Irresistible force meets immovable alphabet?

"Could we play the rhyming game again? Can we make pig wig?," the preK student asks.

"Absolutely! That would be fun," I say, impressed that she considers our recent word-building endeavor a game. "What do we need?"

"The at bat hat book and the immobile alphabet," she says, and scurries off to find them.

There's a funny mental image. It must be wheelchair day at the double A baseball game! I'm putting on my rally cap for this at bat.

Her "immobile alphabet" is really the classic teaching movable alphabet. Maybe writer's block is just a bad case of immobilized alphabet...
"Can I play, too? I played yesterday!," a second girl asks. She's a bit older, and can think of sat fat rat. Of course she may join us.

Speaking of fat rats and immobile alphabets, my Cingular cellphone service recently changed to "AT&T Mobility". What a silly name! The word mobility doesn't inspire thoughts of untethered phoning freedom. It instantly conjures its opposite, immobility. Oh, great. I've got a cellphone that needs a ramp, and I'm paying how much a month?!

Back with the rhyming preK girls, we play the "game" with at, it, ox, ig, og, ug. I'm delighted when they put their consonant heads together to figure out twig. Sure, they have some ideas that don't make words. The best is vog. "You know, Ms. Nancy, vog, when you can't see anything!" That vould be a Transylvanian fog.


Why am I wearing my at bat hat rally cap on this voggy day? CollageMama is celebrating in the dugout on the twenty-first birthday of her youngest son. Pour that nice ice lime rhyme cooler of Gatorade on her head!

Put the rhyme in the coconut, shake it all up. Put the rhyme in the coconut, call the doctor, wake him up.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Spidey trading cards

Much as I wanted to make arachnid cootie-catcher/fortune-tellers for my students and coworkers this Halloween, the project kept getting more ugly every time I stabbed at it. I have great digital photos of the spiders in the school garden, but my Adobe Photoshop Elements program has ghastly hick-ups and burps that make photo editing an ordeal since I'm now using the Microsoft Vista operating system.

Going upstairs to water the jade plants, and hacking through the artifacts, USB cords, and archives of three grown sons, I was reminded of Topps baseball and Magic trading cards. The upstairs condo repository is a scary place, but has more potential for greatness than a pending presidential library at SMU. [The jade plants and Christmas cactus may or may not survive.]

The Halloween spider trading cards are ready to print and give to my students. My own kids learned bartering and negotiating skills, and concepts of abundance and scarcity, not to mention a few carnival midway cons by trading baseball cards with each other.



Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott
© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Tigers and Cardinals

Denny McLain, Bob Gibson, and Mickey Lolich were the stars of my first and most vivid World Series. My eighth grade American Studies teacher at Millard Lefler Junior High believed strongly that baseball was both Our National Pasttime and a barometer of racial equality. It was our duty as citizens to observe the World Series, just as it was our duty to vote and serve on a jury. Mr. Stith required our class, just after lunch, to watch and listen to the '68 games. Back then the World Series games were played in the afternoon. I didn't like Mr. Stith, but I've always been grateful for this World Series experience.



In the 1968 World Series between the Tigers and Cardinals, there were seven complete games. Mickey Lolich and Bob Gibson pitched three each, and Denny McLain the other. Gibson was a favorite in Nebraska, having been born in Omaha. McLain ended up in prison. Lolich had a donut shop. I don't have a clue what happened to the cute but nerdy kid named Dougie who sat behind me in Mr. Stith's class.

Our National Naptime

Eureka! I've found it, but it's nearly two decades since I really, REALLY needed it. I've found a cd that makes kids fall asleep!

If you want to know the name, just mail me a twenty dollar bill... No, I'm going to tell you for free. It's the humanitarian thing to do! It's a good feeling knowing I'm making the world a better place for sleep-deprived mommies (and kids)everywhere.

