What a soul-crushing disappointment to discover that a predecessor, probably someone exactly my age, had circled all the hidden items.\u00a0 How could someone be so selfish and spoil the fun for the next anxious kid?\u00a0 Here was my introduction to thinking beyond myself, beyond friends and family, to people I would never meet or know.\u00a0 I never circled hidden pictures.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Betrayal<\/p>\n
I had an unruffled childhood \u2013 loving parents who never argued, a family of means with a home in an affluent suburb, tennis lessons, sleep-away camp, spring break ski trips and summer vacations.\u00a0 Life unspooled before more \u2013 high school at a boarding school out east, college, perhaps a career, but knowing that a housewife was an acceptable goal.<\/p>\n
Things fell apart a little bit when I was fourteen and walked into town to buy a pack of Dentyne.\u00a0 This cinnamon flavored gum was the official gum of our family.\u00a0 My mother never bought us candy, but did make an allowance for Dentyne, and Dentyne alone.\u00a0 Bazooka gum was too d\u00e9class\u00e9 and the other sticks of gum \u2013 Juicy Fruit, Doublemint \u2013 were large and unladylike.\u00a0 Even better the cute chubby pieces of Dentyne came with a health message.\u00a0 This gum kept my teeth white and breath fresh.<\/p>\n
I marched into the drug store clutching my nickel and was stunned when the cashier told me the price had gone up. \u00a0Why did the owner turn on me? \u00a0I was the epitome of loyalty, always buying my Dentyne at his store.\u00a0 And why did Dentyne betray me?\u00a0 I never chewed anything else and looked down on those who did.\u00a0 I scurried across the street to take my business elsewhere but was again disappointed. What was happening, were these two stores in cahoots?<\/p>\n
Something bigger was going on.<\/p>\n
It slowly dawned on me that I was experiencing the dispassionate grip of inflation, until then an abstract concept my father grumbled about.\u00a0 Now it was a chilling reality. If inflation could attack something as lowly as a nickel package of gum, it must be pervasive, and that must be the reason my father worked so hard. Staying ahead of inflation emerged as a grim goal of the life-time of work stretching before me.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 Envy<\/p>\n
As idyllic as my childhood was, I also lived in a suburb where you could always find somebody with a little bit more.\u00a0 Our next-door neighbors the Reeds were that family.\u00a0 We were exceptionally close with the Reeds, with kids from each family lining up in age with each other.\u00a0 There was so much traffic between the houses that Mrs. Reed put in a paved path through the muddy woods that separated us.\u00a0 But I always knew they were in a different category.\u00a0 One year we went with them on a train trip to go skiing in New Mexico.\u00a0 Mr. Reed was the president of Santa Fe Railway, so they all rode in the private car at the head of the train.\u00a0 My father was a salesman for a printing company.\u00a0 We went in the sit-up cars. I was standing next to my father looking out the window when the train curved around a sharp bend.\u00a0 \u201cLook, up there ahead, that must be the Reed\u2019s private car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Good Humor man solidified their status.\u00a0 Back in the 1960s, Good Humor ice cream bars were not available in stores; you could only get them from the Good Humor man, who parked his van at the beach, park or at other public places.\u00a0 My parents never indulged in a Good Humor; they considered them a luxury compared to the economy of buying a tub of ice cream.\u00a0 One evening I was standing with my father in our driveway when I heard the tinkling bell of the ice cream truck.\u00a0 Why would the Good Humor man come to our dead-end street?\u00a0 His eyes widened as the truck pulled into the Reeds driveway.\u00a0 \u201cGood lord,\u201d he said, \u201cthe Good Humor man is making a house call at the Reeds.\u201d<\/p>\n
4.\u00a0 Failure<\/p>\n
In my grade school, social status was based on grades and athletic ability.\u00a0 I was reasonably athletic and hard-working enough to avoid the visible signs of a loser \u2013 at least until eighth grade when the girls’ choir emerged as an additional status symbol.\u00a0 I marched into the tryouts full of confidence since I had been repeatedly told, “You have such a musical family.”<\/p>\n
The piano teacher thumped away as I sang with great gusto.\u00a0 The music stopped in mid-verse.\u00a0 The teacher said, “That’s enough,” and called\u00a0for the next student.\u00a0 I supposed the teacher didn’t need to hear the whole song to recognize my obvious talent.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t make the choir,a stunning blow since with a handful of exceptions \u2013Kathy Washburne, Emily Clow, Peggy Huber and Nini Swift \u2013 everyone else was in.<\/p>\n
This failure seeped into my identity, an immutable fact equaling my more visible successes.\u00a0 I could not sing.\u00a0 At one Christmas caroling party I was pointedly asked not to sing.\u00a0 At the same time, I saw how much my mother enjoyed her music, and how much pleasure she brought to others \u2013 and by the way she was very bright and athletic.\u00a0 \u00a0I could not match all her footsteps.<\/p>\n
5.\u00a0 Fear<\/p>\n
Before the days of cable, VHS or DVD, the Wizard of Oz aired once a year, always on a Sunday afternoon at 5 PM CST at the beginning of November.\u00a0 I\u2019d be horsing around outside, playing in leaf piles or playing touch football, when someone would announce, \u201cHey isn\u2019t the Wizard of Oz on tonight?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 We would rush inside, through the scuttling fall leaves, trailing the brisk air into the family room where we squished together on the couch.<\/p>\n
The movie scared me.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t the troubling themes of finding your way home or menacing adults who wanted to kill your dog.\u00a0 I had complete faith in Dorothy, in fact she was a fine role model \u2013 a young girl who was a leader with an infectious can-do attitude.\u00a0 My respect for Dorothy blossomed as she moved on down the road.\u00a0 In the sepia world of the Kansas farm, she was helpless, frantic and casually dismissed.\u00a0 In her fantasy world, she became a better version of herself, formulating and sticking to a plan with a mentoring and equal relationship with men.<\/p>\n
It was the flying monkeys.\u00a0 They terrified me.<\/p>\n
In the final third of the movie, the sky darkens with squadrons of flying monkeys sent off to bring Dorothy back alive.\u00a0 This was my cue to skulk into the kitchen and make myself a honey sandwich, not returning until I heard \u201cThe witch is dead!\u201d\u00a0 It was too nerve-wracking to watch the monkeys drop from the sky, shred the scarecrow and snatch Dorothy away.\u00a0 No matter how courageous and plucky, she\u00a0could not surmount these overwhelming odds, nor could she rely on the non-violent Glinda whose best weapon was a soothing rain in the poppy fields.\u00a0 Dorothy and her pals were doomed.\u00a0 Of course it didn\u2019t help that I was watching the movie at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis.\u00a0 \u00a0During our school bomb drills we would crouch\u00a0under our flimsy wooden desks with our hands over our heads, but we\u00a0all knew we were doomed if the Russians dropped one.<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: 1.\u00a0 Selfishness I don\u2019t recall\u00a0absorbing the difficult childhood mandate to share, but by age nine or ten, I had a grasp on the give and take of toys and the painful sacrifice of a split cookie.\u00a0 At this point sharing … Continue reading ![\"Facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/48x48\/facebook.png\" "\\"Follow")
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