“T double-E double-R double-R double-I double-F double-I double C, C, C!”

What an appropriate (if not mildly confusing to a child learning to spell) description of this classic tale! I’ve loved this E.B. White story since I was 6 years old. Our first grade teacher started reading the book to us toward the end of our school year, as a reward for how well we were all doing in our studies and our behavior. I remember being completely captivated by the tale she spun for us every day during our lunch break (and, yes, I did just make a cheesy spider web joke).

I also remember that the ultimate lesson from Charlotte’s Web about friendship and loss took on a more poignant meaning for us when our teacher had to leave before the school year or the book was finished. Her father had become critically ill and she needed to return home to China to take care of him.

So we got our first lesson in geography when we asked why she couldn’t just visit with her father in the evenings after school, and many of us got our first lesson in how much it stinks to have to say goodbye to someone we’ve grown to care about. She did return the following school year to resume her duties, but I remember the rest of our year was one far less bright. The substitute teacher brought in to take her place was fine and even finished reading Charlotte’s Web for us, but it wasn’t the same. Some teachers are simply irreplaceable.

Skip ahead a few years…actually, skip ahead several years to the first time I ever saw the 1973 animated version of Charlotte’s Web. I was well into my teens by the time I first saw this movie. Thank goodness I’ve yet to lose my ability to appreciate things that most people would deem “silly” or “childish” as they get older. I love this movie! First, it’s a veritable smorgasbord of 70s talent: Paul Lynde, Agnes Moorehead, Henry Gibson, Danny Bonaduce, Dave Madden, and the mellifluous voice of Debbie Reynolds. Plus, the movie was animated by Hanna-Barbera, co-directed by Scooby Doo creator Iwao Takomoto, and featured voice artist Don Messick, the original voice of that groovy Great Dane!

Yes, the movie is

Oh noes. While looking up info for this Flashback Friday, I just discovered that Suncoast Motion Picture Company is officially no more 🙁

Why does this make me so very sad? Because most of every week’s allowance when I was a young geekling somehow made its way into Suncoast’s cash registers. This was, hands down, the most awesome store in our local mall. In fact, Suncoast and the Walden Books were the only two stores that I ever wanted…nay, needed to go to (Spencer Gifts was also a favorite haunt, but it was too tacky to be considered mandatory). I literally spent hours wandering around Suncoast, most often abandoned there by friends or family who grew weary of trying to coax me away.

What made Suncoast so special? Simply put, it was a nerd store. In addition to an impressive (and impressively overpriced) movie collection, they sold books, T-shirts, action figures, posters, games, and the odd movie memorabilia. Remember the photo I posted a while ago of my nerdy book shelf? A lot of the books on that top shelf were bought from Suncoast. As were several of my movie posters, practically all of the VHS tapes that I’ve been slowly replacing with DVDs, a fair number of action figures…and half of my wardrobe from my teenage years.

Oh, how I loved Suncoast’s T-shirt collection. The photos below only show some of the shirts I bought from Suncoast (and, yes, most of the shirts not pictured were black, too). Actually, though, for full disclosure, the TNG excuse shirt came from Intergalactic Trading Company, another of my favorite haunts when I was younger.

Obviously, I still own these shirts, still in relatively mint condition, except for poor Batman, who now looks a bit on the charcoal gray side (I’m freakishly particular about my laundry style). They’re all in storage at my parents’ house, though. I find that people tend to take you more seriously in certain situations when you don’t have Cyclops glaring at them from your T-shirt.

Okay, that’s all a lie. I placed them in storage because I didn’t want them to fade anymore than they already have. Oh, that confession is just riddled with nerd shame!

What could be even nerdier? How about admitting that when I went to the Trek convention where I met Gates McFadden, I was wearing the X-Files T-shirt pictured below? Yeah, I know, wrong franchise. It was my way of showing solidarity with red-haired doctors on sci-fi shows. Think Ms. McFadden caught that?

