1. Muppet Babies-- I loved this show as a kid, but the logic behind "Nanny" was lost on me. I didn't get that it was intentional that we couldn't see anything but Nanny's legs. I thought there was something wrong with my shitty 13" TV. This was back in the day when you had to adjust the knobs and sometimes the picture would just roll vertically like that wheel on The Price is Right. For whatever reason, I thought that if I got really close to the TV and looked up (as if I were looking at the sky through a window) that I'd be able to see what Nanny looked like. I was like five, so cut me some slack. I also used to think that the adults on Charlie Brown were speaking a language that I just didn't understand.
6. Baby Jessica-- I was five when that happened and it gave me nightmares. My grandmother, being my grandmother, said, "You have a better chance of falling through one of those grates on the sidewalk than finding a well to fall into. Go back to sleep." New nightmares, yay!
7. Punky Brewster-- I was gonna marry her until I saw her friend Cherie. With the exception of the Huxtable kids, Cherie was probably the only black girl on TV... and I would've kicked Rudy and Vanessa down a flight of stairs to get to Cherie.
10. "Just Say No"-- I was five and knew that tidbit of advice was useless. I wasn't concerned with drugs. I was concerned with getting robbed by the people trying to buy them or shot buy the people trying to sell them.
12. The Death of Optimus Prime-- It's still too fresh. I can't talk about it.
15. Garbage Pail Kids Stickers--My grandmother beat my ass when she came home and found all of them on the fridge.
20. Books on Record--That's how I learned to read.
24. Betamax--We had one until Cracky the Crackhead broke into our apartment and stole it.
31. Triple Fat Goose--I wanted one so bad. Almost had one until my grandmother peeped the red London Fog King Joffee Joffer trench coat with the fur going down the collar. "And you wear it all day. Don't put it in the coatroom. I didn't pay $100 for somebody to steal this coat." 80 degrees in school and I'm sitting in class looking like Santa Claus.
32. Double Dare-- No cable! I heard about it though. It wasn't until "Fun House" came on channel 20 that I understood the gist of it.
41. Sugary Cereals-- How many times did I get cursed out for "wasting up that milk!" Crunchberries turned the water into syrup. I couldn't bring myself to drink it, so, being clever, my grandmother started buying one PINT of milk to go with every box of cereal. Finding a bowl of pinkish milk covered with aluminum foil in the fridge became common since I had to reuse my milk.
42. Book Fair order forms--Whoever said that literacy was invaluable never met my family. Slaves had a better chance of getting a book than I did. "You can get books from the library for free." Speaking of which...
44. The card catalog--I'll never get that wasted time back. Subject Card, Author Card, Title Card. I needed to learn this and the dewey decimal system just so that the internet could come out a few years later and make it obsolete. That's up there with the
10 print
20 print
30 run
BASIC class that we had with the big floppy disk and the monochrome monitors. A year later...WINDOWS!
47. Dot matrix paper--Only useful for making banners with "Ordale Rocks" and a picture of a basketball.
48. Trapper Keepers-- I don't understand the hype of these things. Like most of my school supplies, my three ring binder said "Property of the US Government" on the inside. That's the gift/curse of having government employees in your family. When I FINALLY got a Trapper Keeper--And I mean a REAL Trapper Keeper, not that shitty 'No Rules' knockoff--I was disappointed.
The little mesh pocket on the inside ripped the first week. The holes in the two folders tore so they fell out whenever I picked it up. The little school supply plastic pouch just had remnants of pencil sharpener shavings everywhere, and after a while the binder stopped closing all the way. The only thing that worked was the clipboard part in the back. Hell, even the plastic cover on the front came off so I started sliding my own drawings inside to cover up the LSD inspired design on the front.
I dare not tell my mother of this, though. "For $15 this thing better last you from now until you finish high school." This was in 5th grade, by the way. Wanna hear something funny? Why did I JUST throw that thing away a few years ago?
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Thought I was lying?[/caption]
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