Fishing Adventures

"As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen."  Mark 1:16

We have a new fishing hole.  Actually it is quite a large pond on an acreage containing lots of cows that we have to climb the fence and walk quite a ways to get to, but we have permission.

No, really, we DO have permission.

It has been verified by an old man named Jack who thought we were poachers or something.  What would we be hunting?  Cows?  And all we had was a BB gun.  Not likely to be very successful in the poaching world. 

Anyway, after threatening to call the Wildlife Department on us, he verified with the owners who, sure enough, knew us and had given us permission to fish there.

After our interrogation ceased, we continued about our merry ways.  Here is a pictorial of our fishing fun spaced out over three or four days in the past couple of weeks.

This is what we're looking for.  Sunfish. 

The hub bought the boys a Red Ryder BB gun again motherly advice.  Apparently I'm the one who was supposed to obey. 

This was the first time my 7YO had gotten his hands on the gun. 

My husband found this in the woods and brought it to me.  Romantic, huh?  

I was lured to the far side of the pond where I saw some ducks.  Turns out they were plastic.  No wonder ducks fall for it! 

  

This one must have hit an iceberg.
 

The kids found a "make your own cow" puzzle.

And frogs.  I won't even tell you about our run-in with a cottonmouth or how my little one stepped on a garter snake.  And took 10 years off our lives!   

The hub borrowed this boat from the neighbor and we carried it all the way across the cow pasture.  I guess it was worth it from the looks on their faces. 

And finally on our last trek out, we caught a decent number of fish.  16 in about 30 minutes.  And some were actually visible with the naked eye.  Still can't figure out what this one is.  Is it a striper bass? 

Hope you're fishing for memories today and I hope you catch some big ones!    

CSI: Special Dental Unit

"A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free."  Proverbs 19:5

Click! 

I’d sent my 7YO to go brush his teeth and after he shut the door, I heard the click of the door lock. 

Now it might not be weird for people to lock bathroom doors in your house, but it is around here.  In fact, with my boys, it is weird if they even shut the door at all.  Just be prepared, should you ever come to visit. 

So, I knew something was up. 

I hear water running and all the usuals of teeth brushing.  But, that click… 

He comes out. 

“Did you brush your teeth?” I ask. 

“Yes.”

“Did you use toothpaste?”

“Yes.”  Shifty eyes. 

“Let me smell your breath.”

He uses watermelon toothpaste so sometimes it can be difficult to discern whether or not he’s brushed his teeth or eaten a piece of candy. 

He breathes in my face.  Hmm…

“You didn’t use toothpaste!  Now get back in there and brush your teeth again.”

“Yes, I did!  You just couldn’t smell it!”

A retort!  Not his usual defense.  Must employ elevated tactics. 

“Well, let me smell your toothbrush!”  Evil mother eyes.

Busted!

His mouth turns up into that little upside down grin that says, “She knows!” 

“Uh huh!  Now get back in there and brush your teeth!  And do it RIGHT this time!”

Often I feel like my own private investigator.  I feel like I’m both the good cop and bad cop.  I feel like I live with a bunch of criminals just waiting to break Mommy Law.  And now it seems they do so and then lie to me about it. 

Will they proceed from not using toothpaste and on to a life of organized crime? 

Or will my detective work moments serve to build a conscience that will speak to them when I’m retired? 

Will I ever be able to retire?? 

Just another day in the life of the Toothpaste Detective.

Hope your pearly whites are minty (or at least watermelony) fresh today!

Tiny

We bought a King Cake for Fat Tuesday a couple of weeks ago.  It came with the baby above.  The kids and I strategically placed it in Daddy’s piece of the King Cake, and my 7YO almost spontaneously combusted with anticipation of Daddy finding the baby. 

He told him, “Daddy, next year instead of a King Cake, just buy us jelly donuts, okay?”

But, oh, that is only one family story concerning a tiny plastic baby. 

Picture it.  Commerce, Oklahoma.  1978.  I was two and staying with Nanna in her mobile home.  My mom calls Nanna to check in on me and hears me crying in the background. 