…

I’m now incredibly sad. Suncoast is no more and I’ve been so disconnected from those days that I wasn’t even remotely aware of this until now. Who knows how long ago this took place. Apparently, they were absorbed by f.y.e, which is pretty much a hybrid of Suncoast and Sam Goody.

Holy crap! Sam Goody is gone now, too! They’ve been absorbed by f.y.e! WTH? Is this store the mall version of the Borg? Or am I pretty much giving away the fact that I step inside a mall about twice a year, and usually it’s with a particular destination in mind that I run to with blinders of disdain for my surroundings firmly in place?

Oh well. It’s not like I’ve set foot in a Suncoast in years anyway. Last time was at a Going Out of Business sale at the store near where I live now. That was about 6 years ago. Still, it does make me feel slightly more reminiscent for those days in which my biggest decision was whether I wanted to buy the new X-Men T-shirt or the special edition VHS of Halloween…

Today’s flashback is just a quick one, denizens. I was going to do one that I’ve been putting off for a while now, but the overwhelming nature of the topic…overwhelmed me. Truth is, though, I think I’ve just built it up so huge in my brain that I’m now frightened of it. Jinkies, it’s just a cartoon after all.

Right. Like Star Trek is just a TV show.

Anyway, so UNO. I’ve already mentioned that I was never really one for board games when I was a pup. But UNO was different. Easy to transport, easy to put together, easy to play on the fly. It was the perfect distraction at recess as we were transitioning out of that age range of monkey bars and merry-go-rounds and heading toward the surly insouciance of teendom.

I remember spending several months of total UNO submersion during the latter part of my elementary school days (I think it was 5th grade, but it could have been 6th grade). Every recess, we would gather under the one tree on the playground and start dealing UNO cards. To this day, I’m surprised that my old school didn’t ban us from playing this game, citing some bizarre mandate that it was akin to gambling and the devil would possess us if we didn’t stop.

One particular game still sticks in my mind, and subsequently still makes me laugh whenever I think about it. We were well into our latest round of games that recess, parked under our regular tree, under the bright spring sky. One girl suddenly called out, “UNO”…and was promptly shat upon by a bird sitting in the tree. Plopped right down in the middle of her skirt.

She ran in and washed up in the restroom, came back for another round, inevitably called “UNO” again…and this time the bird shat on her shoulder.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Third time’s the charm? This time, when she called, “UNO” the bird hit bullseye right on her head. And oh the screaming that ensued, both from her and from the howls of laughter from the rest of us in the game. It was too perfect a set of coincidences, something so seemingly staged as to be from a movie. Was it something about her voice that had an effect on this poor little bird similar to the way a woman suffered epileptic seizures whenever she heard Entertainment Tonight’s Mary Hart? Or was she simply yelling UNO so loudly that she simply (and literally) scared the shit out of this bird?

Who knows. All I know is that it was my favorite game of UNO that I have ever played. I also know that whenever I get ready to call UNO any more, I always make sure to look up first.

Post-Flashback Follow-up

Um. They make a Star Trek UNO. Most awesome UNO EVAR (until they make a TNG version, and then that will win :-D).

Ah, Sweet Thunder. This was my very first “Big Girl” bicycle. It was a classic Huffy “no-speed” with fenders and a banana seat, and those awesome bumpy off-road tires. And its own name and number. The flash kind of washes out the number, but it’s 2. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why the bike was called Sweet Thunder. Or why my parents thought I should have a pink bike. Minus a horrible 6th-grade graduation dress decision made by my mom, involving a pink dress that flared in all the places that a fat girl never wants her clothes to flare, this was the only thing my parents ever gave me that was pink. Well, Pink Panther…but he doesn’t count. He’s supposed to be pink.

My parents bought this bike for me for, I believe, my 5th birthday. Yes, before you even ask, it was way too big for me at the time. But my dad, realizing that his daughter was destined to have massive growth spurts throughout her childhood, knew that I would quickly grow tall enough to handle this wheeled pink fury. Plus, it’s a “girl bike” frame, so I could stand up and pedal without fear of falling on that dangerously pointless bar that “boy bikes” have.