"Bella Espana" is the name of the cd. My little art students are painting to the music, with some splendid results. They are abnormally calm and focused. Some of them are so calm they fall asleep in class. I'll post images of the paintings soon, but I wanted the word to go out immediately about the nap-inducing effects of this classical guitar music.



The first four tracks are music from Bizet's "Carmen" performed by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. The preschoolers love track four, which is the "Toreadors". They know this music from a Disney tv series called "Little Einsteins". Track four gets them really listening to the music. Then the less familiar pieces can work their calming and sleep-inducing magic. As an added bonus, I don't mind listening to it for a solid week of classes.

My colicky son has finished grad school. My son who perfected the technique of ripping wallpaper off the wall by his crib during naptimes is a senior in college. My youngest will probably never tell the guys in his dorm that he could only fall asleep to music from Disney's "The Little Mermaid" or Raffi songs about ducks. I would have loved "Bella Espana" in those years.

I have one other tip for getting little kids to fall asleep: "You must get in bed now, but you may listen to the baseball game on your radio." Mark Holtz died from leukemia in 1997. I had nominated him for sainthood several years before for his ability to engage my boys in radio baseball. Mark, with his signature expression, "Hello Win Column," did the play-by-play for Texas Rangers baseball games on the radio, with Eric Nadle doing color commentary. Following a baseball game on the radio takes considerable concentration. It's exhausting. Eventually, little ears and brains wear out, forgetting to stretch in the seventh inning. When kids drift off to sleep, many moms have thought, "Hello Win Column".

Hot Collage Gals

Misspellers* around the globe search for explicit photos of university coeds and stumble onto this blog. That's the problem with Boolean keyword search engines. Even during nineteen straight days of temps over one hundred degrees (Fahrenheit not Celsius), there's a world of difference in this big old Lone Star State of Texas between UT Longhorn sand volleyball bikini babes, and hot-flashing middle-aged Collin County mixed-media artists with three grown sons.

Four skills never go out of style:

1. Spelling
2. Keyboarding, or, as we warm gals call it, typing
3. Proofreading, or attention to detail
4. Punctuation (meaning cannot exist without form)

You can't depend on Spell Czech. Those Prague Mamas are probably hot, too. The Kingdom of Bohemia may be one of those European countries lacking in ice cubes, but I can't research that right now. My main concern is the age at which a woman crosses the line from girl to gal.

Wikipedia doesn't consider age connotations of female synonyms:

The word girl has many synonyms, including "belle", "chick", "doll", "gal", "lass" or "lassie", "maiden", and "miss". The slang word "gal", as in "Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight", is a variant pronunciation of girl.

In my search for enlightenment, I slogged through a mucky slough of academic jargon before finding a flicker of clarity:

In all University settings, members of the University community should:

1. Use gender equivalent construction. Equivalent or parallel construction should be used for males and females. Thus, if males are referred to as “men,” females should be referred to as “women,” not as “girls” or “ladies.”

2. Use alternatives to the masculine singular pronoun for generic singular. The masculine singular pronoun traditionally has been used as the generic singular. Such usage fails to acknowledge the participation of women in human activity unless they are specifically identified. Alternatives to the use of “he,” “him,” and “his” for the generic singular are he/she, she/he, her/him, him/her, hers/his, his/hers or one’s. Some individuals may prefer to alternate the use of the male and female singular pronoun to indicate generic singular. While some alternatives may seem awkward when they are first used, they become comfortable with usage and will, as any other language construction, become second nature in time. It is this natural incorporation of women into language on an equal basis with men that is the purpose of non-sexist language usage. [I don't have the slightest idea what this means, but it sounds kinkier** than the title of this post!]....

...6. Exhibit non-patronizing, non-condescending ways of describing and addressing women, particularly women in traditional occupations, e.g., secretaries, clerks, nurses. Both men and women should be sensitized to the negative effects which result from usage of terms such as “girl,” “gal,” “coed,”, “girl Friday,” the “girls in the office,” and the like.