“Nnnnnnaaaannnnnnaaaaa…..  Ttttiiinnnnyyyy!”   I said through exaggerated sobs and cries. 

My mom asked what was wrong with me. 

“Oh, that S.O.B.-ing Tiny is missing again!” said Nanna, according to family tales.  Only she didn’t use the acronym.

Now Nanna was a Sunday school teacher for at least 50 years.  What was it about Tiny, and occasionally me and my friends as children, that would make Nanna stoop to such language?  (We always thought it was hugely funny when we could get her to say bad words.)

Well, as you can see, Tiny was, well, tiny.  And apparently I had quite the affinity for these tiny babies when I was little.  I held on to Tiny with all my might.  But inevitably, I would misplace Tiny and then it became quite a challenge to find Tiny due to his size. 

I can empathize with the search for Tiny as every two weeks a missing library book usually reduces me to the very last synapses of my nerves.  There will eventually be a wing at the library dedicated to my family’s honor, paid for with fines for missing library books. 

So, the family got wise.  They went to the Dime Store and bought a whole package of Tinies.  *Is that spelled right?  Or is it Tinys?  What kind of grammatical rule applies here? 

Anyway, now whenever Tiny went missing, they could slip me a new Tiny!  Genius!  But the patting themselves on the back ended shortly… 

I wuddn’t no dummy!  I knew they’d slipped me a new Tiny! 

Or at least I figured it out when I found OLD Tiny. 

Then I had two Tinies!  And we had to keep track of TWO Tinies. 

Then FOUR Tinies! 

It was an ever growing problem.   

Tiny survived all of my childhood.  I still had a couple up until adulthood, but alas, they are buried somewhere along with other items of my childhood, like prom dresses and old boyfriend pictures that didn’t get flooded, in some of my mother’s storage items.  I’m pretty sure sometime in my life I will once again run across my favorite Tiny, who was embossed with his own set of underpants. 

But until then, learn from my Nanna’s mistake.  For one, don’t give inch-high plastic babies to a 2YO.  They’re choking hazards, you know!  And if you do, have a plan in place that does not include exponentially increasing your grief should Tiny go missing! 

So, whenever I see a baby from a King Cake, to me he will always wear his full title of “S.O.B.-ing Tiny” due to his tendency to become lost and causing people to lose it! 

Hope you’re not losing it today!  Happy Wednesday!

A Skating Good Time

"So come on, come on, and do the locomotion with me!"  - Kylie Minogue, 1988.  

My boys were invited to a skating party a couple of weekends ago.  I hated to even tell them where it was because the oldest one had tried skating once before.  And it didn’t go well.

And that brings me back to my memories of the Miami Skating Rink.  I spent many an afternoon there at skating parties, or church parties, or just because Nanna was sick of taking us to the swimming pool.  Or maybe we were too sunburned.  I don’t know.  I just know I have a lot of skating rink memories.

Of course the biggest deal of skating is trying to find the perfect skate and then get them on.  In Miami, they were a kind of beige leather with brown laces that you would eventually wrap around the top of the skate and your leg several times so that you wouldn’t trip on your own ties.  They had orange wheels and stoppers if I remember correctly. 

The laces and wheels perfectly matched the brown and orange shag carpeting that made up most of the skating rink and its lovely round benches that were parked in front of the lockers.  There was about a two inch drop to the baby blue painted hardwood floor of the actual rink.  The floor was warped and if you made it about half-way around, there was a dip big enough to give an unseasoned skater the thrill of going dangerously fast.  Just when you thought you had your balance on the wheels of death, they would turn on the disco lights.  There was an actual mirrored ball that hung in the center of the rink and I hated that thing!  When the patterns of light fell and spun on the rink, it would mess with my mind and make me fall down.  Yeah, that’s what it was! 