[Boy Bike Tangent: Could someone please explain to me why the bicycle frames built for boys have that bar positioned in such a place that would, I assume, cause maximum damage to any guy who slipped and knocked into it? It makes no sense to me whatsoever. I mean, I get that the reason that girls’ bikes don’t have the bar is so that we delicate flowers can mount our bikes modestly while wearing our hoop skirts and corsets, but that bar just seems so ill-positioned for the gender with “outtie” bits as opposed to “innie” bits that might fare a bit better in an altercation involving that bar. Were boy bikes designed by some bitter spinster who wanted to hurt any man who rode her creation? Or is it just a stupid piece of metal that someone tacked onto the frame to make sure that dudes knew they weren’t riding a girly bike? They were riding a manly bike with a manly, ball-breaking appendage!

Oh, and by the way, I’m still giggling from writing “mount our bikes.”]

So when I first got this bike, it definitely needed training wheels. I hadn’t yet developed the enviable balance I have today, which allows me to do things like stand on one foot while unlacing one of my Docs after having way too many margarita swirlies down at Uncle Julio’s. I also think I was terrified by the sheer size of this bike. I was a wee pup when I was 5. The freakish growth spurts (both of the vertical and horizontal varieties) didn’t start to kick in until around 7. So the training wheels stayed on much longer than they should have.

Finally, my dad decided that it was time to call my bluff. He removed the training wheels while I was at school, so when I came home, there sat Sweet Thunder, mocking me with its now only two wheels. Being the pure bundle of stubborn that I am, however, I refused to play my dad’s game.

That’s when the bribery came in.

Growing ever-irritated by the fact that the bike was steadily developing a patina of dust from my disuse, my dad threw down the gauntlet in the form of monetary inducement. If I could ride my bike around our quarter-acre of yard without stopping or falling, he’d give me $20.

Next day, there I was, doing my best to learn how to ride a bike with only two wheels. However, not without incident. We had a holly tree in our back yard. It was a beautiful tree, especially in the snow. Looked very Christmas-y with its dark green leaves and red holly berries. Know when a holly tree isn’t pretty? When you’re losing control of your Huffy and heading face-first into a low-hanging branch full of prickly holly leaves.

Know what makes a face full of holly leaf scratches okay? A crisp 20-dollar bill in your pocket. Yes, sadly, I had to be bribed into learning how to ride a big girl bike.

Through the years, I decked out Sweet Thunder with streamers that inevitably disintegrated, a headlight kit, a bell that at one time had a little Snoopy on top that spun whenever you rang the bell (Snoopy fell of at some point, but you can still see the bell portion on the left handlebar grip), and a little pink basket that had Snoopy’s “Joe Cool” alter ego leaning against a giant strawberry. Oh, that I wish I was kidding on that last part. The only reason that the basket isn’t still on the bike is because the bottom rotted out. They sure made quality bike accessories back in the day!

I rode this bike until Christmas of my 6th grade year (yes, the year of the traumatic pink graduation dress) when my parents upgraded me to a 10-speed. This time, the bike was blue. And I outgrew it in pretty much a year and inevitably had to switch to riding my dad’s 10-speed. Dangerous, those growth spurts.

Strangely, my dad has kept Sweet Thunder in the family. Even during the great detritus dump that my parents did when they moved out of the area, he refused to get rid of my first bike (although I believe he did sell my 10-speed). The Huffy was packed into the moving truck and now lives in my parents’ garage, where the above photo was taken. I asked my dad why he kept this bike, but he just mumbled something about not knowing why and then promptly wandered away to organize his tools or something. I say he’s far more sentimental than he ever lets on, and that’s why my little pink Huffy bike still has a home.

Whatever the reason, it’s sweet. Just like Sweet Thunder.

I’m sorry, denizens. I know that I try to keep things relatively light and funny on Flashback Fridays. But I still has a sad. Data’s passing has impacted me far more than I expected it to…although it’s a bit silly on my part to ever have thought that such a thing wouldn’t upset me. Like I said, he was in my life for more than half my existence.