I'm happy to report my discovery of Ruth Walker's "Words On the Move" column in the Christian Science Monitor***. I'll be checking in often for my language usage fix:

There are plenty of colloquialisms for "female person": They start with terms like "chick" and go on through terms you aren't going to read in this space. What they have in common is that they define women as "the other," in a way that terms like "guy" or "bloke" do not define men. When Simone de Beauvoir called her book about women "The Second Sex," people knew what she meant.

There's "gal," which isn't to everyone's taste. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a "vulgar or dial. pronunciation of 'girl.'" (The Compact Oxford is somewhat more forgiving, defining it as an informal, chiefly North American term for "girl or young woman." In practice, "gal" has a rather flexible upward age limit; see "Golden Girls," above.) "Gal Friday," or " girl Friday," has worked its way into the language as a takeoff on "Man Friday," itself a phrase of dubious political correctness. Nowadays "his girl Friday" may well be the executive vice president for strategy and human resources. But why was it ever OK for the counterpart of "man" to be "gal," anyway?

*Yes, I checked two dictionaries on this one! Gals, your dictionary is your friend in a way that the masculine singular pronoun for generic singular never could be. Now excuse me. I have a volleyball game at seven.

**This blog has no opinion at the moment on the independent candidacy of Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas. I've read some of his books, but didn't think them as funny as he did. By the way, that's what my dad says about the guys on Car Talk.

***Some other day we will ponder the resemblance between 2004 Inductee Baseball Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, one of my favorite players, and monitor lizards, who swallow their prey whole.

Litton Farewell

This week I've been saying good-bye. Breakfasted with a dear, crazy art teacher friend who will soon be living in a cute college town and undoubtedly scrounging for interesting recyclables back east. Said good-bye to a incredibly talented young teacher I've had the joy of working with for three years. She's also moving to the right side of the map, taking my enormous respect (and her cute husband) along.

Last Sunday I said good-bye to Maestro Litton of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. True, I didn't know him personally. Andrew Litton and I shared just a few afternoons in the last year, but they were powerful aesthetic experiences.

On Sunday Litton introduced me to Elgar's Enigma Variations, and my world added many friends. In January he gave me the transcending gift of Janacek's Glagolitic Mass. Last fall he transformed me to glowing particles of pure energy with Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5. During the winter his youthful excitement before conducting Ives: General William Booth Enters Into Heaven made me feel like a co-conspirator in a raucous, colorful scientific experiment (or a bar joke); Red Barber, Red Skelton, and Red Grooms Go Into a Symphony.

I sit in the cheap seats behind the orchestra when I go to the DSO, or else up in the cardio workout section known as the Grand Tier (or K2). I love sitting in the Dress Circle Loft's eight dollar seats because I can look down on the orchestra members and straight into Maestro Litton's face. I consider those cheap seats the Catbird Section. The Grand Tier has its visual moments, too. Sunday's violin soloist, Gil Shaham, looked like he was trying to kick down trousers afflicted with horrible static cling without missing a note! On the drive home I wondered what that spray stuff was that we used to fight static cling.

Saw in the newspaper that the Littons are moving to the right side of the map to be near Andrew's father. I hope three generations of Litton males will head on out to some ballgames!

Catbird seat/empty nest catbird 1731, common name for the North American thrush (Dumetella Carolinensis), so called from its warning cry, which resembles that of a cat. Catbird seat is a 19c. Dixieism, popularized by Brooklyn Dodgers baseball announcer Red Barber and by author James Thurber (1942). " 'Sitting in the catbird seat' meant sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him." [Thurber, "Stories from New Yorker"] According to my bird book, a catbird is a close relative of the mockingbird, the Official Texas State Bird.

Water Cooler Tantrums

Dear Mr. Selig,

Opened the newspaper this morning, and saw that another MLB pitcher, Kenny Rogers of the Rangers, injured himself punching out a water cooler. Rogers will miss at least one start with a broken bone at the base of his pinky on his non-pitching hand. If I were signing his paycheck, I'd be pretty disgruntled, but I wouldn't take it out on an inanimate object. That is why I have a suggestion for you that might solve several problems you are facing in Major League Baseball.

