I was trying to reply to Spwinkle's entry http://spwinkles.livejournal.com/309863.html and found I had so much stuff to say that I decided to do my own. Not having gone to public school or had cable for most of my childhood, and being an anti-conformist even back then kind of left me out of the loop on about half of this, but still, so much of it is familiar.


[ ] Kenan and Kel
[ ] Doug
[ ] Ren & Stimpy [] Pinky & the Brain
[ ] AAAAAAAH Real Monsters!
[ ] Rocko's Modern Life
[X] Animaniacs (Only on commercials. My mother thought they were wierd/mean and wouldn't let us watch them.)
[X] Gargoyles (Commercials/merchandise.)
[X] Hey Arnold! (Watched it a few times at the doctor's office lol)
[ ] Out of the Box
[X] Bear in the Big Blue House (I was too old for it.)
[X] You’ve ever ended a sentence with the word "PSYCHE!"
[ ] You just can’t resist finishing this: "In west Philadelphia born and raised...".


You remember:

[ ] Step by Step
[ ] Family Matters
[ ] Dinosaurs
[ ] Boy Meets World
[X] Full House. (Was aware of it.)
[X] You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons
[X] You remember reading/watching Goosebumps. (Read a few. Didn't really like them. Everyone talked about them, though!)

When everything was settled by:

[X] "Rock/paper/scissors"
[ ] "Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish"
[ ] "Miss Mary Mack" ("All dressed in black black black~")
[ ] When kickball was something you did everyday (mmhmmmm)
[ ] You used to listen to the radio all day long
[X] Just to record your FAVORITE song of ALL time on a tape (actually happened AFTER the 90's. I listened to very little music as a kid.)
[X] You remember Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis
[X] You remember The Original Game Boy (I wanted one so badly! Then Gameboy color came out and I wanted that, too.)
[X] You always wanted to send in a tape to America’s Funniest Home Videos... but never taped anything funny (Not really, just sort of, wouldn't it be cool if...)

You remember watching:

[X] The Magic School Bus (Yay! Read the books, watched the show.)
[X] Wishbone (Loved this thing. I even grew my bangs out because I liked the way Sam's hair looked.)
[X] Reading Rainbow (Watched it when I was really little. Then I saw Star Trek and was like, "it's that guy from Reading Rainbow!)
[X ] Ghostwriter (Oh yes. Watched it all the time, read a ton of the books. Wrote Rally!O all over my notebooks. So much DENIM everywhere in that thing. And the purple ooze monster.)
[X] You remember when Yo-Yo's were cool (Vaguely.)
[X] You remember those "Where’s Waldo" books (Ate them up.)
[ ] You remember eating Warheads and Splashers Gushers. (Starbursts were pretty much the only "trendy" candy I had. My family ate oldies like M&M's.)

You remember watching:

[X] Batman the Animated Series (My brother did. He had a Batman birthday one year, too.)
[X] Aladdin (Oh, boy, yes.)
[X] Ninja Turtles (The movies more than the show actually.)
[ ] Ghost Busters

[X] You remember Ring Pops!!!
[ ] You remember when everything was "da BOMB!"
[ ] You remember boom boxes vs. CD players
[X] Making those little paper fortune cookie things, and then predicting your life with them; (Did that a couple times with a friend.)
[ ] You played and/or collected Pogs (Never ever heard of these!
[X] You had at least one Tamagotchi, GigaPet or Nano and brought it everywhere you went. (Not quite but my friends had a bunch and I got to play with them sometimes.)

You watched the original cartoons of:

[X] Rugrats (Saw them. Didn't like them. Neither did my parents.)
[ ] Wild Thornberrys
[X] Power Rangers (Watched it all the time. I really liked how the green ranger looked, and the fact that their was a pink ranger. Getting all excited about the movie. Getting mad when the 2nd season came and they changed the cast.)
[X] All your school supplies were "Lisa Frank" brand. (Not quite. But endless Lisa Frank stickers found their way onto my correspondence.)

