Feeling Nostalgic Day 8: Nobody had Ever Heard of Gluten

                I didn’t really get into cereal too much as a kid because I could not drink milk, but I would eat cereal dry like a snack. Krispy Kritters and Oreo O’s were two of my favorites that are no longer. Krispy Kritters was like animal crackers, and Oreo O’s were like Cheerios but chocolatey with cream sprinkly things on them. 

               

                One night I had some Cocoa Puffs in a baggie and was walking around downtown Dells snacking on them like a bag of chips. My friends were laughing and asking why I was walking around eating Cocoa Puffs. I think I replied something like I wanted a snack and that was all I could find.

                Or going to the Wooden Nickel with our “allowance” to get the Frooties tootsie rolls for a penny or the weird unwrapped two-colored suckers for a dime or a can of soda for fifty cents. We’ll never see those prices again. These days it’s even difficult to purchase a single can of soda. I needed one can of Dr. Pepper awhile back for a recipe and could not find one anywhere without buying a 6 or 12 pack. I had to purchase a single bottle instead.

                Orbitz! Who remember Orbitz? No, not the gum or the travel website but the drink! Yes, the fruity water drink with the jelly balls suspended in it! Kwik Trip in Adams used to be the only place I could ever find it and whenever I had an extra buck or two I would stop there and get one. It had the funkiest texture ever. I remember our Chemistry teacher in high school doing a project with Orbitz trying to explain to us density and mass and how the jello balls stayed suspended in the drink. Or something like that… I failed Chemistry. Twice. 

 

                Anyway, continuing to read this may think about you destroying your crazy diet with my flashbacks of the days when a regular size candy bar was fifty cents and king size was 89 cents…

                I think it was Blue Bunny that used to always do a limited or special edition ice cream flavor and when we could afford a treat while shopping we would always get the special flavor if it looked good. That was usually on a Saturday after spending the mornings doing chores and the afternoons cleaning the church. Yeah, there were no Saturday morning cartoons in our house.

                I thought Kool-Aid Kool Bursts used to be bigger, or maybe it’s just that I was smaller. When you are little, everything seems so big. Like when I was in Future Educators in high school and we went to teach in the K-3 classrooms… the chairs and desks were so tiny!

               

                Remember collecting Kool-Aid and Pepsi points? We always had to get the new flavors of Kool-Aid also because those ones had two points on the back. I remember cutting them out and keeping them in an old red peanut butter bucket Dad brought home from Camp Chi when he worked there. I don’t think we ever sent them in for any merchandise. I think my brother sent in Pepsi points for a baseball cap or something like that. 

 

                Crystal Pepsi and Pepsi Blue! I was never much into a cola phase so I don’t really remember what they taste like. But we can’t forget about Surge! 

 

                My Mom reminded me today of YooHoo! We were watching a television show about it and I learned something new… apparently warm or cold, YooHoo! will not go bad as long as it is unopened… which means it may have a longer shelf life than Twinkies… ewwwwww!

                Tahitian Treat fruit punch was one of my favorite drinks as a kid. I had not seen it in forever until last summer I found it at the gas station by work. Temporarily… now it’s gone again. 

 

                Are there any treats or drinks you indulged in that are no longer available?  

Feeling Nostalgic Day 7: Imagination Only; Batteries Not Required

                Speaking of toys…. Ahhhhhh…. I could go on all day about the toys we had while growing up that inspired creativity compared to today’s cheap-o “why does everything run on batteries” nonsense. No wonder children today do not have an imagination… because all their “toys” do everything for them!

Heck, when I was 15, I was still asking for nothing but a bucket of Lego bricks for Christmas! And not one of those fancy technical kits where you could only build one thing using every Lego in the kit, but just a bucket of bricks. I liked to build skyscrapers and mini cities with the blocks.

One Christmas I got a K’Nex set and by that afternoon had built a 3-foot high Ferris wheel that really turned by twisting the crank.

I was completely satisfied with my Lite-Brite or Legos or K’Nex or coloring books and crayons. One of our secrets was always trying to get the new “special” crayons and art stuff. Through the years I had glitter crayons:

 Magic scent crayons:

 

 Glow in the dark crayons that we “painted” my bedroom ceiling with, super stamp markers:

 Color change markers, crazy tip markers, watercolor pencils, tri-color pencils; anything that was new and unusual or out of the ordinary and fun, we had to get. And I was anal about my coloring books. If someone wanted to color a picture in one of my coloring books, they had to ask me if they could color that picture and put their name and the date on it when they were finished. Hmmm… maybe that’s why I didn’t have (m)any friends.

Nah. Doubtful that had anything to do with coloring books.