Bud, if I may call you Bud, you need Designated Dugout Moms. It worked in Edmond, Oklahoma t-ball, and it could work for you. Back in Edmond we took turns in the dugout, because we also had to be Designated Baby Watchers and Designated Toddler Chasers. We had to contribute to the cheers of "Be a hitter, MAN", "Way to watch'em", and "Good eye, good eye!" Still, the Designated Dugout Moms made a significant improvement in the baseball experience for all parties.

Bud, face it. Baseball just has an awful lot of waiting around. Players in the outfield can generally amuse themselves safely by stomping on bugs, watching passing trains or planes, rearranging their underwear, or picking dandelions. They are spread out so they can't put the bugs or dandelions down other players' underwear. Probably it was a mom who decided that one player was enough each for right field, center field, and left field no matter how unlikely it was that any of them could catch or throw a ball from way out there. Probably it was the same mom who invented minivans with three rows of seats. Bud, that's just the kind of creative problem solving MLB needs.

Players in the dugout are a much more challenging Mom Management issue. You've seen those stories about how caged animals behave more aggressively with increased population density, right? When you put a whole team of kids in a dugout without a DDM, someone is bound to get hurt. Players climb the chain link, get their arms stuck and broken (I won't name names, but it wasn't one of mine!), they pick up broken glass and sharp cans left by previous unsupervised players. They stuff dirt and grass down each others' shirts which leads to poking eyes and bickering. They drink from each other's squeeze bottles and get cooties. They trip over the catcher's gear, swing bats around, swipe each others' gloves, and throw caps over the fence. They eat chocolate, which is a really dumb thing to do when you have to run in 95 degree, 60 % humidity weather. They taunt each other, and cry. They become convinced the other players are getting more turns to bat, and they put stupid things in their mouths.

Designated Dugout Moms don't tolerate this stuff. They make players watch the game just in case they could learn something. They tie shoes, and not together. They get the catcher in and out of that ridiculous lobster costume, and put helmets on the upcoming batters to speed up the game. I'm sure it was a DDM who first taught players how to make rally caps and shell peanuts so they would keep their hands to themselves. Moms say, "We don't do that here", "spit that out RIGHT NOW", "I don't think you really need a band-aid", "let's put a little ice on it for a minute", and "respect your teammates". They recognize the dance when a player needs to race to the outhouse before the next inning. Most importantly, DDMs do not allow tantrums, because they don't want all the younger siblings to get the idea you can behave badly just because you struck out.

The history of baseball tantrums resulting in injuries is long, and reinforces the old stereotype of the dumb jock, and the new stereotype of the professional athlete as hoodlum. A Designated Dugout Mom would be quick to tell the water cooler-punching player, "If you're going to act like that, no mom will ever invite you to a birthday party or over to play at her house." Dave George had a few thoughts on the matter,Cox News Service Friday, May 13, 2005 :

"Everybody has a boiling point and I think it's about time I vented," said [former Baltimore manager Ray] Miller, who addressed the media later with a bag of ice on his hand to reduce the swelling from punching the wall. "I think I've done all that's been asked of me as far as promoting the team. I think I'm entitled to snap every once in a while."

Words to live by, as long as you wear a baseball uniform to work and not a postal worker's.

Marlins pitcher Brian Moehler believes in another piece of timeless wisdom. "My mom always told me," he said, "if you're going to start a tantrum go up where they can't see you."

Bud, I've sure enjoyed this chat. I hope you will put my suggestion of Major League Designated Dugout Moms into effect immediately. If not, I sure hope the next commissioner is somebody's mother.

Cabbage

After reading a review in the Dallas Morning News about the Fort Worth Opera's production of "Salome", I went on about my assorted tasks of a weekend morning. Suddenly I realized I was remembering my mom fixing salami and cheese sandwiches on toast with lettuce, French's mustard, and maybe tomato with Weaver's potato chips on the side for Saturday lunches when I was a kid. Dad would be home, and we would all sit around in the living room watching the little black and white t.v. We might watch baseball or football, possibly bowling, the local station's talent round-up, or roller derby.