Also, from a thoroughly selfish standpoint (although, really, what other is there in the blog-o-sphere, eh?), I realized the other day that this is the first time I am completely pet-less since I was 7 years old. In that time, I’ve had four hamsters, two dogs, one cat, and a squirrel. Yes, a squirrel. She was awesome. I really need to find and scan those slides.

And while I know that one should never have favorites among their dependents (I’m not going to call them children because…well, I’d rather not envision birthing a four-legged furry), I think the losses of Data and Jodie have hit me the hardest of them all.

I know that there are “dog people” and there are “cat people.” The debate has always somewhat baffled me. It’s like being “Kirk people” or “Picard people.” Both have wonders to offer, lessons to teach, love to give. Plus, we all know Janeway was the best anyway.

Ha. See? Not too sad to resist geek speak.

I loved both pets equally and differently. Of Jodie I once wrote:

You were my serendipity

Today’s a nasty one for work overload, denizens, but I haven’t forgotten that it’s…Flashback Friday! And so today, I bring you PEZ! More precisely, I give you a photo of Loba’s very own PEZ dispenser collection. Perty, innit? As I’m sure you can no doubt deduce, most of the PEZ dispensers I received were holiday gifts…something tucked into a Christmas stocking or Easter basket or received in my big Halloween pillowcase/bag. It’s a lovely gift for any kid you want hyped up on an instant sugar rush (especially if said kid doesn’t belong to you). You’re pretty much giving them a toy that when they play with it, it delivers a little brick of pure flavored sugar. And the more you play with it, the more sweet goodness you get. It’s a life lesson best learned early.

[Fhat the wuck? Did I just make an inappropriate joke at the expense of a childhood memory?!]

My very first PEZ dispenser was the little chick wearing a red hat. Said hat comes off. So does Santa’s hat as well as the two snowmen’s hats. And noses. Rudolph’s ears come off, and Batman’s fleshy face slides out of his blue cowl. Yes, I used to disassemble and reassemble my PEZ dispensers with such frequency that I’m amazed all the pieces still fit back into place (see my Mouse Trap Flashback for more on this).

I have a vague memory of sitting in the back of our family Chevette (the destined-to-be-mine blueberry Nerd Mobile), taking all my PEZ dispensers apart and then making them do battle like Transformers. I so desperately wanted Transformers. I got PEZ dispensers instead. So I made do.

[Oh dear Prophets, was I really that big a geek when I was little?]

Know what I love most about this photo of my PEZ collection? How I inadvertently snapped a bonus flashback photo by lining them up on top of our old Betamax VCR. Betamax!! Yeah, my dad still has it, and still has it in working condition. See how awesome it is to have tinkerer blood? It’s strangely comforting to know that I can still watch my Beta tapes of Troop Beverly Hills and the remake of The Blob whenever I go to visit.

Also, see the little telly in the background, reflecting my dorkiness in the screen? This is my old TV, the one from my Hunt the Wumpus Flashback! Told you my dad still had it.

So, there you go. PEZ. Go get some. Rot your teeth. Bounce off the walls. Pretend the dispensers are Transformers. It’s all Loba-approved fun 😉

This is one of those flashbacks that I’ve been carrying around in my noggin almost since the beginning of this series. I haven’t written about it until now because I couldn’t remember exactly what it was called (you know, because it has such a difficult name to remember) and so I couldn’t locate any information on it. Plus, I was too busy unlocking my inner Trek geek that I couldn’t be bothered to figure it out.

Then I just happened to type in “pour colored sand into water” in Google and bam…or rather WHAM-O. I found my flashback! Magic Sand!!

Wham-O, the company most famous in my mind for their Frisbees, marketed Magic Sand back in the early 1980s. According to this Neatorama.com page:

Magic Sand is ordinary beach sand coated with tiny particles of pure silica, then exposing them to vapors of a silicon compound called trimethylhydroxysilane. The result is a hydrophobic or water-hating sand: when exposed to water, the sand would “stick” to each other rather than to the water, and therefore remain dry.

