UPDATE: Romeocat loves this “meme-ory” tag. I can see why. Her list reminds me of many other childhood memories of my own.
UPDATE #2: Spurs chimes in with… another list I can resonate strongly with. Oh, and Spurs just HAD to add another meme-ory—and it’s one that’ll crack you up… Spurs really got ahead on his blogroll entry rent. 🙂
UPDATE #3: Christine outdoes herself! She posted a collection not only at Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea, but a different collection at By the Way.
UPDATE #4:
BTW, if you’re not a regular reader of any of the blogs above, browse around their blogs for some good reads. I blogrolled each of these because I read them daily.
Detestable Dan does it again,
(I don’t know what’s up with this guy)
He tags me once more, detestable man,
Just winds one up and lets fly!
Dan Riehl, of Riehl World View, decided the way to end the week was by misspelling the name of my blog (he obviously has no idea how hard it is to get my fingers to type “Riehl”), insulting me and then asking me to participate in what he calls “this Detestable Meme.”
“…Third World Country [SIC] – I know, I didn’t take up some of the memes you sent me. One was even the music meme mentioned in VC’s double whammy post. For saddling me with such tremendous guilt, what better pay back than to return the favor. No need to thank me. Bwahahaha!”
Ever one to fold in the face of such saccharine sweetness and smarmy blandishments (no thanks to Dan, indeed 🙂 I hereby take up the torch he passes on! Anyone singed by the flame can take responsibility for their own burns. That’ll teach you a lesson.
The rules (quoting Dan, with minor edits):
Remove the #1 item from the following list, bump everyone up one place and add your blog’s name in the #5 spot. You need to… actually link to each of the blogs for the link-whorage aspect of this fiendish meme-age to kick in.
Next, select four unsuspecting victims, list and link to them.
Fine
- Boudicca’s Voice – With boys like yours, Bou, you just HAVE to do this… for perspective, if nothing else. 🙂
- Cathouse Chat‘s Romeocat – What with the move and all, you have all that extra time on your hands for this, right?
- Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea – Christine has to have some interesting answers for this.
- Pull My Finger – to paraphrase Dan Riehl, rent’s due on the blogroll, Spurs. 🙂
Now – the subject of “this Detestable Meme” is Five Things I Miss From My Childhood:
1. The Green Rocking Chair: Sitting in that chair in a day when being five didn’t mean being bundled off to Prison For Kids, Heidi (our Dachsund) in my lap hanging her head over the side to catch some warmth from the floor heater, watching black and white TV. In the evening, the five of us kids would swarm Mother’s lap as she sat in that chair and read us Bible stories.
2. Granddaddy’s Whistling: the guy was a credible bass singer, a competent all-around handyman (was a farmer with foresight: missed the Depression and the Dustbowl by that much by getting abd keeping a job in the post office shortly before both whomped the small OK town he lived in), great company—stories, poetry, fishing, teaching a boy how to hold a paintbrush, use a saw, make a magnet, swing a hammer and much, much more. And boy, could he whistle a tune. Add in Grandmother’s cooking and what more could a boy want in the summer? Oh, yeh. Climbing the redbud tree in his back yard with a matching cousin.
3. My Schwinn: Easily modified from Dan’s listing of a much newer ten-speed bike (Dan must still be in his first childhood for him to remember one of those new-fangled ten-speeds as a fav childhood memory -CORRECTION: Dan’s first was an older model :-). Second hand. Heavy clunker with those old fat tires. Red. One speed, stomp-on-’em brakes. Coasting down the looooong hills to the public library (and slogging that one-speed back up ’em on the way home) riding over squashed frogs there and back in the spring and enjoying the bite of the air and sting of snow in the winter. Hit twice from behind by cars when the drivers just weren’t looking, the second time retired that old bike forever.
4. Dad-Dad’s preaching: Add Granddaddy’s ability to quote page upon page of Sir Walter Scott to Dad-Dad’s sermons and it’s little wonder I grew up with an ear tuned to detect subliterate speech. heh. For a guy from a hardscrabble tobacco farm in the Ozarks whose high school and college education came late, after some years in the Oklahoma boomtown oilfields, Dad-Dad was one of the two most literate men I have ever met (due in large part to one of the most literate women I have ever met: his wife, Me-Ma, who was also his teacher). I still re-read his sermons from time to time when I want to hear clear, honest, good speaking.
5. The Little Red Wagon: Yep. That Little Red Wagon. It wasn’t so much mine as it belonged to all of us—me and my four sibs. We’d load the thing up and off we’d go down the street—wherever. It was a great dump truck for hauling dirt around the back yard when building yet another fort. A handy piece of equipment for my first business venture: gathering (with my older and very grown up and responsible seven-year-old sister to watch our for me) discarded pop bottles from alleys and empty lots in the vicinity of our neighborhood, taking them down to the corner grocery and redeeming them for warm, fuzzy cash. Of course, my sister—and later other sibs—had their share of the loot. And, truth be told, the venture was her idea, anyway, as I recall.
There, now. That wasn’t as hard as I had supposed it might be. Of course, if may have something to do with the way my memories age as I get older. From a distance, they all seem to be surrounded by a slight golden haze… eh? What’s that you say sonny? I cain’t hear ya boy! Speak up… (aehhhh kids these days…)
NOTE: the “five things” above are in no particular order and draw from a deep well. I could easily have listed any of many other five things. Dan even points to one of them in another post on his blog when he mentions Michelle Malkin’s recent spelling bee post. but that’s another tale all its own and belongs in one of my public school rants.
For those rare readers of Whistling in the Light (well, I only post there rarely, so that’s fair), I’ve posted it there, as well.