Next thing you know, I was trying to remember the name of a tavern in Omaha that had a really outstanding corned beef sandwich on St. Patrick's Day in the early Eighties. If I remember it, I will have to write it on a little piece of paper to put in the bathroom insomnia drawer. We used to go there to watch baseball pennant race games. It's not all that surprising that I can't remember. It was so far back Nolan Ryan was pitching in a Houston Astros uniform with those rainbow stripes that looked like seventh grade Home Ec. class Jello parfaits.


I'll add to this soon, but maybe someone out there will have a hopeful memory jogger, and leave a comment. Here's a site about Nebraska taverns and Midwest music venues.

And that's all for this Friday's Sandwich Report.

Wired

Sat down to watch the ALCS game seven on Wednesday night. I truly wanted to watch Kevin Brown pitch to the Sox, but there were visible electrical cords from the t.v., vcr, and dvd player to two different outlets, plus the wire for the cable t.v. dangling and snarling in plain view. Slap me with the defibrillator paddles because I just can't handle this aesthetic aggravation! Obviously, I don't sit down to watch t.v. in the living room more than twice a year, or I might have noticed the cable wire. It's been a year and a half since we got cable.

Rearranging furniture is always a stress relief activity for me. I can't control the world OUT THERE, so I shove heavy furniture and major home appliances around and try to balance the design aesthetics of original art works with the Auto Zone car battery that has been plunked down in the living room for at least two weeks.

I hope to sit down tomorrow night and watch the Tech-UT game and game one of the Series. It's going to be challenging, since they are on simultaneously. Glad I won't have the wire distraction to steal my focus.

Spoiling the fun

Part of this week's preschool lesson plan included reading Pierre: A Cautionary Tale In Five Chapters and a Prologue by Maurice Sendak This wonderfully funny and engaging book includes a scene in Chapter Four when Pierre's father hits the hungry lion with a folding chair. Oops! Our Texas Rangers have been hitting people with folding chairs.

Baseball highlights reel

A friend is attending an Orioles/Royals game in KC tonight. I've been showing my students a clip from the baseball time travel movie "A Kid in King Arthur's Court". Baseball is on my brain, so maybe I've been beaned. These are special baseball memories for me:

Wilson Alvarez throwing a no-hitter against the Orioles during one of the last games at old Memorial Stadium in 1991. After arriving in the majors with Texas in 1989, it took Alvarez a while to get his act together. He gave up two homers and three earned runs without retiring a batter in his major league debut with the Rangers and, five days later, was traded with Scott Fletcher and Sammy Sosa to the White Sox for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique. In just his second major-league start -- on August 11, 1991, at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium -- Alvarez showed his potential by becoming the eighth-youngest pitcher in history to toss a no-hitter.

We were sitting up really high with our backs against the chainlink. The boys all had on blue Texas Ranger caps. (That was how we kept track of them on the Metro and at the museums on the Mall.) My sister drove us up to Baltimore. We were plagued by yellowjackets the entire game, and were afraid to eat or drink anything because of the bees. We had spent the morning at Ft. McHenry. It was Jeff's ninth birthday. I had forgotten that. Mike was six and Steven four. It was an unusual vacation because no one broke their arm or required stitches.

I think Jeff was four when he went to his first Major League game in Kansas City. It was my first, too. Mike was maybe one, so '85 or '86. I had been to Royals Stadium before for a Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young concert with the Beach Boys back in '74 or '75. I am pretty sure George Brett hit a triple at the game. We mostly watched the fountains and scoreboard as I recall. A fan three rows behind us got excited and flipped his beer and hotdog with sauerkraut into the air. It all landed on me. As soon as the boys got cranky I was real glad to go back to the motel and take a shower.


