I remember waiting for the cancellation: watching on TV for the name of our school to come across the bottom of the screen. We’d watch the list Attleboro, Acton, Boxboro, Chatham, Dedham, and wait and wait for the M’s. Then the news would cut to commercial, and we’d have to wait some more. So many times we’d leave the room and miss the M’s and have to wait for the whole list to circulate again, dreading the word Massasoit, because that would mean Martha’s Vineyard got skipped once again. We always got rain when everyone else got snow, so we rarely got to stay home.

I remember bundling up in tights, long johns, wool socks, heavy sweaters, snowpants, ski jackets, mittens, hats with flaps over the ears, neck socks, and snow boots, and finally getting outside where we’d be sweating five minutes later. I remember walking outside and my glasses immediately fogging up. I would just stand there, waiting until I could see again, and nine times out of ten, Chris would take this opportunity to throw a snowball right at my face.

Once the tears and glasses fog subsided, I remember lying down and waving my arms and legs to make an angel. I remember that moment once my imprint was made, when I just lie there not wanting to get up. There was something so exhausting about snow. Or maybe it was the 50 pounds of clothes I was carrying. I remember finally trying to stand, and being very careful about where I placed my feet so that I would not destroy the angel.

I remember one year when Dad helped us make a snow fort in the front yard. It was snail-shaped and about three feet tall. You walked in the entrance and around a wall to get inside. I remember bringing out cups and pots and pitchers of water to pour on the walls to help them harden. I remember long after the spring thaw, as the grass was turning green and the crocuses were blooming, the remains of the snow fort still adorned the lawn stubbornly refusing to melt.

I remember one year when it snowed on Thanksgiving, and I made a snow turkey. I had the idea to color my sculpture with food coloring, and it must have been somewhat convincing, because it attracted a bunch of crows. I finally had to go out and destroy it with a shovel so the crows would go away.

I remember walking to the sledding hill at the end of the road in the pasture of Sweetened Water Farm. I remember my brother pulling me down the snow-covered dirt road in a sled because I was too slow. I remember the older kids used to pile up the snow and make jumps, and I was scared to death of accidentally finding a jump in my path and falling off the sled. I remember the barn had a giant tobaggon that could fit, like, six or seven kids, and every few years they’d bring it out and put it to use and inevitably end up with a picture on the cover of the newspaper. Snow days were newsworthy events around here.

The day of the Challenger launch was Dana G’s birthday, and the teacher passed a pile of brown paper napkins to each student in the front row, and they each took a brown paper napkin and passed the pile back through the rows of desks until everyone had one.

I remember the smell of the air popper and how jealous I’d be walking in the hallway of the school and catching the smell of popcorn emanating from one of the classrooms. It was such an invasive and delicious smell, and it lingered for days. That day, anyone walking the hallway would be smelling the popcorn from my classroom, and I’d be eating it. I had no idea that after that day, the smell of popcorn would become a vehicle for this memory, as so many smells and sounds from childhood do.

I remember someone wheeling the television stand into the classroom and finding the channel. There were only a handful of channels to choose from at the time, so this didn’t take long. Once it was time, we were allowed to sit wherever we wanted, we didn’t have to stay at our desks, and I remember sitting on the sink counter at the back of the classroom, right in the center, to watch the launch.

I remember the countdown. We counted along to the voice on the television, chanting as one with students across America, while Mrs. McAuliffe smiled at us in her space suit from the poster taped to the blackboard.

I remember seeing the flames of the thrusters and hearing their woosh sound as the shuttle left the ground, then the perfectly straight long white cloud that arched across the sky like the tail of a heaven-bound kite.

Then I remember that perfect cloud blossom into a giant pinkish burst, a burst we would see over and over for days. I had never watched a shuttle launch before and didn’t know this wasn’t supposed to happen. There was confusion on the television, and my teacher’s face sank. We didn’t know what had happened. We knew we were supposed to be jumping for joy at this part, but no one was. Something was wrong. Dana G was crying, and a friend was chosen to walk her to the nurse’s office.

There are some moments they say you’ll always remember where you were: JFK, Princess Di, September 11. That day, I remember going back to the blue plastic chair at my desk and watching as the grease stain from my ration of birthday popcorn spread slowly across a brown paper napkin.

