Topic: Middle Aged Memories

Oct 19, 2020 11:24PM WC3 wrote:

cm2020:

I don't recall the exact sources of those two but if you are a fan of interesting little facts like that then I highly recommend two books:

Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things

When Did Poodles Roam The Earth?

Oct 22, 2020 05:01PM M0mmyof2 wrote:

My mom and I making beaded ornaments to sell.

Oct 23, 2020 04:05AM M0mmyof2 wrote:

Oh yes!

Birthdays were a family affair, even if it was yours and you wanted a party for just you anda few friends

Oct 23, 2020 04:22PM M0mmyof2 wrote:

Always thought those mints were gross

Oct 26, 2020 02:15PM elimar wrote:

I didn't like those pastel mints as a kid (when so many restaurants had an open bowl sitting out by the cash register,) but I bought some about 10 years ago and nostalgia, and my changing tastes, made me like them.

Don't think we ever mentioned coin collecting on here yet. Anyone else do that? In my youth, I had the book for pennies. Yeah, back when I could read all those dates with my bare eyes!

Oct 27, 2020 02:57PM M0mmyof2 wrote:

Making family recipes for the holidays. My mom making us go to bed early on Christmas Eve so Santa would come.

Oct 30, 2020 08:26AM NativeMainer wrote:

In our house, we kids could go get the stockings as soon as we woke up and take them back to our rooms. We never did take them to our rooms, we took them into Mom & Dad's room, jumped up on the bed and emptied them out there. If Mom and Dad thought they were getting a bit more sleep that way it didn't work!

Oct 30, 2020 04:54PM MinusTwo wrote:

Oh yup Mommy - I forgot that so were we. Hard choices.

Nov 3, 2020 05:50AM - edited Nov 26, 2020 09:19PM by TectonicShift

We weren't allow to go downstairs on Christmas morning until everyone was up. So I'd sit at the top of the stairs and wait for everyone. We each had several unopened gifts that were from Santa. The wrapped gifts were from our parents. My father would hand them out one by one and everyone watched everyone open their gifts one at a time. It was a long morning. We put our stocking out on New Year's Eve (not Christmas Eve) and they were filled by the Brownies.

Nov 8, 2020 07:26AM cm2020 wrote:

I love reading these. We were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve. We were very particular about which one we opened because we wanted to make sure it was a toy and not pjs. On Christmas morning we had to wait until our parents got up but they were usually pretty good about getting up early. It was a free-for-all once we started opening. I don't have many happy childhood memories, but Christmas was always a lot of fun.

Nov 16, 2020 09:47AM elimar wrote:

Family holiday traditions, I never really thought of it like that but...as a kid Christmas Eve always meant going to Grandpa's for a meal, then a few of us kids hung out in the living room looking at the tree, maybe watching something festive on t.v., and waiting, waiting, waiting (while the grown-ups drank some Christmas cheer, maybe played Uno or some kind of card game, having loud arguments over who was cheating) and interrupting them every five minutes with "Can we open our presents yet?" After about an hour, the grownups came in and arranged themselves on various sofas and chairs, and my aunts passed around present from under the tree til everyone had one and then we more or less simultaneously opened them. My uncle would always pause to guess what every single one of his gifts were. He took so long (two minutes that felt like 20) that even the grownups were saying, "Just open it already!" It was kind of annoying that he was right 98% of the time. After that frenzy, the grownups could then smoke and drink in peace for another hour or two while we played with some new toys. At a younger age, I was probably carried to the car asleep, but at an older age I was always expected to give Grandpa a hug and kiss goodbye (and that always served to verify how much boozier he was than when I had greeted him on arrival.)

Christmas morning would be at my own house. Yes, I woke up before first light, checked in the living room to see if Jolly Old St. Nick had been lured by our ruse of a cardboard fireplace into making a stop, and then reporting to mom, "Santa came, Santa's been here!" Mom knew how to buy herself some time by telling me I could take down my stocking. Thanks to that faux fireplace, I had one hanging on by a big thumbtack. My stocking usually had an orange and walnuts in it (filler!) and those wrapped hard candies that had a soft jelly center (imported from Germany or Poland) but it would also have some amazing trinkets like Silly Putty, tiny bone china dog figures, tiny 2" square book of fairy tales, animal shape erasers, one of those wooden stringed figured that if you pressed the base, it would collapse. Those little things bought my mom at least 20-30 minutes more of sleep and so the sun was at least approaching the horizon when she got up. I think the routine was for mom to delight in me opening the gifts from Santa, and then we would open our family gifts together. My dad was there somewhere, late to the party, and not interested in opening his gifts because (direct quote here) "None of them look big enough to be a Caddy." Buzzkill is putting it mildly.

I had some gifts from out of state relatives under the tree. One year, my uncle sent me a Superball (original black one) before they were even in the local store, so I was the first kid on the block to have one. My aunt always made homemade divinity fudge, a treat I could not really appreciate as a kid, but she truly was a good cook and baker and I would kill for her recipe now.

Sorry, I know I wrote about three times more than anyone else but, for those who don't realize it, I've always thought of this thread as a hedge against the day I get one of those dementias, so forgive me.

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MT, Your ex-in-laws were real sophisticates!

Nov 16, 2020 03:03PM M0mmyof2 wrote:

I still have the winter hat minus the pom-pom that my mom did for me when I was in 8th grade. I also have the sweater she made me in the 10th grade.

Nov 17, 2020 11:38AM MinusTwo wrote:

Eli - I agree with NM. I absolutely LOVED the long post. Friend's memories are always interesting. Even more so when we're all staying close to home.

We did our stocking first too while my Mom made coffee. Our other (big) gifts from Santa were never wrapped. Just sitting around the tree with the wrapped presents from friends & relatives. Actually things for each child were grouped around their specific chair. I don't know if that's regional (I was raised in CA), but it seems most people I know said their presents from Santa were wrapped also. I never could understand wrapping a bicycle or a train that was set up & ready to run around the tracks immediately.

Which nudges me to get my gifts wrapped and packaged to mail SOON this year.

Nov 18, 2020 09:32AM - edited Dec 4, 2020 08:35AM by elimar

The Santa gifts were wrapped, but always in a distinctly DIFFERENT wrapping paper so, if questioned, mom could always say "But I don't have any wrapping paper like THAT." I used the same line on my own young interrogators and it worked like a charm.

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NM, I had the same thought about that product name being similar to the Mary Poppins word/phrase. Now you are making me remember when my elementary classmates all learned that antidisestablishmentarianism was the "longest word in the dictionary." Was it? Who could fact check that back in the day??? Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious is longer and in the dictionary, but considered a "nonsense word." Ha, as if antidisestablishmentarianism made sense!

In case you all are wondering what passes for the longest word these days, I'll spare you the trouble of the search:

The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis.

Now if you like gibberish as much as I do, please control your sudden urge to run out and start sniffing volcanoes.

Nov 19, 2020 08:04AM NativeMainer wrote:

Elimar--LOVE IT! I think I can almost pronounce it, even!