When we first moved to Texas we attended lots of Rangers games at the old Arlington Stadium. Little Steven would usually fall asleep in my lap. Jeff would count all the airplanes that flew over. Mike would eat fruit roll-ups, raisins, and jalapeno nachos. The Rangers had Bobby Valentine managing back then, Julio Franco 2B, Rafael Palmieio 1B, Steve Bueuchele 3B "Boooosh"!, Nolan Ryan, Pudge Rodriguez (age 19)C, Jeff Huson at SS, Ruben Sierra, Juan Gonzalez, and Gary Pettis in the outfield, Brian Downing at DH, Kevin Brown, Jose Guzman, Bobby Witt, Brian Bohanon, Oil Can Boyd, Rich Gossage, Kenny Rogers pitching...

I remember an especially scary night when all the fans were told to exit to the concourses. The sky was dark and very green. I was sure we were all a-gonna die in a tornado at the ballpark. The weather was too bad to attempt the long trek across the parking lots to our car with three tiny boys, so we just had to hang out as the temperature dropped about thirty degrees and golf ball-size hail fell.

The boys each had a radio in their bedroom, and I would let them listen to Rangers games until they fell asleep. It takes amazing concentration for anyone to create a mental picture of the action of a baseball game just from radio descriptions while wrapped in blankies in a dark room. I figured they were either being lulled to sleep as pitchers tediously reviewed the signals, or they were developing impressive skills that would last a lifetime, and either way they were being quiet after a long day. They also developed math skills figuring out baseball statistics that make absolutely no sense to me to this day.

When Mike played T-ball he would put a clip-on earring on one ear so he could be Ruben Sierra. We would play a cassette tape of "We Are the Champions" on the way to the field so he could get psyched. I was supposed to imitate the KRLD radio announcer saying "Roooo-Ben Sierra!" when Mike walked up to the plate. Always fashion-conscious, Mike had to have a batting glove even for T-ball. He didn't like soccer because soccer players don't wear caps.

Steven spent many hours during his bigger brother's T-ball, coach-pitch, and kid-pitch baseball games playing in the dirt behind the backstop. He would bring a case of GI Joes or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and hang them all from the chainlink backstop. Even then he appreciated members of the opposite sex if they had brought sidewalk chalk to the games.

Some other day I will post about the meaning of the '68 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals to an eighth grade girl in Lincoln, Nebraska. I can't write it just at the moment. I'm having a bad flashback of 3B Dean Palmer's arm tendon rolling up like a window shade underneath his skin.

My dad used to tell a story of breaking his arm during the Depression. He didn't let that put him on the DL. He just used the plaster cast on his arm as a bat. Amazingly, he grew up to have pretty good sense later on.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Wo wo wo).
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
"Joltin' Joe has left and gone away" (Hey hey hey, hey hey hey).

Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese on a tiny black and white t.v. My dad snoozing on the couch with the newspaper over his face after a lunch of saltines, summer sausage, and cheese, priceless.

Our National Pastime

This week Our Texas Rangers traded expensive superstar Alex Rodriguez to the NY Yankees. As always, there has been much pondering in the Dallas Morning News about how to dig the Rangers out of the cellar. As a preschool art teacher, I suggest that everyone involved in the conversation reread "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel" to learn how to turn Mary Ann into the furnace in the new town hall instead of getting her out of the cellar.

As a woman of a certain age, I think the problem with professional baseball goes deeper. Has a menopausal woman ever managed a major league team? Of course not! Is the sport ignoring the most logical solution to its problems? Certainly!

Every woman I know has spent years training to become a team manager. Every Saturday morning of our adult lives we have played the "Imagine You Are a Baseball Manager" game. I've heard of Monday morning quarterbacks. I give you Saturday morning managers.