I remember when penny loafers came back. But they couldn’t be just any penny loafers – they had to be Bass Weejuns. And they had to contain pennies, right-side up, with Lincoln’s profile clearly visible in that little half-moon window. I remember stepping on the backs of the loafers to flatten them down – a DIY conversion to mules. We also did this with our…

…Sebagos. And they had to be Sebago. They couldn’t be Bass or L.L. Bean. I remember lacing them in parallel lines instead of criss-crossed, and instead of tying the laces, the ends had to be wrapped into a little coil.

I remember fluorescent laces shaped like springs with which we replaced our everyday laces.

I remember making “friendship pins” by stacking seed beads on tiny gold safety pins and lining them up across the bottom laces of my Tretorns. I remember trading them with friends, but only if the safety pins were tiny and gold, not giant and silver. I remember going to Robin’s Hardware in Vineyard Haven to buy the beads and the pins. They were on the wall to the right when you walked in the door in the same place where they hung latex masks at Halloween.

I remember Sam and Libby ballet flats with big leather bows.

I remember push-down socks. They had a name, which I can’t remember. Scrunch socks, maybe? I remember Claudia Kishi wore them all the time in the Babysitters’ Club books. I remember it was super cool to coordinate two sets of socks with your outfit, and then stack them, say, yellow over green on your left foot and green over yellow on your right.

These are way cooler than the sneakers I owned, but at the time, I wouldn't have been caught dead in these, because in the 80s, it was rumored that Adidas stood for "All day I dream about sex." I was, like, 10, so Nike it was. Or probably Reebok....

]]> http://startwithiremember.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/late-80searly-90s-footwear-trends/feed/ 3 ifyoubelievethenclap sneakers_velcro http://startwithiremember.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/hiatus-ended/ http://startwithiremember.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/hiatus-ended/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:46:15 +0000 ifyoubelievethenclap http://startwithiremember.wordpress.com/?p=44 ]]> Let’s get this kid back in action.

Time to generate ideas.

Time to pull some stuff back through the grey matter.

Site resuscitated.

Good morning to you.

I remember wearing the flower girl dress from a wedding I was in. It was long and white, with a high collar and a burgundy sash. I remember my mother cutting wings out of poster board and attaching them with string. I had a wand and a halo. I remember being too scared to go on stage for the school costume contest, just as scared as I had been the first time I wore that dress up the aisle of the church, crying, and completely forgetting to throw the rose petals from the wicker basket.

Age 6

I remember wearing a black leotard with black tights, and over them, the shell that my mother had made, painted red with big black dots, completing my ladybug ensemble. I remember that almost every year, the base of our Halloween costumes was a leotard, tights, and then, on our heads, another pair of tights with the legs chopped off, with the leg stubs acting as ears, antennae, or whatever that particular creature’s head called for. I remember my ladybug costume as the favorite of my childhood. I remember having my picture in the paper with my friend Andrea, who was dressed as a clown.

Age 7

I remember the wig for my Raggedy Andy costume came from the Whipples’ upstairs, which was more like an attic/play area when we were little, as it was still under construction. I remember it being originally intended as a mop head. It had long red strands of yarn, thickly wound. I don’t remember the rest of the costume, but I remember I won a prize at school, and I even remember what it was: a Crayola coloring set that came with a set of crayons and a spiral-shaped stand for the crayons, as well as a coveted crayon sharpener.

Age 8

I remember my sister coming up with the concept of being a “thing.” It was a perfect backup costume, particularly for trick-or-treating in the rain. I remember the costume consisting of wearing a trash bag, then accessorizing with a particular color. If you were a “purple thing,” as I was, you might wear your trash bag with a purple sash tied at the waist, a purple wig, purple star stickers on your cheeks, purple tights, and purple shoes. I can’t remember the exact ensemble, but it fell under these basic rules.

Age 9

I remember dressing as a witch in a black dress with the obligatory pointed hat, and green face paint. I remember making it to one house trick-or-treating before the skin on my face began to burn and we had to rush back to Kay’s house (our annual Halloween headquarters) to scrub the allergy-inducing green makeup (and many tears) off my face. I remember this also being the year that the house around the corner from Kay’s, an old schoolhouse-turned-mansion, was set up as a haunted house, and I totally freaked out. The people there felt awful and never did anything like it again. In future years, though, I made my mom call them ahead before I’d go over there, and to this day, they apologize when they see me.

