Child's Play

The older we get, the more we look back at our past -- seeing it almost as if written in a third person novel.  Although it's not unusual for my mind to wander, and it does very frequently, most of my wandering is reminiscing about childhood.  Little mental vignettes pass through my mind, stopping like a ViewMaster.

I remember playing games with my sisters.  I wasn't much of a board game player.  Actually, no one wanted to play with me.  I couldn't focus for any length of time to finish the game.  I'd start to fidget and distract my sisters.  I'd end a Monopoly game by making noises in the crook of my arm and make believe someone had a gas problem.  Throwing the pink, green and blue paper money around also helped speed it along.  I'd end up losing all my money first so I could go and hide in the pantry to eat sour cream and onion potato chips before dinner.  

One of my least favorite games was Operation.  I wasn't very good at it.  Because I needed to concentrate really hard to pull out the wrenched ankle, when the buzzer went off (and it invariably would), I'd be scared out of my wits and jump up pulling the little tweezer wire out of the plastic game board.  

Most games didn't survive long in my hands.  The corners of the boxes would be taped and re-taped because someone sat on them or tried to cram them onto the top shelf in the closet.  The inside box cover would be filled with my graffiti of unflattering pictures of my sister's faces and body parts.   I'd lose pieces of them or repurpose them in some of my make-believe play.  Cooties worked well as pets for my GI Joes.  I'd tie a piece of yarn around their plastic peg necks and the other to Joe's hand.  He would drag them around until they lost all their legs or a part of their thorax.  

Marbles from Chinese Checkers or Parchesi would end up rolling under beds to be lost forever among the dust bunnies. Some just disappeared like some sort of marble fairy would take them away in the night.  Many of my marbles would be chipped and scratched from being used in the yard.  I'm sure my Dad encountered many of them as bullets flying from the lawn mower.

But indoor games were really a rare occurrence -- saved for rainy days.  Most other days were spent outside.  We could spend hours sitting on our swing set.  The white, purple and rust colored poles supported two swings, a teeter totter and a glider.  The late comers would be relegated to the teeter totter.  Back and force we'd swing, higher and higher, until we made the swing set posts go thwomp.  We tried to time our swinging so that the two swings weren't moving at the same time to prevent the back of the set from lifting off the ground.  So we tried to alternate our swinging...we were very scientific.  Unfortunately, it didn't work and my dad had to add little ball and chains to each of the posts to anchor them to the ground to stop the set from tipping over. The thwomp would sound when the anchor pulled taught and the post fell back into the ground.  Too bad the oil industry couldn't harness the power of little girl swing sets to drill for the mother load.

We'd sing songs -- songs my mom taught us from her childhood and popular songs from the radio.  And we would talk about make believe things.  If we looked at the sky when we were at the swings highest point we could be birds flying off into the sunset.  If we closed our eyes, we could be captives on a pirate ship.

The swing set served as a rocking chair when we were sad, a piece of exercise equipment when we needed to burn off the second whoopee pie before we went in for dinner, and an excellent theater seat to view our neighbor's cows.  Prime swing viewing was when our gentleman farmer neighbor would cut down his hay and bail it.  The day would start with his tractor moving through the grass with a sort of large hair trimmer on the side of it.  Then would come another tractor attachment in the back with little metal finger combs to line up the stacks of grass.  Then the wondrous bailing machine.  The bailing machine made such a unique noise...a sort of a hooumph, hooumph.  It had a sort of silly dangerous sound to our young ears.  It was exciting when those green bails spit out of the end of the machine and fell to the ground.  The field would be littered with fuzzy cow food blocks and the aroma of alfalfa.

Make-believe came so easy to us.   Old tin can tops (bent in half by Daddy) were excellent whittling tools for peeling bark off of sticks and could also be used to cut up grass and other vegetation when we were cooking like Mommy.  What amazing food we could make with a little water, dirt and cut up grass.  I can almost smell the wet dirt and fresh cut greenery.

To be a child again....when distraction was encouraged.

Grocery Shoppers Anonymous

I have a strange addiction to grocery shopping. Some people like to buy shoes, cars or electronics. But me, I love to stroll through the aisles filled with shiny boxes of breakfast cereal and cookies.

Pulling into the parking lot of the store is an adventure in itself. I usually go to the store with my sister in her late model Honda Odyssey proudly displaying the dings and scratches of many parking lot skirmishes with other cars, yellow-painted concrete barriers and shopping carts. Ever leave a store and wonder if a dent or scratch on your car door was new or just something you hadn't noticed before?

I walk in the store and try to detach my selected shopping cart from the thousand of others that are connected together by the infant seat belts. One hard yank and a pinched finger later and my cart is free from its brothers. Need to check the wheels to make sure they work okay. Wheels that seem pretty smooth and easy to push now, might turn into a manual lawn mower in knee high grass when the cart is filled with bottled water and gallons of milk. This one's good. I envision the bubonic plague on the cart handle so I pull a half dried sanitary wipe from the dispenser near the door and try to scrub the germs into oblivion. Wonder if the friction heat in combination with the alcohol will burn the bacteria into microscopic toast.