Yes, barely any of the toys we owned required batteries. We played school and we played house and we created our own cities on poster board to use with our Micro Machines and we built forts in the woods and had family board game night and my Mom even created this silly mix-up sentence drawing game and we did Mad Libs and laughed until we thought our guts would burst. Ha! Mad Libs! Thanks to the “common core” I’m wondering if they even teach children nouns and verbs and adjectives in today’s schools.

Arts and crafts don’t take batteries. Micro Machines and Tonka trucks don’t take batteries. Most board games didn’t take batteries…except that loud buzzy game of Operation:

 

If I remember right, we lost Adam’s rib and have yet to locate. Legos and K’Nex don’t take batteries. Coloring books and crayons do not require batteries.

See, these are all things that sparked imagination and creativity. When was the last time you had a screen free evening and played a board game or put together a puzzle with your family?

Feeling Nostalgic Day 6: All-Day Shopping Excursions

                Recently I saw a slideshow online of two abandoned malls in Ohio. The pictures were pretty creepy. I wonder how the person inside taking the pictures felt!

               

                I was never much of a mall person. I really only wanted to go to Mall of America to see LegoLand and ride the indoor rollercoasters, which I finally got to do for my 28^th birthday.

                There weren’t really any malls very close to where I grew up. We had to go to Wisconsin Rapids (about 40 miles north) or Madison (about 70 miles south) to get to any malls. Going to the Rapids on a Saturday was an all-day affair for us.

                We would usually start at the Rapids Mall, which had Wal-Mart, an arcade where we would send my brother off to, the Tea Shoppe, which was this neat little store I loved that was kind of like a mild version of Spencer’s, but they had Jelly Belly’s. Actually, one of the first years I lived in La Crosse, my roommate and I took a road trip to the Rapids because she wanted to see the place. That was the last time I remember being there. At the moment I don’t really remember any other specific stores that were in the Rapids Mall. Wal-Mart left and built a Super Center on the south end of the city and everything has seemed to follow. There are all kinds of little plazas and mini-strips and new buildings going in all around Wal-Mart on the south side.

                Then there was the ShopKo Plaza mall. This mall had ShopKo, of course, and a Radio Shack where we would usually lose my Dad and my brother, a Christian bookstore called The Lighthouse where we would usually lose Mom, and I would usually wander back and forth between those two places and The Aquarium pet shop, where I would engage in conversation with the gigantic $2,000 African parrot. If I got really bored, I would find a piece of paper and pen and write down the titles and authors of all the books I wanted to read and then at a later time, go see if the library had them.

                As it sits today, the Rapids Mall still has a few stores remaining. A thrift shop, Subway, Dollar Tree, some insanely outrageously priced clothing stores, but the anchor ex-Wal-Mart still sits empty. The ShopKo mall is now a church but ShopKo remains. The Aquarium moved into a strip mall across the parking lot, and most of the other stores have followed to the area of the new Wal-Mart. The old K-Mart, which was across the highway from the new Wal-Mart, is now a car dealership, with The Lighthouse in a little spot around the side of their building.

                In high school Marketing class, my partner and I actually drafted a business plan to purchase the old Wal-Mart building in the Rapids and convert it to the most awesome gigantic toy store in central WI, since there are like… none. And yes, me being the hoarder that I am, still have it. We got an A-.

Feeling Nostalgic Day 5: Let Kids Be Kids!

It makes me smile when I see children playing outside these days. Yes, it annoys me in the summer when they’re outside yelling and screaming and my vampire lifestyle makes me sleep during the day with the windows open and it keeps me awake, but I would rather they be outside than indoors glued to the television and computer or their handheld computer of a smartphone. I did write a blog awhile back about a similar issue. 

Dude, when we were kids, we were ALWAYS outside. I loved being outside, even if it were just sitting at the picnic table watching the traffic go by. We lived in a small town where we knew pretty much everyone; so well that Mom usually knew what I had done before I’d gotten home. We’d ride our bikes and rollerblade all over town, climb trees, play in puddles, have water wars, come home muddy, and just be kids.

I smile now when I see kids being kids because there is too much pressure on kids from the fearful adults who are raising them. Parents are too afraid to let their children out of their sight out of fear they will get hurt or abducted or shot or something. Yes, that’s always a possibility, but I don’t think keeping our kids locked up all summer is the answer. Let them go outside and run around and get hurt and learn from it. That’s how we grew up. 

 

I miss seeing kids be kids and playing outside, getting dirty, ripping holes in the knees of their jeans, hearing the joyful shrieks from a game of hide-n-seek or chasing one another with water balloons. The freedom of riding our bikes all over and popping in our friends to see if they were home to play. If they weren’t, knocking on another’s door was the norm. You didn’t have to “make plans” to meet up with your friends because if there were any events in town, you knew you could find everyone there. You couldn’t text your friends to see where they were; you had to figure out whose house they were at by all the bikes out front or the noises coming from the backyard. 