I mostly stayed on the carpeted areas, trying to make it from round bench to bench.  Every once in a while, I would get brave and try the slick surface of the concession area where there were booths to hang on to.  Inevitably, I would brave the rapids of the rink.  And it always seemed that just as I was getting good at it, they would clear the floor for a couple’s skate, or limbo, or the choo choo train thing.  Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion still plays loudly in my brain when I think of the skating rink.  (I secretly can’t believe I still remember who it was by!)

And then there was that inevitable trip to the restroom where it was nearly impossible to maneuver in the bathroom stall, precariously perched on one leg with the skate stopper down, trying to take care of business without  rolling out the space at the bottom of the door or off the toilet. 

I don’t want you thinking that bad skating skills run in the family.  My dad’s brother, my uncle Bill, was quite a skating phenom.  He was the classic disco skater.  I was at the skating rink a few times when he was there.  He was probably a little old to be there.  Probably all of thirty or so, but he could do twists and turns and spins that nobody else could do.  Not even the weird guys who worked there.  Yes, it has always been a prerequisite that you must be only slightly on the edge of morality and normalcy to work at a skating rink. 

So back to the kids’ birthday party invitation…

I told them where it was.  They said they’d try it only after I told them if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to skate.  Of course, they never took their skates off until it was time to go.    

We get there and they have these handy dandy walker looking things that make it look like a place for geriatric skaters, but they really work!  Uh, I mean, they look like they would work.  Okay, I’ll admit that after making it around ONCE without falling, I grabbed a walker.  And even though it was about two feet too short for me, it really did help.  After a while with the walker, I actually made it around FOUR times without killing myself or my tailbone. 

My husband had a different technique.  He would carry the walker and only put it down if he thought he needed it.  It was hilarious to watch! 

But what neither of us did was continually fall on our rears like one dad there.  He was nearly my inspiration to stop while I was still ahead.

AND, after putting it off for quite some time, I finally had a less than exciting trip to the restroom still on my wheels! 

A good time was had by all!  Many new skating rink memories were made including the lights of death, countless falls, and some slightly inappropriate music for the 7YO crowd.  And of course, there was the one guy there who was an ice dancer in another life who could turn around backwards and actually HELP little kids who’d fallen get back up. 

My only defense was to crash myself before I crashed into them. 

Keep on rolling!

Immigrant Legacy

“Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.”  Exodus 23:9

You never really think about the legacy you’re building or the place you’ll hold in family lore.  It’s all about the here and now, living in the moment.  But today I’ll reflect on the past and project into the future.  Perhaps I am becoming an existentialist. 

Or maybe not. 

I had to look existentialist up! 

Anyway, my uncle sent me the scanned photo up there the other night.  Hans and Hulda Foss - my great-great-grandparents on my mom’s side.  The boy in the middle is my great-grandpa, Alvin.  He is flanked by two of his brothers – Harris on the left, and Clifford on the right.  Yes, I know, Clifford doesn’t seem like a nice little girl’s name, but that was the custom of the day.  Why did they do that???  Clifford lived to be over 90 and liked tractors, so it must not have affected him too much. 

Hans and Hulda immigrated to this country from Norway.  They came by ship.  Not sure what their initial reasons were, but probably freedom, a better life, you know, typical immigrant ideals.  And then there were a lot of begets, and eventually I came to be, but the Norwegian tie has always been remembered.  My uncle’s name is distinctly Norwegian.  My grandpa can speak a few words of the language and has always held an affinity for all things Nordic.  I, myself, have tried my hand at making lefse.

Ok, so fast forward to yesterday… 

The hub says the last time he talked to his dad, his dad mentioned he wanted to come visit, so would I mind (once again) looking up what paperwork we needed to do to get the ball rolling on a visit?  Today I spent the morning perusing the Department of State’s website looking at forms regarding a visitor visa application. 

But if it were only that simple… 

When his mother wanted to come visit in 2006, she didn’t have enough “ties”, as determined by the consulate office, to sufficiently prove that she would NOT immigrate to this country, so she was denied a visitor visa.  We contacted our State Representative and got a nice “too bad, so sad” letter from the consulate office, but there was nothing else we could do on the visitor visa road.  BUT… since my husband is a US citizen, she did qualify for a green card which would allow her to visit and immigrate to this country.  Logic is not a strong point for immigration procedures, I have found.  We had to go through the entire process (and paperwork) of getting her a green card just to come visit. 

