedroom I undressed, he undressed and I fumbled and flopped drunkenly on the bed. Somehow Blankie was expose, and the boy asked "what's this?" without disgust or horror, just curiosity. I muttered something about it being a rag that I must have dropped there while cleaning and tossed it to the floor and kicked it under the bed. We continued our groping and kissing and touching, but then the boy stopped and said he didn't want our first time to be when I was so out of it. I said I didn't care, but he did, so we stopped. Then I said I wanted the party to be over, and the boy got dressed and demanded everyone leave, and they did, and we fell asleep in my bed, Blankie on the floor below us.
The next morning, the boy stayed to help me clean up after the party, and as we filled bags with garbage, I took Blankie from the floor, so matted and tangled, held it to my nose, smelled it one last time, and tossed it in with all the rest of the trash. I glanced at the matted wad of what was formerly my Blankie, in there with all the food and garbage. I had my doubts, and I must admit, I did look away as I tied that one back shut before putting it with the other garbage bags. I even thought, for a moment that I should rip the bag open again and rescue Blankie, but I didn't, probably because that boy was there.
That boy became my boyfriend, and in the slowest thaw out in history, 7 years later, almost one month ago, I married him. I had a lot of untangling to do, first with my heart, then my gut, then my head. All that hurt, all that sadness, all those threads of what should have been, should have never been, all the holes where things were missing - they all had to come unwound.
Somewhere, in some landfill somewhere, I hope Blankie has turned back into the organic material that all new things begin from, because, for me, I feel brand new. I feel like, untangled, I live in a world of possibility for the first time. Now I have people who will comfort me, but more importantly I can comfort myself. So goodbye Blankie, wherever you are, I really don't need you anymore.
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You know, that story is either non-fiction or fiction.
If it's non-fiction: WOW.
If it's fiction: WOW.
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Yeah, just wow. 'knotted together like a tumour' is a great line by the way.
I, uh, I had legos. I always used to play with this one specific guy that didn't have the original arm so I made a new one out of some small technic pieces and he was a cyborg bad ass. I also used to try make transformers out of lego but they tended to fall apart in ***** form because I didn't make the legs-torso joins sturdy enough.
I also used to wear an adam-west era batman costume everywhere until I was about 5 and made batarang grappling hooks out of cardboard and string.
I kept all my old stuffed animals and cherished childhood stuff in a bottom drawer until I put them in a box marked "Cameron's stuff, do not throw out" when I was around 16 or so. Want to guess what label my dad neglected to read next time he cleaned out the garage?
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The only toys I can remember are a cabbage patch doll and a ghost busters ghost catcher that I used to catch mice in. I was real hard into sports at a young age (and until dylan turned me on to the person I am today, really) and used to wear a catchers mask my mom made me out of a manilla folder. Eventually she got tired of being asked what was wrong with me and forced my dad to buy me a real catchers mask. That was probably the happiest day of my life at that point.
Also, one time I saw the harlem globetrotters and dressed like a harlem globetrotter for at least 2 months. I also remember some type of football Halloween costume I got from a friends brother and wore way too much.
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batarang
This sounds like some sort of exotic southeast asia martial arts weapon.
"Cameron's stuff, do not throw out"
Is this the first time you've mentioned your name? I'll add you to the short list of Camerons I know, which presently includes 3 Canadian lacrosse players, a professional cheerleader, a few childhood friends, and my new baby boy.
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This sounds like some sort of exotic southeast asia martial arts weapon.
No, coming from Doc it sounds like some obscure little marsupial, one of the ones that's small but so dangerous that you need grappling hooks to capture it.
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Is this the first time you've mentioned your name? I'll add you to the short list of Camerons I know, which presently includes 3 Canadian lacrosse players, a professional cheerleader, a few childhood friends, and my new baby boy.
Also, the first hot female doctor on House.
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Smells your story made me cry.
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Is this the first time you've mentioned your name? I'll add you to the short list of Camerons I know, which presently includes 3 Canadian lacrosse players, a professional cheerleader, a few childhood friends, and my new baby boy.
Are we counting Cameron, Kirk and Candace? My neighbor growing up was Cameron. OH! and Cameron Frye.
Smells your story made me cry.
Jesus, yes. I am always reminded by your posts that my life is so uneventful (and by Paul's too, sometimes), or that at least my actions are so poorly conveyed.
Edit: repeating phrases. AGAIN.
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Are we counting Cameron, Kirk and Candace? My neighbor growing up was Cameron. OH! and Cameron Frye.
Mostly I was counting people I had at least seen in person, if not spoken with. Otherwise we could throw Cameron Diaz in as well.
(http://www.mynameiscameronhughes.com/img/row4_5-191x294.jpg)
This (http://www.mynameiscameronhughes.com/mynameis.php?id=1) is the cheerleader. I saw and spoke to him at a lot of the Stealth's home games last season.
When Cameron was in Egypt-land...let my Cameron go...
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my new baby boy.
It's a pretty awesome name, I believe it derives from the gaelic for 'Totally Rad'.
one of the ones that's small but so dangerous that you need grappling hooks to capture it.
They're the reason that drop-bears are endangered.
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Smells your story made me cry.
Thanks, it is indeed true. I did have a Blankie, and I did hold on to it until that moment. The interesting thing is while I was writing that, I kept wanting to refer to Blankie as "her" not "it."
Here's the monkey and surrogate wire/ blanket covered "mother" experiment I mentioned (http://books.google.com/books?id=14uLkgB73RcC&pg=PA380&lpg=PA380&dq=monkey's+blanket+mother+experiment&source=web&ots=LW28EVUAdF&sig=1uEyBaL9XCddKeTc413q6YC0q_A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA378,M1) in another thread some time ago. It's interesting reading.
Also, here's a clip of one of the monkeys . (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLrBrk9DXVk) and here's what happens when they scare a monkey with a horrible ***** (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg9QCeA4FJs&NR=1).
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Cameron would have been the name of one of the little del Vacas, had they turned out male.