Tag Archives: vintage zebra

Just Life, The Zebra, Throwback Thursday

My Thursday was a Thursday so I’m inventing Throwback Friday.

My Thursday was a Thursday so this is throwback Friday.
Me. In the 80’s. Not in a poodle skirt, but rocking the hell out of my Alice dress and flip flops.

When I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the 1950’s. I think all of America still is, to be honest. But particularly in the 1980’s I remember a significant amount of 50’s themed things – 50’s day at school, watching Grease at sleepovers, 50’s diners, Barbie even had a 57 Chevy. The same era a Sonic drive-in opened up briefly in town. I made a personal goal to drive there in a 57 Chevy of my own someday while wearing a poodle skirt. And then Sonic closed only a few months later and basically ruined everything. Also I got bored of the idea. But mostly it’s their fault.

Someday you should ask me about how I also planned to have my sweet sixteen birthday on this one floating castle that turned out to be the kind of party boat that’s not really apprioriate for kids. The world conspired againt my childhood dreams.

My mom was born in 1950 and so the 1950’s were her decade in the same way the 1980’s are mine. 30 years apart, each. And, just as the 50’s did in my childhood, the 80’s are making a comeback now (god help us all).

But the thing is that the 1950’s were FOREVER ago when I was a kid, but the 1980’s were basically just a few weeks ago if you ask me now.

Is this how it was for my mom? Did the 50’s feel like last week to her when I was obsessed with them? Do my own kids think the 1980’s are a million years ago? For research I asked them and I got insightful answers such as, “The 80’s were like 100 years ago, right?” and “You mean people from the 50’s are still alive?” Ah, youth.

It’s not news to say that time is relative and that it gets shorter as you get older, but I still can’t wrap my brain around it. This year it’ll be 20 years since Kurt Cobain died (the marker by which I organize everything in my lifetime). But it feels like just a couple of years ago.

As Einstein once said about time, “What the hell man?”

Edumacation, Geek, The Zebra

Where I say the word “literary” too many times in one paragraph.

Happy Thing: Reading Harry Potter to Margie

I sometimes get frustrated with my daughter when I recommend a book to her knowing she’ll like it, but she brushes me off or otherwise ignores the suggestion. Have I mentioned my daughter is an ornery Taurus?

But then, if I’m being honest, I have to admit she gets this trait from me (and I’m not even a Taurus). It took me at least 25 years to finally read Anne of Green Gables even though I knew I’d love it. Instead I reread The Ghost at Dawn’s House 647 times.

The interesting thing about the internet is the impressive nerd community. We are in our element here. We can connect with other nerds and correct the grammar of non-nerds while bonding over our intense and sometimes life-destroying love of fictional characters. This is accomplished via various means such as Tumblr, or image posts on Facebook, or Tumblr posts made into image posts and then posted on Facebook. It was through these that I gradually became aware of the fact that normal people, apparently, don’t get overly attached to fictional characters. I assume this must be true based on these posts themselves loudly proclaiming they’re sorry-not-sorry about loving fictional characters. In my personal life most of the people I know have just been like, “Oh you have a crush on Ford Prefect? What? That’s normal.” But I assume that if an entire community online has to support each other in this sense, then we must be alone in this trait.

And so I started examining why I sometimes avoid reading new books and it finally hit me: I have enough fictional friends already. My heart can’t always take the vulnerability of meeting new people who might get hurt and will, at the very least, definitely leave me by the end of the book. And I know I can always reread the book, but that is a different experience which is wonderful in its own way. In any case, that is sort of the point, isn’t it? That I keep rereading the old ones rather than new ones. This isn’t to say I’ve been reading the same six books my whole life – I do read new ones, quite often even. This is just the reason that I find myself magnetically repelled from books I know I’ll love.

When I was in high school (during the 90’s when everyone was a shitty beat poet in Doc Martens and thrift store flannels) my favorite English teacher sort of crushed my soul a little by declaring that you can tell a literary person because they are always in the middle of a bunch of books at once. But I never was. I’m extremely monogamous with books. I think it’s due to my attention issues. And maybe loyalty. I can’t cheat on a book, you know. So I assumed I must not be literary and my occasional hesitancy to avoid good literature reinforced that opinion. Now that I’m an adult I know better (although my inner self needs constant reminders). Literary people can read however the fuck many books they want at once. And the reason I avoid new books sometimes is, I think, an incredibly literary reason. After all, who else by shitty beat poets in Doc Martens and thrift store flannels becomes so attached to fictional characters that they literally cry at the words “the end”?

I mean. Except I don’t write shitty poetry anymore. I mean my inner 90’s grunge hipster teen. And yours, too. You know you have one.