She stayed five weeks, hated it, and promptly returned home.  We’ve not tried to get her to come back over and really don’t know how that will work since her green card is in limbo since she didn’t immigrate.  Will she ever immigrate?  I don’t know. 

Any who, we’re hoping the hub’s dad has more “ties”.  It all depends on the opinion of the consulate officer who is conducting the interview.  My father-in-law has traveled extensively, most recently to India, and has always returned back to Russia, so we’re hoping this makes a difference.

So all this foreigner-immigration stuff has got me to thinking about the future.  Someday I’m going to be somebody’s great-great-grandma.  And there’ll probably be a picture of me somewhere with my kids and husband.  And the story will be “she married a Russian, and that’s why you’re part Russian.”  And maybe they’ll like fur hats, and maybe they’ll like nesting dolls, and maybe they’ll try making borscht. 

And maybe all my paperwork will not have been in vain!

My Nursing Home Plan

“Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God.  I am the Lord.”  Leviticus 19:32

I always say that I had children so I would have someone to put me in a nice nursing home someday.  I have no denials about getting old and needing round-the-clock convalescent care.  In fact, I intend to be a huge burden!  Most likely I will lose my mind, but no one will really be able to tell the difference.  And I intend to start drinking once I enter the nursing home.  I’m going straight for the hard liquor.  I figure if, by then, I will have held off for 80 years or so, what’s the use in holding out any longer?  Plus, maybe it will make my days go faster. 

I worked in the kitchen at a nursing home for about four years during my teenage hood, so I have no myths or false assumptions about what a nursing home entails.  And, I have every intent of using every amenity to the best of my ability.  In fact, sometimes I wish I had one of those emergency nurse buttons now.  She could bring me a drink of water when I’m already in bed… 

Anyhow, Grandma Hazel has been in a nursing home or like facility for numerous years, but due to failing condition and several episodes, she has moved several times in the past couple of years.  The kids and I have visited her at least once at each of the facilities she’s been at.  The first was an assisted living facility and had a big dog that the kids liked to pet.  The second was a “memory” facility where one lady asked my youngest if his name was Thomas at least 97 times while we were there because he was wearing a Thomas the Train shirt.  The third was more of a nursing home facility that had birds in a glass cabinet that the residents could sit and watch.  And her current facility is homey and has a giant fish aquarium in one of the sitting areas. 

Yes, some of the people are scary.  Yes, they are desperate for visitors.  Yes, you can sometimes smell pee.  Let’s just get all that out there!  I think those are the usual reasons people tend to shy away from regular visits to the nursing home. 

So on Monday night, my 7YO tells me, “Mommy, I love you.  I’ll make sure you go to a nice nursing home.” 

Have I groomed him well or what?

And then he starts talking about what my nursing home will be like.  And then he decides that he’ll build me a nursing home.  Here will be some of the amenities:

• A swimming pool and hot tub
• My own cat
• A TV in my room
• A fish aquarium in my room, with a larger aquarium in the hall to hold extras, in case my fish die
• Meatloaf on Sundays (The meatloaf cracks me up because I think I’ve made meatloaf maybe once in his life.)

Then he asks, “How do the people who work at the nursing home go to church on Sundays since the nursing home still has to be open?”

I told him that the workers who were working didn’t go to church because they had to be there, but that sometimes a pastor would come to the nursing home to have a church service for the people there.

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” he said.  “We’ll have all the people lined up and they can just raise their hands if they need help.”

He’s got it all figured out.

Hopefully, we’ll only have grape juice at communion.    

He also said we would only have girl nurses because girl nurses are nice.  I told him boy nurses could be nice too.  He said, “Okay, we’ll have boy nurses too,” and decided that his brother would do the hiring.

“I hope you don’t have to have a wheelchair,” he told me. 

“Me too,” I said.  I’ve spent enough time sitting on my butt as it is. 

