My Life As A Hobby

  I would guess most kids growing up today wouldn’t want anything that their parents had. We had three channels. They have about 300. We barely had black and white TV. They have color and high def. We had a single home phone that was tethered to the wall with a cord. They have one on their wrist. But we had one thing that I’m sure most of this generation is missing out on - the drive-in movie.  What a wonderful thing it was - watching a motion picture under a starry sky while you were in the comfort of your own car.  It was almost magical. Rows of cars and speakers facing a giant silver screen. Being indoors  and outdoors at the same time.  As a child, going to the drive in was a major event. My sister and I would put on our pajamas (the kind with sewn-in feet), get blankets and pillows, and head for the back seat of our 1963 Chevy Impala. Mom, always the thrifty homemaker, popped a copious amount of popcorn and placed it in a brown paper grocery bag. No n...

I went to a children’s beauty pageant this week. That’s because I had a beauty at the pageant - words spoken as a proud grandparent.  I was happy to attend. However, I must go on record by saying that I’m not a fan of these things. There is an inherent cruelty that you just can’t hide.   It was on full display when the winners in the kindergarten category were announced. It was kind of depressing because one girl garnered most of the awards, and the others stood and watched silently, sadly. I found it hard to watch. Two of the tiny contestants were in tears. Life is full of enough heartache - why start dumping it on them at the age of four?   That said, I will be the first one to tell you I do not care for participation trophies, especially in team sports. The score is a measurable thing. You win or you lose. But in beauty pageants, there is lots of subjectivity. So, it could be that the girl with the nicest, most expensive dress and the nicest, most exp...

Occasionally, I run across something that baffles me. For example, I am mystified when I watch the Discovery Channel do a program on how the Egyptians made the pyramids.  I wonder how a bunch of caveman built Stonehenge. And I don’t know if anyone will figure out why those enormous heads on Easter Island were carved.  As for Machu Pichu. - I’ve got no clue.  But there is another puzzle that also has me flummoxed. Why are so many people backing into parking places? This is a rather recent phenomenon, but it is definitely happening.  I went to the YMCA today and the parking lot had at least a third of the cars had their headlights pointing out.  When I was in my twenties I had a friend of mine who always backed his car in the driveway because he had an expired car tag. Did the same thing at Walmart. I get that.  But surely there can’t be that many people who have out of date car registrations.  Perhaps some of these folks have knocked off a liquor ...

      As I look back on the life I lived, I seem to focus a lot on my childhood.  I think most anyone does. As the time between now and then grows longer, our memories seem to grow fonder. However, I readily admit that life is mostly better nowadays, although it’s a lot more complicated.  Nevertheless, many of us still pine for the simple days of long ago; the days before social media and iPhones ruled kid’s lives. The days when Google was a set of World Book Encyclopedias.  There are lots of people, places, and things that were important to me when I was growing up (not including parents or siblings- that’s a given). All of them certainly enriched my childhood, and many of them gave me life lessons I still use to this day. Some of them got me in trouble, some of them gave me a heartache - of course, now I can see that it was all part of the growing up experience.   Let me list a few of mine for you. I hope it makes you think about some of you...

One thing that’s funny about snow in the south is how we will desperately try to find something to use to slide down an icy hill.  Besides the folks who buy 6 gallons of milk and 10 loaves of bread when they see a snowflake, lots of southerners will begin to search for anything that might give them a chance to take a icy, fast ride.  Most of the time their creations fail - but, it’s usually because there’s not enough snow on the ground. Hey, even an Olympic bobsled won’t work in a dusting of snow. However, on the rare occasion when we get a few inches of the white stuff, people will pull out you-name-it; garbage can lids, pieces of laminate, a cookie sheet, inner tubes, dog beds, even a cardboard box wrapped in a garbage bag, to  joy ride down a steep, slick incline.  Fortunately for me and my three boys,   years ago I built a nice wooden homemade sled. I even nailed a couple of flat curtain rods to the bottom, which made that sucker really fast. Most of th...