family

The Smarts against the Dumbs

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‘Show me a kid who grows up playing games, and I’ll show you a grownup who knows how to play games.’

If you have the good fortune to have access to the New York Times on Sunday (forgive the local journalistic boosterism), then you may already be familiar with a feature called ‘Sunday Routine’. New Yorkers of all stripes, including Jim Grant (better known as Lee Child), are asked about their, um, Sunday routines. Heady stuff.

Most of the New Yorkers profiled here, interestingly enough, do much the same as me and everyone else on a Sunday: read the paper, and drink coffee. (‘Lee Child’ drinks even more coffee on Sunday than I do, and that’s saying something.)

Well. I was giving this week’s piece (about some landscape designer or whatever) a perfunctory skim when I noticed her saying that her son wakes her every Sunday with a demand to play ‘Sorry!’. I felt an immediate connection with Whatshername, even though she’s decades younger and lives in a row house in Queens. And it was all about that demand to play a game.

When I was a kid — and even when The Child was actually a child — games were a big deal. I don’t, alas, have photographic evidence, but I swear on a stack of Scrabble dictionaries that we did in fact play hours and hours of Sorry! Also Clue (Miss Purple in the library with a candlestick, anyone?) and Monopoly. (I liked to ‘be’ the iron, for some strange reason.) Board games were big. Very big. And, of course, there was Scrabble. But before I get into Scrabble, let’s talk about cards. Continue reading

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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‘There is nothing scarier than a teenage girl’

A spirit once haunted my house. And it wasn’t just at Halloween. An alien presence took possession of The Child when she was, oh, 14 or so, and stuck around for about three years. Three very long, very frightening years.

Before she was possessed by this alien force — let’s call it the Spirit of Teen Girlhood — The Child was a normal, happy little sprite. An inventive sort who insisted, for unexplained reasons of her own, on dressing as objects for Halloween. As the years went by, she was, among other things, a Number Two Pencil, a Bloomingdale’s Bag, and a Pre-War Building. (Check her out as a Strawberry in ‘Happy Ho-made Halloween’.) Here are a couple more:

The Child as a candle, complete with flame

The Child as a candle, complete with flame. And flame-colored socks

Have a Child stand in a hole in a cardboard box, drape newspaper-stuffed leggings over the front, staple on a squirrel, and you've got a Park Bench

Cut a Child-sized hole in a cardboard box, drape newspaper-stuffed leggings over the front, staple on a squirrel, and you’ve got a Park Bench

Notice that in both of these shots she is smiling. While, in the picture at the top of this post, she is making that ‘okay okay, I’ll let you take a picture if you hurry up about it and get the heck out of here’ face. (Did you notice her eyes? I swear that’s not red-eye; that’s the Spirit peeking out.) Continue reading

In an alternate universe, I would have been a redhead

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‘What if Mom had married the Insurance Salesman?’

When we kids were bored and it was too rainy or too cold to throw us outside, our Mom would let us rummage through this big cardboard box of snapshots that she kept in the attic. Most of them were shots of family members. And all of them, in those days, were in black and white. Take this example, picturing my brothers Scott and Roger modeling (probably) Easter outfits, made by my Mom herself:

Incredibly cute, though typical, snapshot to be found in the big cardboard box

A typical, yet incredibly cute, snapshot to be found in the big cardboard box

We would pick through the pictures, admiring ourselves as Cute Little Tots, taking turns guessing the identities of the adults, and smirking at how funny everybody looked in the Olden Days.

No mistaking this relative: Aunt Net (short for Annette). Though we kids thought she was named after her hairnet

It was easy to spot Aunt Net (short for Annette, though we kids thought she was named after her hairnet)

One rainy boring day we were sifting away through the box and happened across a picture of an Adult We Didn’t Know. Who’s this? We asked our Mom. ‘Oh, that’s Jim. He’s a man I used to go out with.’ (‘Go out with? Like, as in on a date?’) We were shocked into horrified silence. Continue reading

‘Roger did it’

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‘It’s a wonder every Middle Child isn’t an ax murderer’

To have a Middle Child in your family you need, at minimum (duh), three kids. Mine had five. We had the Big Kids (Scott and me), the Little Kids (Laura and Doug). And poor Roger — who, incidentally, just had a birthday Saturday– was the one stuck in the middle.