Originally created as a means of trapping oil spills (so sayeth Wikipedia), this hydrophobic sand was deemed too expensive to produce for such a namby-pamby tree-hugger purpose. So the capitalists got hold of it and turned it into a financial bonanza aimed at the most awesomest marketing group imaginable: kids! After all, what parent can withstand the repetitive torture of a kid who reallyreallyreallyreally wants something?

http://www.hulu.com/embed/WNU44-VbepDrXaRBlCvIFA/0

I remember loving my Magic Sand. I received the kit one Christmas, so I had all four colors: red, yellow, green, and blue. The anal-retentive side of me prevented me from mixing the colors at first. Yes, I was a Magic Sand segregationist. For about a minute. It was just too much fun mixing and swirling the colors to keep them separated for long. It was also too difficult to keep them in their respective bottles. I mean, look at that design! Great for squirting the sand into the water…not so great when antsy little hands are trying to get the sand back in. After a while, all four colors of Magic Sand ended up in one big Ziploc baggie.

I wish I could remember what happened to my Magic Sand. It was such a cool thing for an introverted only child…I loved building little underground cities or strange abstract designs. It was one of those great “quiet time” activities that would keep me occupied for hours. At this point in my life, Magic Sand sounds like it would hold quite the relaxing Zen quality to it. I could pull out a bottle during staff meetings and just squirt my way to serenity.

Wait. That sounded really bad.

I just did a search on Amazon.com for Magic Sand. Apparently, it’s now being marketed as “Aqua Sand,” “Mars Sand,” or “Space Sand.” Whatever they’re calling it now, I’m quite surprised and admittedly a little excited to see that it’s still on the market. I might just have to treat myself to some. I did get an Amazon gift card for Christmas that I’ve yet to use…

Say what you will about Paul Reubens…but there was a “train wreck” brilliance to his man-child creation known the world over as Pee-wee Herman. Equal parts kitschy, creative, confusing, quirky, and deranged (dare we even say, perverse?), Pee-wee is undoubtedly one of the more, um, unique icons of our 80s childhoods.

Personally, I love Pee-wee Herman. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was a standard part of my Saturday morning cartoon ritual from the beginning to the end of its 5-season run, and I loved every minute. There was nothing on TV quite like Pee-wee and his cavalcade of insanity: the secret word ritual, the bizarre talking furniture, Jambi (WTF does “Mekka Lekka Hi-Mekka Hiney Ho” mean?), giant underpants!, the kooky neighbors and friends…Miss Yvonne, the King of Cartoons, Captain Carl (Phil Hartman?), Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne?!?). It was weekly weirdness injections in 30-minute doses.

See the little guy to the right of this entry? He’s mine. That was the scooter that Pee-wee would ride off on at the end of each show. The weird helmet came about toward the end, I guess in response to national bike helmet laws that had recently been passed. See? Pee-wee was always trying to teach us positive lessons.

And Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? Don’t even get me started. I watched that movie so regularly, it was like my own personal religion for a while. Why? I have no friggin’ clue. But it had loads of everything that used to make me laugh. Actually, after watching some clips now on YouTube, I realize that it still makes me laugh. Why I don’t own this movie is beyond me.

Know which part used to make me laugh the most? It’s this:

I think I may have just squeed a little while watching that clip again.

Reubens’s legal run-ins tarnished Pee-wee Herman, especially the mysterious 2002 child pornography charges that were somehow related to more explicit charges against Jeffrey “Ed Rooney” Jones. Reubens’s charges were expunged from his record; Jones is now a registered sex offender. Reubens had made an announcement the year prior to these charges that he intended to bring back Pee-wee. Obviously, those plans were curtailed.

Until now. A movie version of Pee-wee’s Playhouse is currently in production, starring a now nearly 60-year-old Paul Reubens. Talk about getting a “no” feeling. I’d much rather watch the original show than this. Netflix currently has the first two seasons for rent along with the more adult 1983 Pee-wee Herman Show. I also just discovered that they have Pee-wee’s Big Adventure for instant watching pleasure.