“I’ll say a prayer that you don’t have to have a wheelchair,” he told me right before bed.

“Say one too that it will be a LONG time before Mommy has to go to the nursing home,” I told him.

“Okay!”

Now everyone else pray that his plans pan out!

Communion Wine (Whine)

“Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’”  Matthew 26:27-28


Okay, so we’re not good Lutherans. 

When I first learned to commune, I used to drink from the traditional chalice.  I was young.  I liked Pastor communing me.  And I knew they used Everclear to wipe the rim of that cup between rounds of communion.  Nanna was on the Altar Guild, after all, so that meant I was an honorary Guild-ster since I helped her put communion out when it was her turn.   I remember when we got those tiny cups for individual wine servings and started offering an “option” to drinking after everyone else.  I remember the horrible filling of those tiny cups with this glass jar apparatus with a rubber bulb on the top. 

I also knew that the inner-round of those circular trays didn’t have wine in them.  They had grape juice.  Welch’s.  Straight from the kitchen refrigerator, to be exact.   It was purple, just like the wine, so you’d have to know what was in those cups.  And, of course, it was assumed by me throughout my growing up that if you took grape juice at communion, you were a recovering alcoholic. 

I’m judgmental that way.

Or maybe I was told that. 

Now they say “allergic to wine”. 

Anyway…. 

Years pass, Nanna dies, I go off on my own, I get married, move away from my home church, and start attending where I do now. 

And it turns out, I don’t feel so comfortable drinking after all these people anymore.  And it turns out, that the wine tastes like rotten raisins.  And it turns out, you can have grape juice at communion and not be a recovering alcoholic. 

My church uses white grape juice, probably Welch’s, so you know what you’re getting.  Every communion Sunday I have the grape juice.  I don’t care what you say, wine is nasty.  It burns my throat, gives me dragon breath, and is not an enjoyable experience for me to consume. 

And, if my Lord can put his cleansing spirit in wine, then I’m pretty sure he can put it in grape juice too!

So this Sunday, the wafers and the Pastor pass.  Wafer was not stale this Sunday, I note.  Sometimes they are chewy and get stuck in my teeth.  I like to think of myself as quality control for the Body of Jesus.  Ok, maybe not.

Then the elder comes with my now-usual individual cups.  I only say “elder” as a church term.  He was younger than me.  And we’ll blame it on his lack of “elder” knowledge and experience that he’d let the center circle of cups of grape juice run OUT before he got to me.  So I made a face at him.  And he kind of paused and grinned at me, wondering what I was going to do, my unspoken disgust for the situation written on my face. 

And then I took a tiny cup of wine. 

While the elder spoke the words of communion, I threw back the wine so as to limit the exposure of my taste buds to the horrible taste.  It burned my throat as it made a fiery path to my stomach.  My lips curled and a shudder went through me.  My face got hot and red.  Then I looked over at my husband, who was chin to chest with his face contorted into a grimace usually saved for cough syrup. 

And I laughed.  Ok, not hard, but I found all this quite funny.  I don’t think there is much of a chance of the hub and I ever becoming alcoholics if we can’t even handle the communion wine! 

Maybe we’re “allergic”! 

I did feel a bit more renewed, or cleansed, or like a new person, as I walked back to my pew.  Maybe I needed a reminder of what communion is all about.

Plus, the kids enjoyed my dragon breath!     

Thanks be to God for powerful blessings that can turn even stale wafers and grape juice in to perfect reminders of our salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

And for forgiving even bad Lutherans like me!

Can't Put a Price on Innocence

“How can a young man keep his way pure?  By living according to your word.”  Psalm 119:9

*Okay, so Anakin Skywalker has nothing to do with this post, but I was really proud of my Halloween pumpkin.  We won first place at church.  Think of it as me waving the mighty sword of motherhood.

I try to keep my kids safe from the pitfalls of the world.  They’ve only seen a handful of PG-13 movies that I have previewed myself.  Mythbusters is probably the most risqué show we watch on TV.  And my husband and I don’t generally go around having inappropriate PDA moments. 