Age 10

I remember dressing as an old man, fashioning my entire costume around a bald wig I’d chosen from the costume wall at the hardware store. I remember telling everyone I was my grandfather, who was and still is decidedly not bald.

Age 11

I dressed as the Grim Reaper. I don’t remember what possessed me to do so. It’s an unusual costume choice for a fifth grade girl. I remember in college, Andrea sent me a few pictures from our childhood, and one was from this Halloween. I could only tell this from the paint on my face, because in the picture, we are not in costume but instead sorting our candy wearing only bathing suits. I vaguely remember wearing bathing suits under our costumes a few times when it rained on Halloween, but I have no idea why.

Age 12

I remember assembling my gypsy costume from layers of dresses and skirts. The top layer was a plaid dress that buttoned up the front and had two pockets. I remember we mostly trick-or-treated south of Main Street, but there were a few houses on the north side of town that we liked to hit as well. I remember being terrified of crossing Main Street, because it was rumored that that was where the older boys hung out, dressed in black with shoe polish on their faces, waiting to throw eggs at innocent young trick-or-treaters. I remember that year, Kay suggested I arm myself with one egg, to be used only for purposes of self-defense. I put it in the front pocket of my gypsy dress. I remember someone picking us up in a car to go somewhere. (I don’t remember the where or why.) I remember hopping in the back seat, my skirts tangling around me, then feeling a crack buried deep in the layers of fabric, followed by wetness. I had sat on my egg.

I have been egged once in my life, and I’m sorry to say, it was my own doing.

I remember the yellowish TV that sat on Dad’s dresser in my parents’ room. It was black and white and only got a couple channels. The rabbit ears on top were much, much bigger than the set itself. I remember the Creature Double-Feature on Channel 56 every Sunday afternoon, and how I was so scared of it, I couldn’t even go in the room if it was on. I remember watching a lot of television shows through static.

I remember when Mom would take us to Video Hut on rainy Saturdays to rent a VCR and a couple of movies. I remember the VCR was in a big plastic enclosure, and the movies were in blue cases. You’d have to get there early, because the VCRs rented out quickly. I remember renting Herbie the Lovebug, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Pollyanna. As the youngest of three, I don’t remember having much say in which movies we rented.

I remember our first VCR, which we got the same Christmas as our golden retriever, Archer. It was top-loading, silver, and huge. It included the first remote control we’d ever had, too, though it was connected to the unit by a cord. I remember Archer chewing through the cord within the first week. That VCR lasted about ten years. The one with which it was replaced lasted a fraction of that.

I remember when a friend of my mother’s shipped us boxes of VHS tapes that someone she knew had copied. Imagine having two VCRs so you could copy movies! We suddenly had so many movies! I remember my very favorite: a tape that included Sixteen Candles and Girls Just Want to Have Fun – a double-header of teenage awesome. I remember reciting every line.

I remember the day we first got cable TV on Martha’s Vineyard. I remember riding into Oak Bluffs with my grandmother and seeing these trucks with giant spools of wire coming off the boat and Grammy telling me what it was. It was another ten years before we got them to run the cable down the half-mile dirt road to my house. It was a long time before I could do much more than “want my MTV.” I finally got it right around the time they stopped playing videos.

I remember when we only had to dial four numbers to call someone. I remember coming back from Camp Sharon (where the sixth graders from the five island elementary schools spent four days each year to bond before meeting again in high school) and having to dial seven digits. This was also around the time my sister, my brother, and I got our own phone line because my father had just gone into business and couldn’t have two junior high girls tying up the phone line. I remember all of Massachusetts was 617 at the time. I don’t remember when we switched to 508, or when we started having to dial ten digits like the rest of the world, but I remember it sucked.

I remember there was something you could dial (753, maybe?) and then put down the phone to make all the phones in the house ring. My brother used to do this all the time to drive everyone crazy, particularly my sister who had a much more active social life than anyone else in the family. I remember I could never figure out how to do it myself, which was very frustrating. I remember the sneaker phone that we got from a guy Dad was the caretaker for who was the publisher of Sports Illustrated. He also got me Mary Lou Retton’s autograph – something only a girl who grew up in the 80s can understand the sheer awesomeness of.