My walking buddy and I are in Spring Training here in the Grapefruit League. That means we've been working very hard to lose weight since New Year's. On Saturday mornings we review our progress, and assess the roster. We try on and send some pants that have become too saggy/baggy down to the closet minors. We audition skinny minor league candidates for the closet big league. Will they fit into the current line-up? If I send two pairs to the minors, and only bring up one, how long will they last in a four pants rotation? Should this pair be placed on the DL until the popped button is resewn?

Major league baseball also faces many problems with sportsmanship, character, and player use of chemical enhancers. It is time for the female manager to be promoted to league commissioner. My friends all know that you must never trash talk the competition. If you call attention to the weight of someone else, you will be slapped upside your thighs with bad, bad, evil karmic cellulite. If you grandstand after a home run, your seams will surely burst. Slim Fast will never substitute for a conscious change in diet and exercise habits. We won't even get into the subject of corking bats! It has been many years since we wadded Kleenex in our training bras, but we know all the tricks.

Why stop at commissioner? Fantasy Baseball offers women the chance to go for the Big Time. We lust after the NY Yankee's superstar talent, depth, budget, and George Steinbrenner's office. Can you imagine that major league closet???

From the middle to the middle

How funny! Just got a flashback of my dad taking me to see "The Snow Queen" when I was about four. We must have waited until the result of the t.v. baseball game (annouced by Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese, of course) was not in doubt, then driven downtown in the '54 pea green Chevy to the State Theater. Walked in as the scary evil Snow Queen was turning everybody to ice, then sat through it, thawing, melting, and back to being frozen again. I know Dad & I saw "Babes in Toyland", "Lady & the Tramp", and "Bambi" by the tag-team middle-to-middle system also. "Bambi" had a nature short about desert animals in the middle (well, it should have been at the beginning, right after the newsreels!), that I remember vividly as it was my introduction to rattlesnakes. Dad & I were probably escaping long weekend afternoons with my colicky baby brother. We also used to drive out to the old Lincoln Air Force Base/muni airport and stand on the outdoor observation deck to watch airplanes take off. One time a pelican was sitting on the railing of the deck. That was a way off course pelican! I think that was the time Dad & I were escaping after my mom slid our chicken potpies off the cookie sheet onto the heating element in the bottom of the oven by accident. One time Dad & I escaped to the city's Pioneer Park, and I rolled down a hill. Got cockleburrs stuck on every inch of my face and body. Dad felt so horrible. He picked me up gently, put me in the car, and rushed me home. Mom sat me on a highchair, and the two of them spent hours pulling the stickers out of me with tweezers.
The first movie I remember seeing was a double feature at the drive-in. I was probably barely three, and my parents must have thought I would sleep in the backseat. The first movie was some sort of Sinbad story with ships, pirates, people hiding in large wicker chests, and other people poking swords into the wicker...The second feature was "Porgy & Bess". Singing black guys with no legs...! "Bess, you is my woman now. You is..." The first movie I can remember seeing in a theater was "Gypsy". My parents were really into Broadway musicals. One time my folks were down here visiting, and the boys were watching Steve Martin & Darryl Hannah in "Roxanne". My folks were freaking because Darryl had no clothes on. It was great fun reminding them about "Gypsy"!

Steven and I had a discussion about Twinkies this week. That set me off recalling how I got the job of riding shotgun with Dad late one night up to the hospital in Norfolk (120 miles in the Chevy) where one of my ancient relatives had been taken. I went along to keep my dad awake. He taught me to whistle. We stopped for gas, and to get vending machine treats to go with the vacuum bottle of coffee. I thought the Hostess "Snowballs", especially the pink ones, were the most tempting things I had ever seen, and finally convinced my dad to buy them. Dang if that coconut didn't stick halfway down my throat. May I never eat another bit of coconut as long as I live! I will always be suspicious of anything pink, fluffy, and too good to be true (probably should pass that suspicion on to the boys!). We arrived at the hospital in the middle of the night. While Dad was doing whatever he had to do, the nuns took me down to the basement kitchen and fed me soup.
I must be dying, since my life is passing before my eyes--but maybe Dad and I are just arriving in the middle of the feature.