Average Jane: Average Jane's Childhood

I found this “name 5 things about your childhood” meme on Kiwifruit, so I thought I'd take the easy way out today and just discuss the same topics.

1. Games: We played a lot of games when I was a child, but one of the most memorable for me was BINGO. My grandmother had a BINGO set at her house and when we came to visit, she would be the BINGO caller and my sister and I would be the players. She would wrap a collection of little prizes from around her house for us to choose and open each time we won. After all these years, I still remember getting a tiny bottle of pikake perfume, which was probably a memento from a cruise my grandparents had taken.

2. Television: Like most children of the 1970s, I watched way too much TV. I clearly remember Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Later, I know I never missed an episode of The Muppet Show. We watched Wonder Woman, the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels (which my parents felt was a little inappropriate for us, but we got to watch it because they watched it), Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley (my first cat was named Boo Boo Kitty), and slightly older shows in reruns like Gilligan's Island and the Beverly Hillbillies. There are many, many more I could list, but you get the idea: I was steeped in television as a kid.

3. Fashion: Could there have been a worse fashion era for a kid than the 70s? I distinctly remember an outfit that can only be described as a "girl's leisure suit" in pale yellow with appliqued fabric flowers all over it. I also had an icky, pale blue polyester pantsuit with a vest. I remember wearing a floor length "granny dress" made of pink and white gingham for my school photo one year. Kids today don't know how lucky they are!

4. Toys: I had an extensive Barbie collection, but it was always a treat to visit my great-aunt and get to play with the Barbies that had belonged to her kids a generation earlier. She had a Barbie that came with different wigs and that made her way better than my Barbies, even if she did have unusually pronounced, molded eyelashes. At home, we had a set of Tinkertoys back when they were still made of wood, and I still remember how difficult it could be to connect them together. The coolest toy we had but never really appreciated enough was the log cabin playhouse my dad built in our back yard. He cut down all the logs and built a little house with windows that opened and a faux brick linoleum floor. You'd think we'd have played it in constantly, but with the typical fickleness of children, we rarely used it after the novelty wore off.

5. Food: I've discussed some of my childhood favorites before, but there are plenty of others I can name. For my birthday, I always asked my grandmother to serve hot-oil fondue. These days it tries my patience to have a fondue meal and cook all my own food, but it's pure fun when you're a kid. My mother had a recipe for beef stroganoff that I still make every now and then, even though the sauce is just steak, onions, mushrooms, tomato soup, sour cream and Worcestershire sauce. I loved my grandmother's lemon meringue pie and my mom's cherry pie. I'm fortunate to have kept most of the recipes from my childhood, so it's not uncommon for me to break out an old recipe and enjoy a fondly-remembered treat such as the pound cake we often had.

I'm not going to tag anyone to continue this, but feel free to take on the topic or add your two cents via a comment. Have a great weekend!

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