Remember when...
When I was three or four, my parents sent me to Villa Teresa. We were not Catholic so I'd never seen nuns before but they let us watch cartoons so hey, how bad could they be? I still remember my very first day there, although I'm sure that front door isn't nearly as big as I remember it.
I can actually recall more than you'd think a four year old could recall about pre-school. They made us take naps and then gave us orange juice and saltine crackers and we got swatted if we woke up during nap-time. One of the kids pulled the habit off one of the nuns because rumor had it that they had to get their heads shaved when they became nuns. Not true. The asphalt playground had a teeter-totter and somehow my ring finger got smushed between the board and the asphalt. A week or so later, my blackened fingernail fell off and rolled under the bed of my babysitter and I crawled under there to go get it. I learned what dust bunnies were on that day.
The next year I went to kindergarten, also at Villa Teresa. I remember Sister Teresa Margaret had absolutely no sense of humor and I thought they named the place after her. She was one of those ruler-wielding nuns but thankfully, I never got the ruler. Nope, I had to stand in the corner of the grassy playground (they upgraded when you went to the "big" school) all by myself just because I said the picture of a human heart looked like a piece of ham. No sense of humor. This was a bean chowder and fish on Friday's kind of place, we still had to take naps with juice and saltines as our reward and I remember this really old woman (she was probably 40) with orange hair came in on Tuesdays to teach us tap and another woman came in on Wednesdays to teach us Spanish. Hola! I can still remember how to count and that's about it. But I do wonder if taking a foreign language so early made it so easy to learn French and German later.
Not sure why I bring all this up. Probably because whenever my dad and I get together, we tend to reminisce about Tulsa and yesterday we were talking about Villa Teresa. We also disgusted my stepmother by bringing up Coney I-Lander.
Coney I-Lander is a chain based in Tulsa. The restaurant started as a hole in the wall downtown and it was a Tulsa urban legend (or was it) that their chili was made from stray dogs. Their claim to fame is a slow-grilled hot dog topped with chili, shredded cheese, onions, and mustard, sitting in a steamed bun. The coneys are much smaller than a typical hot dog so it's easy to consume at least a couple. My dad and I love the place. My stepmother, not so much. There used to be the original and then a few out in the burbs but now they're all over the place. Last time I was back in Tulsa, I had one and it wasn't the same but it's a coney and it'll always have a special place in my arteries.