And the neighbors did not call the cops for something because they would come over and ask if everything was okay prior to doing so, and if you were throwing a party no one called the police because all your neighbors were at the party! But you had better be home at the time Mom told you to be because this was prior to the days of cell phones and if your folks had to come hunt you down, it was brutal. 

But we were still outside. And as I mentioned in an earlier post about the declining enjoyment of the natural beauty of the Dells, I don’t think it’s just there. The Dells is just more commercialized to detract from it. All I know is that kids spend too much time indoors today. Whether they’re glued to their computer or video games or just have parents that are too afraid to let them out of captivity, gone are the days where children learn to appreciate the small things in life by being amused by an insect or lying on the grass to point out what the cloud shapes appear to look like upon a blue sky. Don’t grow up too quick, kids. Learn to appreciate the small things in life by appreciating the beauty of the natural environment. Slow down. Quit being in such a hurry all the time. Don’t overwhelm yourself with so many activities that you stress yourself out and don’t have time for anything. There’s no fun in that. 

Maybe it is just a personal thing with me, but I would always get upset when someone told me they did not have the time to do something. I always interpreted that as they didn’t want to make the time. And if you really do not have the time, then you’ve probably taken on too much because if you really want to do something, you would find the time to make it happen. A little off topic here, but not much, because this could be the underlying reason we do not see children outside playing anymore… parents have them rushing from school to band practice to a soccer game to evening church activities then home to dinner and homework then bed. Then parents turn around and blame the teachers for the amount of homework they give kids nowadays. We didn’t have any of these issues when I was a kid. Not that I was aware of anyway… we had plenty of things to keep us busy and if we told Mom we were bored, we wouldn't be bored long after that because that darned bathroom floor always needed to be scrubbed with a toothbrush. Ha! I wonder why she never suggested the kitchen floor...

All I’m saying is… I’m happy when I see kids outside these days. 

Feeling Nostalgic Day 4: Before Reality TV

What were some of your favorite television shows as a kid? 

Today it is mostly all “reality tv” and most of it is boring or sickening and aligns with my thoughts about the degradation of society… for another time. 

TV time was limited in our home when I was a child. After school I watched Full House and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Sometimes Reading Rainbow, then the news. 

Tuesday evenings we watched Rescue 911. Man that show kind of freaked me out sometimes.

Fridays was TGIF on ABC… good shows such as Boy Meets World, Full House, Perfect Strangers, Step by Step, Two of a Kind, So Little Time, and that’s all I remember at the moment.

Boy Meets World has reruns on nowadays on MTV2, and they are also making a sequel called Girl Meets World which is supposed to be Cory and Topanga’s teenagers as the main roles. 

Step by Step and ALF have reruns on the Hub and Full House is on Nick at Nite every weeknight. Now you know you feel old when shows you enjoyed as a child end up on Nick at Nite. Even though I own all 8 seasons of Full House on DVD, I still watch it in the evenings sometimes when there is nothing else on… which is most of the time.    

Another show I own all seasons of on DVD but still watch when it is on is 7^th Heaven. Why did I never hear of this show until I was like… 17????

Saturday nights we would watch shows such as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Early Edition, and Walker, Texas Ranger. 

Another television show I greatly enjoyed that I wish they (who’s they?) would put on DVD is Promised Land, one of my favorite television shows ever. About ten years ago there were reruns on a local station but I have not heard or seen anything of it since. If I’m lucky I may have a couple of fuzzy recorded episodes on a VHS tape buried in a bin in my garage. And yes, I still own a VCR that works and many VHS tapes. Slowly I have been attempting to upgrade all the VHS tapes to DVD but some are impossible to find or so rare they cost too much on Amazon. 

Yes, I’m still old school. I still prefer the classic video games. My Super Nintendo died so for Zach’s birthday I bought one of those FS Twin consoles that plays both 8 bit Nintendo games and 16 bit Super Nintendo games. All the games on the newer systems are too complicated with too many buttons. Even when I got a Wii, I downloaded some of the games I couldn’t find in cartridge form such as Dr. Mario. I even still own a Game Boy Color even though I have not played it in forever. Zach has a PS3 and most of the games he rents to try are so complicated just to set up, let alone figure out how to play. I just want to play the game, not spend two hours choosing the color of my player’s pants. 

Here is the link to my Pinterest board of stuff I may have forgotten to talk about here: http://www.pinterest.com/hollyswaney/movies-and-tv-shows/