I remember Chris getting a CD player. It was a discman that he hooked into an amp. I remember sitting in his room playing Excitebike on Nintendo and listening to him use the feature that allowed you to skip forward or backward a second to remix Bobby Brown’s “Roni.” To this day, in my mind that song goes, “My heart-heart-heart belongs to a Roni-oni-oni-oni-oni….”

I remember walking through Harvard Square with a friend and going into Oona’s, a vintage clothing store. I remember looking at all the Manic Panic colors, the little folds of synthetic hair that showed what each color would look like in action. I never considered green or blue or bright orange. They just looked yucky to me. They would complement no skin tone. But Lilac and plum. It was like doll hair, or fairy princesses. Childhood daydreams. Sugar plum fairies. Pretty, fantasy hair. It didn’t make sense to me that it could just be put-your-foot-down capital-W Wrong for hair to be this color, for such a fantasy to have life. It would wash out in two weeks, and for two weeks, I would be an ethereal fairy princess, an artist from head to Converse-clad toe.

I remember asking permission and being shut down – no way, no how. I remember the night I did it. The one time I ever defied my parents. They were out to dinner. I remember how my hands shook as I opened the little pot of dye. I remember rinsing it out of my hair, freezing cold in the outside shower so that I wouldn’t stain the tub. I remember the wind blowing outside as I rinsed, and seeing already in the outside shower mirror that the dye was leaving little purple freckles on my forehead. I remember my heart beating out of my chest.

I remember lying in bed that night, too excited to sleep. Before that night, I had been a girl who dreamed doing things just because she wanted to, just for herself, and for this one solitary night, I was that girl. I had done something just for me, for nobody else. I can’t remember any other time in my life that I felt so wonderfully selfish and really quite proud. The best word to describe the feeling was glee. Pure glee.

I remember my parents coming home and my mother poking her head in to say good night. I remember summoning the courage to tell her, in my most even, most rational, adult tone what I had done. I can’t remember what she said, because I had purple hair! And I did it for me!

I remember how I loved the way the dark color looked around my face. I remember how the pieces in the front that were still bleached from the summer sun took on a different color of purple and looked electric. I’ve never felt as in love with my hair as I did that first few days, before the color began to fade, and I returned to my natural blonde, and with my hair color, so returned my natural instinct to obey. I only wish I had taken just one picture – just one – to remember that time when I made my own rules.

I remember you were silver on the bottom and navy blue on top, with light blue racing stripes on the sides. You only had two doors, so we’d have to put the front seats forward to get in. Your upolstry was striped gray, light blue, and navy and it had a velour texture. I spent a lot of time in your back seat, because Shannon always called “front.” I remember the spare tire on the back, and that we had to slam it really hard or it would rattle as you drove.

I remember the time Chris took you to drive Shannon and her friends to field hockey camp and got t-boned at an intersection in western Mass. I remember Mom was so nervous, waiting for you all to get home. It was the first time I remember seeing her cry. No one was hurt but you, but they bandaged you up with a brand new door and soon you were good as new.

I remember when Chris and Shannon were both off at college and Mom brought home her first Explorer. That was the day you became mine. I remember the first time I backed you out of the driveway to drive you to high school. I didn’t cut your steering wheel quite hard enough, and I slammed you into an old oak tree. I remember Dad was in the driveway, loading up his work truck for the day and saw the whole thing. I was so embarrassed. I remember how he took his time walking to the end of the driveway. He took a long look at you and your new dent, then he stepped back and took a long look at the tree, then he said, “I saw that tree jump right out in front of you. Now go to school!” And I could hear him chuckle to himself as he went about his business.

I remember riding around up-island in you each day after school, most often with Nettie in the passenger’s seat, smoking cigarettes and listening to cassette tapes. We called it “bajaing” because we rode mostly on pitted out, private dirt roads. I remember the day we were riding around Lambert’s Cove somewhere near Carly Simon’s house when your tape player made an awfully unhealthy sound. I remember spending about a hour trying to rescue my Fugazi tape from your jaws to no avail. From then on, I rode around with a portable tape deck cradled between your two front seats. The nice thing about that was when we’d take you to the beach at night, we could pull the radio right out and listen to it outside.

