The Toys 'R' Us of My Childhood is Gone

Tonight I had the chance to drive down the roads of my childhood. Really, I miscalculated the timing and route to dinner, and forgot about HOV restrictions, and had to go the long way around. And that meant driving surface streets through town, right passed the neighborhood I grew up in.

Being a DC native means accepting that nothing stays the same. Sure every town around the world changes with time. But growing up in DC it's a little more extreme. There are very few "natives" in DC. And when you tell someone you are a native, they tell you how they've never met a real local before. 

That's me. Local girl. Still living in her hometown. 

Long-term unemployment has a way with messing with your head, making you wonder if you are good enough, smart enough, anything enough. And then you drive down the street, and see how the world is moving on without you, everything is changing, everything but you. 

But there are some things you are never prepared to see change. 

The Toys 'R' Us of my childhood, my harbinger of happiness and dreams, is gone.
And a Walmart has been built in its place.
This breaks my heart. I'm being forced to acknowledge that the simpler, easier times of the past are gone. I'll never get to wander its giant, fun, overwhelming, noisy, and colorful aisles again.
I have to be a grown-up. And accept that all of my problems cannot be solved with a new toy.
I don't like this. I don't like this at all!

City Girl, Country Girl on Trailer Homes

Not the house from the story, but a very good replica.

I was born and raised just outside of Washington, DC. I'm a Northern Virginia girl to the core. I came from a place where when my sister and I were little girls, our parents would wrap us up in blankets, put us in the "way back" of our Ford station wagon, and my mom would drive my dad to the nearest Metro stop (for my DC friends- we lived in Fairfax City, and the nearest stop at the time was Ballston). Subways, freeways, and going to museums was always just a way of life for me. What can I say? I was born a City Girl.
But every summer my mom would pack us two little girls up, and off we went to my grandparents' house in Mississippi. Sometimes we drove, sometimes we took the train (but we never ever flew. Those were back in the days where my mom just did.not.fly.ever.).
We'd spend our summer days visiting the old folks, going to cemeteries, setting off fireworks (which were legal year round), living in fear of the snakes under the house, learning to shoot BB guns in the yard, helping Grandpa burn the trash (possibly one of the most exciting events of my summer days- we had a large trash pit where you burned your trash. No county waste management out in the boondocks!), going down to the grocery store where you never had to pay, cause they put everything on your tab, and watching a LOT of tv.
The TV was all satellite, and really amused me. The commercials were from all over Alabama, Mississippi, and even as far as New Orleans (about 3 hours away). The commercials were so strange to me. They were some for houses that only cost $20,000 and could be towed anywhere. To my Northern Virginia ears this was incredible stuff. And there were car commercials for car dealers four hours away! I used to wonder how people would get all the way to those dealerships if they didn't have a car yet. And there were a lot of really long commercials that ended in "Praise Jesus!" But it turns out those weren't commercials at all. Those were actual TV shows. And people sent them money. Bizarre.
It was the commercials for the mobile/trailer homes that really intrigued me. My suburban lifestyle had not yet exposed me to such concepts. Houses on wheels. It was an extraordinary concept. I even went to see if our house had wheels under it. (Our house, like all homes in that part of the world, are not flush to the ground, and are actually elevated a few feet. So I really could look under it, Except I was terrified of the supposed snakes and bobcats that lived under there.) But sadly, our house did not have wheels.
Then one day as we were driving back from town I saw it. A real live trailer house! It was up on bricks, but I could still see the wheels under it. I was enthralled by this concept- a house you could pick up and take anywhere with you. Think of all the cool places you could go if your house had wheels! Every day when we drove past I looked for this house. I was just certain that one day it would be gone. I had big dreams for the people inside that trailer. Someday they were going to fly the coop and go see the world in their house on wheels.
But alas, one day I learned the truth about trailer homes. They are nowhere near as glamorous as my little head had imagined them. My little heart was broken.
So today one thing lead to another, and I found myself playing with Google Maps Street View. And sure enough I found myself looking at our little town in MS. I started on Main St, and worked Peg Man down the road towards our house, looking for familiar sites. And there it was- the trailer house, wheels and all. It is still there nearly 30 years later. It made me a little nostalgic.
And a little sad. I was still hoping it would get up and go see the world someday.



(this also explains my lifelong fascination with RV vacations)

A Poem by the 5th Grade Me

We're cleaning out old boxes of pictures, mementoes, etc around here these days, and we've come across a folder full of essays and poems I wrote in the 5th grade. Some of these are just too funny to not share. So prepare for mockery people, cause here comes the good stuff!


Freedom (by the 5th grade me in 1984)
I am free
You are free
We're not controlled by comis

People speak their rights,
Others are banned for theirs,
That's what we are here for,
Others wish they were.

Freedom bells ring,
Some cannot hear,
Senate, Cabinet, President
Communists, and Gorbachav

We stand with civics,
Some in the cold,
We speak out,
for them it's jail,

America, England, Canada
Soviet, Germany Mongolia,
Free, Free, Free
They are comis.

Nothing for granted there.
Everything for granted here.



And Juli has weighed in with the first review of my poetry-
Jules: LMAO!! let's hear it for Soviet era poetry! You were an abnormally patriotic child.

I'm telling you people, when your very first memory is of being lifted up on top of an elephant at a John Warner for Senate rally, you just can't help it!