But…  I am lazy.  I have not installed a firewall on the computer for fear that it will complicate my life.  I used to manage the firewall at a bank that I worked at and we were all-exclusive when it came to the internet.  I had to open up sites one-by-one that were necessary for our employees.  The reason behind this was a few bad apples who spent nine hours a day on MySpace and completed or attempted very little actual work.  So I am well-versed in the pains of the firewall. 

However, my children like to play games on the internet. 

Introducing:  MommyWall.

I have given them “the talk” on how there are inappropriate things on the internet.  Things that will make their eyes fall out.  Things that will rot their brains.  Things that will make them go blind. 

“Like what?” they wanted to know.

Like sex, and violence, and people using drugs, and other stuff that is not age-appropriate.  (I use “not appropriate” as a catchall for all things bad around here.)

They have been instructed NEVER to click on an advertisement because it might take them straight to all these bad things.  They have been instructed to NEVER answer any questions or sign up for any memberships because bad people might be behind it.  They have MOST IMPORTANTLY been instructed to come and get me if anything looks weird on the computer.

So, the other day my 9YO comes out of the computer room with a wide-eyed look on his face.

“I’m sorry, Mommy…   I won’t ever do it again…  I clicked on something…  I think it was sex…” he said.

“Why do you think that?” I asked.  (Isn’t that what the psychologists say to ask?!?!)

“Because it said I had to pay!”

He has no idea!

Dead Cats

"For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death."  1 Corinthians 15:25-26

We are a three cat family.  We have Mama Cat, Happy, and Mittens.   Mittens should be called Mittens 2.0 because Happy’s brother was the original Mittens, but he met a car that he couldn’t outrun last fall in front of our house.  He’d been dead longer than 24 hours when the kids and I found him.  Twenty-four long, warm hours.  It wasn’t pretty. 

New Mittens is a girl cat and is grey with some peach calico.  She’s a bigger kitten who showed up at the across the street neighbor’s house and she didn’t want to keep her. 

Mama Cat, who has also been called Kitty Waa Waa and Curly by the kids for reasons I don’t understand, has only been a mama once.  She’s older and is kind of cranky.  I’ve lost track of how long we’ve had her, but it’s been a while. 

Oh, and Happy is black and white and is two years old. 

Anyway, three cats…

On Sunday, I was working on getting lunch together and noticed out my kitchen window that I could see a dark, cat-shaped lump in the grass down by the neighbor’s pasture gate.  I kept an eye on the lump while I got lunch together and the lump never moved.  The lump was dark colored, so that made it either Happy or Mama Cat.  I kept watching.  No movement.

When lunch was almost done, I sent the 9YO outside to check and see if he could find all the cats.  Only Mittens was in the garage. 

“Why?” he wanted to know. 

So I told him.

“There is a cat shaped lump down there by the neighbors that hasn’t moved the whole time I’ve been in the kitchen.  I think it might be a dead cat.”

We looked out the window and then he showed his brother.  There was a sense of urgency and they both ran out the door and down the street to check on the dead cat.

My heart constricted.  They weren’t very happy when we found (the first) Mittens.  But I thought maybe this would be better since they were going on their own accord, knowing what to expect, and it wouldn’t be a surprise.

They marched down the middle of the street, Mittens 2.0 following behind. 

I kept an eye on the dead cat.  Still nothing.

But then, just as they passed the halfway point down the road.  The dead cat’s head popped up and Mama Cat ran to meet them. 

It was almost like when the bird came back to life.

I laughed and laughed and so did they.  They patted Mama Cat’s head and came back in the house to tell me she wasn’t dead.  She was only sleeping! 

Thanks be to God for little boys, funny cats, and the promise that our death will only be the beginning of our eternal life in Heaven!

Turntables: The New Stone Tablets

While driving down the road to Wal-Mart yesterday, we were listening to Taio Cruz’s Dynamite song and my 9YO says to me:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could play the song backwards and there was a secret code in it?”

A question that spans the generations.