That's Roger, right there in the middle. Literally, and figuratively

That’s Roger, right there in the middle. Literally, and figuratively

I say ‘poor Roger’ because this is the kind of thing he’d hear all day: ‘Roger! Stop bothering those Big Kids. They have homework to do.’ Or: ‘Roger! Stop teasing those Little Kids. They might get hurt.’

Well, we Big Kids didn’t really mind our homework getting interrupted. And the Little Kids? They didn’t get hurt. Not physically, anyway. Though that Roger was a world-champion teaser/tormenter. I can still picture (and hear) him trailing Laura all around the house blowing on his trombone: ‘Blat blat blaaaaaat…blat blat blaaaaat!’ Over and over and over again. It drove her absolutely wild. Laura: ‘Moooooooom!!!!’ Mom: ‘He’s just practicing, dear.’ Laura: ‘But he won’t stoooooop!’ Mom: ‘Just ignore him.’ Like that would work.

One of the Big Kids (me) condescends to 'play' with Roger. That's Laura lurking by the picnic table. And that's Doug's playpen. (Remember those?)

One of the Big Kids (me) condescends to ‘play’ with Roger. That’s Laura lurking by the picnic table. And that’s Doug’s playpen. (Remember those?)

Poor Roger. Stuck in the middle. Not only did he get squeezed out of exclusive Big Kid and Little Kid activities, he got blamed for pretty much every naughty thing that happened:

Continue reading

The Dude, by any other name, would not be Jeff Bridges

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‘What’s in a name? A lot of funny stuff, actually.’

Many of you were a tad confused, as well as amused, by my recent story ‘The Jerk and The Dude’. So I’d like to take this opportunity to set the record straight: I am not married to Jeff Bridges.

Granted, Mr. Bridges is pretty darned cute, and is known far and wide for his role as The Dude in that funny Coen Brothers film, but I must tell you that my personal Dude earned his dandified moniker back when Mr. Bridges was still only a Fabulous Baker Boy. Even before that, actually.

His Dudeness-to-Whom-I-am-Wed was dubbed ‘The Dude’ when he misguidedly, but rather charmingly, wore a tie to his freshman mixer at Dartmouth College. I do not have photographic evidence of this, since I did not know him then. Continue reading

‘Where do you keep your cake?’

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‘Questions for my Oldest Younger Brother on his Day’

Those of you who are my Devoted Readers (bless your hearts) know by now that I like to speak softly and poke fun at my Family with a big stick. Today, because it’s your birthday, it’s your turn, King Tut (er, Scott).

It’s been a long time since you and I fought over who got the top bunk. (Yes, Scott was my first Roommate of the Opposite Sex.) And a long time, even, since you and I smuggled a motorcycle into a motel room. (I see a pattern of co-habitation here. If you readers are curious and/or titillated, you can check out that story here.)

But, back to you and your birthday. And those questions.

1. Did you recover fully from having watermelon ‘jammed down your throat’? See, when Scott was just a tyke, he, like many small children, was not into trying new, unfamiliar, or weird-looking foods. He thought that red food — tomatoes, watermelon — looked particularly unappetizing. Our less-than-patient father got particularly exasperated one hot suppertime, and told Scott to ‘try that delicious watermelon right now, or I’ll jam it down your throat’. Not sure I’d recommend this technique to some of you New Parents, but hey, it worked. Continue reading

Great Aunts and Glorified Rice

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‘Summer foods that did not come from a farm stand’

Some of you have read my Ode to Corn, and no doubt share my fondness for what can be enjoyed pretty much straight from the garden. (Or, in my case, the farm stand.) But there was a whole other category of deliciousness to be savored during summers where and when I grew up. And that was the food made by Great Aunts and dished out at Family Reunions.

My favorite of these was a dish called Glorified Rice. Here it is, in all its (sorry, I can’t help myself) glory:

I picked this photo because I have these dishes. Now I just need to fill them

I picked this photo because I have these dishes

Now, the Wikipedia entry for Glorified Rice is pretty hilarious, on a couple of levels. For one, the dish is described as a ‘dessert/salad’. For another, one of its sources was a website called lutheransonline.com, which I clicked (of course) and found is now defunct. Probably all the Lutherans grew up and moved to New York.