I remember all the times I drove you home late at night, in the dead of winter when there wasn’t a soul on the road. By then, you were showing your age. You were rusted in many places, and the paint was worn off on top as if you were trying to create your own sunroof. I remember watching your temperature gauge steadily rise the entire way from Vineyard Haven to Edgartown. I remember my friend Sephra, all five feet tall of her, filling you up with antifreeze on the side of the road after school, as her mechanic father had taught her. But the nights, driving home by myself, not a person in sight, and that gauge rising and rising, I knew at some point you would croak. I remember keeping a tally as I drove by each road, thinking OK, Tim’s is here, now only five minutes before Justin’s, OK, now five minutes and there’s a pay phone, now Lindsay’s…all the way home. I remember literally reciting the Hail Mary as I drove.

I can picture you now, parked along the beach in Oak Bluffs, the summer I worked at Mocha Mott’s or maybe the summr after. You were a home base to me, filled with beach towels and suits, clothing if I needed to change. Driving you made me feel kind of bad-ass. Instead of some little compact, you were my truck. I remember backing you into a 1969 mint condition Thunderbird that a woman had only brought out for the day. I remember getting you pulled over in West Tisbury and getting let off when the cop discovered he had been at my birthday party. I remember the picture of Coolio that hung on the flipped down side of your visor, because when the sun was out, and the visor was down, it was you and me and whoever else wanted to come along and ride on a fantastic voyage….

I wish I could remember which hole we started at, as it would be a nice detail, but I don’t. We lined up at the tee, and at the sound of  the coach’s whistle, at 6 a.m. on the dot, we started dribbling our field hockey balls, about forty girls running with sticks. I remember the sound of forty sticks hitting forty balls – it was somewhere between a crack and a pop, repeated and repeated. I remember we were supposed to do a long dribble instead of a short dribble or something because we’d be running nine holes, and we didn’t want to take all day. I remember falling to the back as the captains and more athletic girls took the lead. I remember running at the back of the pack, feeling like I was going to die, full-on hating every minute of it, and wondering what the hell exactly I thought I was doing there.

I remember, after what seemed like forever but was probably just a hair short of it, reaching the final green of the final hole, and not feeling a moment of relief, because we hadn’t yet even started wind sprints. I remember one time when I finished the run and was so cramped up and assuredly going to be sick. I remember rushing back to the club house, which was a good ten minute hike from where the current hell was taking place. I remember this being one of the most uncomfortable walks of my life.

I remember practices on the high school fields, trying hard to do well, not for my team but more so I didn’t look like an idiot in front of my crush who was practicing soccer on the next field over. I remember being proud of myself, not for playing well, but for giving it a shot and trying my hardest. In retrospect, I cannot believe I wasted my time, but I did put everything I had into it.

I remember traveling to away games. We would dress up for school and then leave around 10:45 to make the boat. I remember waiting in Woods Hole for our bus driver, affectionately called “Kaboobie” (I have no idea of the origin of this nickname), to retrieve the school’s bus that lived off-island. I remember who I sat with on the bus each season, because everyone sat with the same person all season long. I remember throwing on my walkman and staring out the window. I remember the school chants. I remember someone putting a tape into the bus’s tape player and everyone singing along – Led Zepplin, Grateful Dead, there was a whole classic rock thing going on. I remember everyone spazzing for “Immigrant Song,” which had been adopted as team song back when my older sister was a freshman.

I barely remember the games, but clearly I was more interested in the social/getting out of school early/travel aspects of playing sports, and not as much the sport itself.

I remember stopping at McDonalds on the way home, which is a big deal for a teenager on an island with no fast food. I remember chicken nuggets and french fries and sweet and sour dipping sauce. I remember the smell on the bus of all that fried food. Must’ve taken forever to air out. I remember each year when we played Chatham or Nauset (can’t remember which), we’d stop at the Tiki Palace and sit at mile-long tables and eat tons of Chinese food. I remember rushing to make the last boat home afterward.

I remember sitting in the dark on the deck of the boat heading home, singing an old Carly song to myself: “I’m bound for the Island, the tide is with me/I think I can make it by dawn/It’s night on the ocean, and I’m going home/and it feels like I’ve never, I’ve never been gone.”