Starting in the dairy section I work through my shopping list. Its necessary to take a deep breath before attempting to pull milk from the cooler. Patience is a virtue here as I might be tempted to use elbows and the front edge of my cart as a battering ram to get near the one-percent milk. Years of crusted milk spills hang onto the cooler shelves along with dust and human hair. I pluck a carton from the fray and inspect it quickly to make sure my choice is not guilty of adding to the gray debris stalagmites Fortunately, I'm clean...and so is my carton.

No deli meat this trip, the line is way too long. We'll have to settle for canned meat and peanut butter for sandwiches this week. No lunch is worth dealing the pulsating irritated group of humanity in front of the glass case. Anyway, Murphy's Law would have me pulling the number behind the person asking about the salt content and preservatives in the meats and then ask for a quarter pound of each type of ham cut extra thin.

I'm not allowed to go down the cereal aisle until the twenty boxes of fibrous, fruity and just plain junk breakfast fare in our pantry are down to ten boxes. As I pass, I can see gleaming packaging beckoning me with seductive words like "heart healthy", "no GMO", and "high fiber". How am I expected to resist their lure? After all, don't the food companies pay tons of money to their marketing people to make sure that we (the consumer) are hypnotized by their magic words? Resisting the terrible temptation to buy a box of Sugar Fruity Fiber Pellets, I slowly keep walking to the next aisle.

Bisquick is the next item on my shopping list. Where would that be...must be the baking aisle. Putting my cart in reverse, because I'd already passed that section, I walk down looking through the cake mixes, sugar and flour. Let's see, there's whole wheat flour, unbleached flour, cake flour, bread flour, rye flour, spelt flour, barley flour...but no sign of Bisquick. After all, isn't Bisquick a baking mix with one of its twenty-five ingredients being flour? Who set this store up anyway? Bisquick should be in the baking section. I ask one of the many helpful stocking people where I could find one of my scavenger hunt items known as Bisquick...you know, the stuff in the bright yellow box with the pancakes on the front. As soon as I said it, I knew before the clerk replied that my box would be found in the breakfast aisle. Guess what, back to the cereal aisle....can I handle passing through the cereals again? I send my sister to get it for me as I head to produce.

When I walk into the produce section I hear the song that plays when Link lifts up that little triangle thingee. All those shiny, brightly colored shapes. All those healthy and nutritious forms that you don't need to feel guilty about eating. They are so beautiful....I can't stop looking at them. I begin by picking out my avocados -- not too soft or too hard and they must have the little stub on the end or they'll ripen too fast. In the bag they go. Then the tomatoes. I search through the different varieties looking for those from the U.S. Nope, those are from Mexico...and those from Canada. At last I find some from the U.S. still stuck on their dried up old vine pieces. I often wonder if that is just another marketing thing to make us think they are fresher (even thought the vine is totally dried up) or if it is just an easier method to pick them up and put them into the bag. Personally, I find the vines poke holes into the tomatoes when you're driving home like evil little fingers.

I pick out a bag of tangerines, some apples, grapes and a bunch of bananas--being careful to watch out for tarantulas and other exotic spiders that might be lurking among the produce. Broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower round out my cruciferous choices (which means "gas producing vegetables" in Swahili).

The store set up is pretty slick...they put the bakery section right next to the checkout. It's like landing on Boardwalk before you get to pass Go. No Baltic prices here, folks. The pies and cakes are expensive because they've got you in the carb trap. You pick out all your healthy fruit and veggies and then, wham!, you smell the yummy goodness of baked goods. After all, if you've eaten a meal of lettuce leaves and brussels sprouts, surely you can afford to eat a piece of pie. An apple pie and two packages of cinnamon rolls go into the cart. I give up...marketing wins!

I try to organize my purchases on the checkout conveyor belt, putting the heavy stuff first, refrigerator stuff next and last my produce and chips. I'm not often successful at getting my purchases on the belt quick enough. Personally, I like the cashier who talks to her bagger or the customer in front of me. It gives me time to line up my milk cartons. But sometimes I get an eager beaver who is trying to break the worlds record for quickest grocery cashier. The conveyor starts and stops in a staccato turning my cartons and boxes into falling dominoes and creating an avalanche of my carefully selected fruits. As I try to recapture my groceries, I need to keep an eye on the bagger. I see him placing my Windex into the same bag as my broccoli -- excuse me, but does your mom boil her broccoli in Windex?...then put it in a separate bag.

Back outside in the parking lot -- and I don't think I notice any new dents or scratches on the bumper -- my sister and I begin to load my treasures into the back of the van. I get a wonderful sense of satisfaction as we drive away. I know that my overflowing pantry and already-full fridge will welcome their new additions. I have this thing about running out of food. I feel good. We'll have plenty of fresh and tasty food to last a while....or at least until next week.