blogabout_this Challenge: A Favorite Childhood Possession
I learned about a newly-created community through my Sim journal. blogabout_this is a community that posts weekly blogging challenges as a way to get people into the blogging habit (or at least provide something to write about). I'm not that regular a blogger, but I thought I'd join with this journal since it's more general and at least if I do a challenge once a week you'll all know I'm still breathing. :-)
This week's challenge: A Favorite Childhood Possession
blog about;
A FAVORITE CHILDHOOD POSSESSION
I am an only child, born in the early 1960's to older parents (Dad was 50, Mom 42 when I was born). Being part of a rural blue-collar family, there was a limit to the material spoilage. Most of the toys and objects I remember from that era have stories around them, either having been passed down from my relatives or gifts for a particular reason. Board games were things I played with when my mother had time to play with me. I had the usual stuffed animals and dolls (mostly baby dolls for some odd reason -- I never had a Barbie or other fashion doll in my life) and since I was hard on things they tended to show wear pretty quickly. My teddy bear had new eyes a couple of times before Mama gave up.
As early as I remember, though, we had one tradition for grocery shopping trips: If I was good in the store, Mama would buy me a book or a magazine. Little Golden Books, the new issue of Jack and Jill or Golden Magazine, the store versions of the literature classics like Pinocchio or Alice in Wonderland all made it into my room eventually. In between I would read the Readers' Digest and National Geographic magazines lying around, the TV Guide and the newspaper of course and whatever other printed matter had been left injudiciously within my reach. I learned to read well before I was 4 and just never lost the habit. As I got older I read not just the newspaper every day when I got home from school but the books on the shelves that Mama got from the book club before she married my father, all the encyclopedias (we had three sets before I got to high school), both etiquette books in the house (Emily Post AND Amy Vanderbilt), old phone books, my mother's reading books from when she was in elementary school, books of Bible stories and even the dictionary as well as whatever I was supposed to be reading for school. I was introduced to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott by reading my mother's copy that her great-aunt gave her that was printed around the turn of the century.
Of course once I got to school I read anything in the school libraries. When I was introduced to the town library it was all over -- I read the children's books but also strayed into the adult section and wandered back and forth there pretty freely. My mother and I often read the same books when I was in high school -- well, I'd read hers if they looked interesting. She was never much interested in my science fiction or fantasy books even if she would buy them for me at the grocery store. That's how I got Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune and Dragonflight among others.
You know, this goes a long way to explaining the groaning bookshelves at my house these days. I can actually blame my parents. :-)
This week's challenge: A Favorite Childhood Possession
blog about;
A FAVORITE CHILDHOOD POSSESSION
I am an only child, born in the early 1960's to older parents (Dad was 50, Mom 42 when I was born). Being part of a rural blue-collar family, there was a limit to the material spoilage. Most of the toys and objects I remember from that era have stories around them, either having been passed down from my relatives or gifts for a particular reason. Board games were things I played with when my mother had time to play with me. I had the usual stuffed animals and dolls (mostly baby dolls for some odd reason -- I never had a Barbie or other fashion doll in my life) and since I was hard on things they tended to show wear pretty quickly. My teddy bear had new eyes a couple of times before Mama gave up.
As early as I remember, though, we had one tradition for grocery shopping trips: If I was good in the store, Mama would buy me a book or a magazine. Little Golden Books, the new issue of Jack and Jill or Golden Magazine, the store versions of the literature classics like Pinocchio or Alice in Wonderland all made it into my room eventually. In between I would read the Readers' Digest and National Geographic magazines lying around, the TV Guide and the newspaper of course and whatever other printed matter had been left injudiciously within my reach. I learned to read well before I was 4 and just never lost the habit. As I got older I read not just the newspaper every day when I got home from school but the books on the shelves that Mama got from the book club before she married my father, all the encyclopedias (we had three sets before I got to high school), both etiquette books in the house (Emily Post AND Amy Vanderbilt), old phone books, my mother's reading books from when she was in elementary school, books of Bible stories and even the dictionary as well as whatever I was supposed to be reading for school. I was introduced to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott by reading my mother's copy that her great-aunt gave her that was printed around the turn of the century.
Of course once I got to school I read anything in the school libraries. When I was introduced to the town library it was all over -- I read the children's books but also strayed into the adult section and wandered back and forth there pretty freely. My mother and I often read the same books when I was in high school -- well, I'd read hers if they looked interesting. She was never much interested in my science fiction or fantasy books even if she would buy them for me at the grocery store. That's how I got Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune and Dragonflight among others.
You know, this goes a long way to explaining the groaning bookshelves at my house these days. I can actually blame my parents. :-)