Hmm. Um, I’ve gotta go now. Very important meeting I forgot I had to attend. Yah. Now it’s time for a Penny cartoon!!

Ah, Tim. Timmy. You sexy piece of plastic and rubber. You were my desire, my need, my oasis in the desert, my ambrosia, the sparkle in my eyes, the spring in my step, the key to my heart’s contentedness.

Okay, not really. You were just that cheap hunk of plastic that they used to bribe us stupid kids into participating in all those awful school fundraisers.

There’s a flashback right there. Remember school fundraisers? How craptacular were they? My name’s not Willie Loman and I don’t have a case of Fuller brushes, so why on earth would I need to go banging on people’s doors in the middle of winter, trying to persuade them into buying a sausage log or those horrifyingly chalky chocolate bars from me so my school could repave their parking lot? Plus, I can’t believe that schools would actively encourage us to go up to strangers’ houses like that. Talk about the ultimate in pedophilia delivery service.

Memory shiver.

I guess they don’t really do that anymore, though. I know that schools still have fundraisers, but I can’t ever recall having a kid come to my door, trying to sell me something. No, now they leave it up to their parents to bring their sales brochures and forms to work to guilt unsuspecting coworkers into buying a roll of Sally Foster wrapping paper or a Yankee candle. Or two. Okay, maybe three…but I’m not buying anything else, dammit!

So where does Tim the Flying Bird fit into this scenario? Well, every year, the same representative from the same organization would come to our school. Our teachers would usher us into the church auditorium, where we would file into our respective pews, all grades from 1st through 12th (the wee little kids in nursery and kindergarten were spared the marketing indoctrination). And for the next hour, the representative would go through all variety of insane machinations in an attempt to fire us up about the prospect of yet again freezing our asses off for another fundraiser.

Part of every schlocky spiel was Tim the Flying Bird. The representative would start talking to us about how awesome it would be if we all could meet a certain sales quota…say 50 sausage logs or 100 cheese crocks shaped like cows wearing hats (no, I’m not making these items up; yes, they are as disgusting as they sound). And if we met our quota, we’d get something awesome. Something extraordinary. Something miraculous.

We’d get Tim!

Honestly, I wonder if anyone else out there recognizes this thing. When I did a Google search for pictures, this was the only one I could find that looked like what I remember as Tim the Flying Bird. He came in two color schemes: this blue and white one and a yellow bird body with brown, red, and yellow wings. The wings had little spokes that fit into the bird body in a rather flimsy way. And there was a rubber band on the inside of the body that you’d wind using the crank on Tim’s bum.

The whole time the sales rep would be psyching us up verbally about the quotas, he’d be on the dais, winding away on Tim’s crank. And then he’d release the bird. Away Tim would soar, flapping all around the chapel, carried by his cheap diaphanous wings and the sugar-coated shouts and trills of hundreds of kids in excitement overdrive.

Can you imagine? A chapel full of kids, all worked up into a frothy frenzy over this? Talk about a good sales pitch. We’d march out into our respective neighborhoods, hellbent on meeting our quotas so that we, too, could experience the sheer joy of owning our very own Tim.

I must have owned at least five of these silly things, if I owned one. I remember standing on our back porch, winding Tim’s crank and releasing him into the yard. He’d flap and flutter for however long the rubber band could keep him aloft…and then crash to the ground with a crinkly thunk. After a while, one of two things would happen: The rubber band inside would break, or he’d land on something that would puncture one of his wings. And that would be the end of Tim’s flying days.

Funny the flotsam that I retain from my childhood. Some days I can’t even remember the password to my online time sheet, but I can still remember Tim. He was silly, he was cheap, he would be ridiculed and mocked by today’s computer-savvy kinder. But he was fun for a while. I kind of wish I still had a Tim. I bet he’d be really fun at staff meetings.