I remember as a kid hearing how certain songs held a secret message if you would only play their record backward on the turntable.

A few definitions:

• Record – big circular piece of thick black vinyl with grooves cut into it that were “read” by a needle on an arm that was also attached to a set of speakers.  Said grooves resulted in a grainy musical experience not able to be replicated by today’s new fanagled CDs or digital downloads. 

• Turntable – a large piece of equipment with the equivalent of a lazy Susan for mechanically turning said records. 

I had an old turntable that was part of a stereo that had belonged to my aunt and uncle.  It also had an 8-track player, which we're not even going to get into...  I had a few 33s (size of a record), including Michael Jackson and Van Halen.  I remember hearing about songs that could be played backwards on the turntable and said things like 666 or Kill Your Parents and believed them to be straight from Satan.  Reportedly one was by Ozzy Osborne, who was going through his blood drinking phase.  I thought if I even listened to one the right way, I would probably immediately become a Devil Worshipper (a horrendous fear of my youth) or at least be permanently warped. 

I think I tried to see if Michael Jackson had embedded any secret messages that I could unlock by spinning the turntable counterclockwise with my hand, but alas Billie Jean and Thriller always sounded better the right way. 

Nevertheless, my question for you today is:  With all our high tech gadgetry out there today, could a song still be played backwards?

When I hit the rewind (probably another outdated term) on my CD player, it merely skips back to the sound one second ago and then plays on.  I don’t believe it is truly playing the song backwards.  Plus, I am unaware (of probably a lot of things) of any way to truly slow down the backward playing of a song so that you could actually understand syllables to decode any secret message. 

Is this a part of my childhood that has been rendered obsolete?

Is this a path into the dark side that has been closed by technology?

Will my children ever have the opportunity to change the needle on an old turntable?   

Is this blog really being written by a cavewoman on a stone tablet?

I'm beginning to think so! 

A Sonic Epiphany

“Youth is wasted on the young.” – George Bernard Shaw

*Note to self:  I should just buy oldest kid a coat for Christmas, as this is the second year in a row his coat has given out the week after Christmas. 

So last week, we had to run to Tulsa to get the kid a coat, even though it was 70 and sunny.  While we were in the 71^st & Memorial area, I decided to throw caution to the wind and say:

“You guys want to go to the mall?” 

Now understand that my kids have been to the mall probably no more than five times in their lives.  They think of it as a magic wonderland where you ride stairs up and down, and get to eat at a lovely place called the Food Court.  There is also a place called Candyopolis there, the sights of which makes their eyeballs fall out of their heads.  So the answer from the backseat was:

“YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!” 

Candyopolis was sadly closed, but was quickly forgotten when the crowds parted and revealed the beautiful neon of the smorgasbord known as the Food Court.  Unfortunately, the rest of Tulsa was still on winter break as well, and everyone had congregated at the Food Court. 

My children chose Sonic. 

Uh, did they not get the memo about their being free-standing restaurants where you don’t stand in line and they bring food out to your car?

Anyway, while I ordered, they held down three seats at the end of a long communal row of tables and chairs. 

When I had finally secured two Wacky Packs and a hamburger, I joined them at the communal table.  Our seatmates appeared to be traditional college students. 

I say traditional because my friend Deb has gone back to college and is a non-traditional student.  Not the age of the traditional college students.  Nice try, Deb.

As I sat eating my Sonic hamburger, I had an epiphany.  Probably caused by the caloric overload.

My children (who are 7 and 9) are now closer in age to these college students than I am! 

Now that’s disturbing.

Disturbing because I still think I’m with it.

Disturbing because I still think I haven’t changed much since that age.

Disturbing because I still have as many pimples as some of them.

So guess who was the “old” lady at the table that day?

Yep.  That would be me. 

A serious blow to my psyche. 

So from now on, I’m warding off Sonic hamburgers.  Apparently they cause serious introspection that can have disturbing results.  From now on, I’m sticking to only items from the ice cream menu.  There’s protein in soft-serve, right? 

Right????

Just say yes. 

Respect your elders, you know.