But more about these family reunions. They were always held in the summer, mainly so they could be outside. These were the days of Big Families, people. (No way these reunions would fit into a dining room or kitchen. Or a normal back yard, for that matter.) One of my earliest memories is of going to something called the P-A-L (Peterson/Anderson, and Lindstrom?) Reunion, held in Belvedere Park. (There was a swinging bridge that terrified me, but that’s another story.) Continue reading

Everybody into the Gene Pool

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‘There’s no such thing as too many cousins’

I guess it’s the Silly Season. Newspapers in the UK are publishing pictures of baby Queen Elizabeth doing a mini Nazi Salute. The New York Times today featured a cover story on (yawn) Hilary Clinton’s Dad. And bloggers are publishing pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch.

Looks like summertime-desperation-for-readers has set in. I’m thinking that it’s the time of year when just about anything I write won’t be able to compete with the beach. The only thing worse for my stats would be if it were Christmas. Or if I wrote about the ding-dang South Pole again.

So here goes. Cousins. I worry, what with the trend to smaller families and all, that the whole Cousin Thing will be experienced by fewer and fewer in the future. The Child, for example, has seven Henry Cousins, five of whom are pictured at the top of this post. Of course that’s waaaay more than the measly three the Whitmores managed to eke out. From six siblings (!)

I mean, when I was a kid, we had cousins. The Petersons, who were Swedish and Lutheran and played Scrabble and drank coffee, produced this batch: Continue reading

Go Betsy Go

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‘Meet me, meet me. Meet me at the Fair’

When I was a kid, the high point of Summer wasn’t the 4th of July, it was the Clinton County Fair.

This Fair was truly an Event For All Ages. If you were a little kid you got to stuff yourself with cotton candy, then get nice and green on the Tilt-A-Whirl or those crazy swings. If you were an adult, you got to feast your eyes on prize-winning livestock and pies or watch cars crash into each other at the demolition derby.

The Child and The Dude take in the view from the (extremely rusty) ferris wheel

The Child and The Dude take in the view from the (urk, extremely rusty) ferris wheel

And if you were a teen, you got to wander around the midway in awkward same-sex groups, giggling at each other and arranging to ‘accidentally’ ride the ferris wheel together. If you were a boy teen and ‘going steady’, you got to win large stuffed animals at the shooting gallery for your girlfriend to parade around the fairground like pirate booty. Continue reading

They didn’t do this for fun, you know

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‘Summer jobs I did not have. But I swear I did not make them up, either’

When I was a kid, a summer job was babysitting. Or working at the 5-and-10. Pumping gas. My best friend Norma had the coolest job of anyone I knew. She worked at the Dairy Queen. One of the perks was you could eat as much DQ as you wanted, which sounded pretty sweet until she told me she had a hard time even looking at a banana boat after the first couple of days.

But these jobs absolutely pale in comparison to the gigs scored by my personal family members in their respective college years. The Child spent one summer working with computers. ‘Yawn’, you say. Well, these computers were located here:

The Child's workplace one summer. She had her own apartment above the stables. Very Thomas Hardy-esque

The Child’s workplace one summer. She had her own apartment above the stables. Very Thomas Hardy-esque

That’s Wadhurst Park, a 900-acre estate in East Sussex. Which is in England, folks. It’s owned by the second-richest guy in Sweden. (Makes you wonder where the richest guy in Sweden lives.) Oh, and here he is, Hans. The Child said she was invited to tea with him and his wife once while she was there. The conversation was less than lively. Not sure if she met the dog.

Hans Rausing, The Child's Boss and the second-richest man in Sweden.

Hans Rausing, The Child’s Boss and the second-richest man in Sweden.

Incidentally, Hans’ dad made the family fortune by inventing the milk carton. Honest. Oh, besides owning that dog in his lap, Hans owned pigs. That’s one of them pictured at the top of this post making friends with The Child. (In addition to working with the estate computers, she performed various livestock-related duties. Including, sometimes, a bit of pig wrangling. And mucking.) Continue reading