You collected:

[X] Beanie Babies (Had a couple from my Grandma.)
[X] Pokemon cards (Started, but had no one to play with and not enough money.)
[ ] Carebears (That was still going in the 90's?)
[ ] Silver dollars

You remember when:

[X] Everyone watched the WB
[X] Everybody knew all the Pokemon by heart (I think I could do a pretty good job now, actually)
[X] Digimon was still on (Yay! Matt = first bishounen I ever encountered.)
[X] If you even know what an original Walkman is
[ ] You knew the Macarena by heart
[ ] "Talk to the hand"
[X] You went to McDonald’s to play in the playplace and it was still sanitary (lol)
[X] Before the MySpace frenzy
[X] Before the Internet & text messaging  (I can remember when we got the internet. It was like "wow, let's go look at Pokemon/Gundam fanart!")
[X] Before Sidekicks & iPods
[X] Before PlayStation3 or X-Box 360
[X] Back before X-Box period
[X] Before SpongeBob
[X] When light up sneakers were cool (I still see kids running around in these)
[X] When you rented VHS tapes, not DVDs
[X] When gas was $0.95 a gallon  (wah... good old days)
[X] When we recorded stuff on VCR
[ ] You had slap bracelets  (What?)
[ ] You actually played outside until it was dark
[X] Way back before we realized all this would eventually disappear
[X] Post this if you smiled at least more than 5 times (who wouldn't lol at most of this?)
[X] And if you remember at least half the stuff on here


Toys: Sky Dancers. Playmobile. Big-eyed Barbies with dimples and blue eye shadow. Tamagotchi (friends had a couple, got to play a few times) Lego's were new. Everyone had hoola-hoops! American Girls and Animorphs books. Polly Pockets (I had the the little tiny ones that came in necklaces when I was really little.) Denim jacket decorating kits and beading-everything.

Games: Sega. (uncle had one)  Sonic, Pokemon Snap, Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy VII. Buying a Playstation. Crash Bandicoot. (Back when it was awesome) Final Fantasy VIII. Tomb Raider! Metal Gear (my brothers and I were hardcore. We bought Metal Gear as soon as it came out and finished pretty fast. That hallway scene with Cyborg Ninja kind of scarred my brother for life though.)

Music: Spice Girls and Hansen being everywhere (I can't help but wonder if the same people who organized Hansen's career are involved in the Jonas Bros.) and my steadfastly ignoring them because everyone else liked them. Seeing Britney Spears for the first time (and not having a clue who she was) on TV at the Disney Easter parade back when she had brown hair...

TV: Pokemon. Thomas the Tank Engine. Mary-Kate and Ashley movies/shows (never watched any of them) Sesame Street. Care Bears show. (This is when I was probably 2 or 3 and I can barely remember it, but I'm pretty sure there was a lion.) Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. (Does anyone else remember that? I'm pretty sure Tails was a girl in it for some reason.) The old Narnia movies. The Land Before Time. 2-D animation Disney movies! Seeing bits of Reboot and Beast Wars and trying to figure out what the hey was going on. Gundam Wing! Escaflowne! (I was like bwah! bishounen, before I even knew what bishounen was. Van Fanel owned my heart.)

The news: OJ Simpson chase. Oklahoma City bombing. That overpass that came down on the one beneath it (can't remember where) Fighting in Bosnia and Serbia. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski's faces on every television in the country. Y2K stuff and everyone celebrating "the new millenium!" a freakin' year early.



 

This is pretty much how I feel right now.

I got fired today. Jack and Jenny at Fratelli's gave me the almighty boot pretty much out of the blue, and in such a completely mean, underhanded, dirty way. I'd suspected they might let me go soon, since my hours kept getting shorter and shorter, but business has been doing pretty well lately, and I've been working so hard that I really didn't think they could manage without me. (I still don't.) I wasn't really expecting to lose my job, and I certainly wasn't expecting them to act the way they did. Jenny only took me aside to tell me right as Mama was coming to pick me up, and she gave me this story about how I'd "talked back to her" (I respectfully corrected her on the number of parmesan cheese containers I was expected to have in the fridge before the weekend) and she "just couldn't take that from an employee."  

I told Jenny as calmly as I could that I had worked hard for her, that I had never disrespected her or Jack, that I had kept up the same quality and amount of work no matter how short my hours got, that she had never told me I had to make 2 boxes of extra parmesan cheese in preparation for the weekend, and even if she had, if she couldn't take an employee (let alone her best employee) giving her a polite correction about something as trivial as parmesan cheese, than there was no way she was going to be able to have any employees.

She just sort of acknowledged what I said, but didn't show any agreement or remorse, or change her mind. Then she gave me my pay for the day in cash, said she'd mail me my check and made me leave. (What, am I too dangerous to have coming in and picking it up in person, that she has to mail it to me?! Who knew I was such terror!) I think this is their way of letting me go because they can't afford me, but instead of telling me that, they made up some pathetic excuse to fire me instead, somehow viewing this as a preferable option(?) The whole thing felt so pre-planned it was like she spent the whole day trying to find some excuse to use. (Apperantly this is a pretty common practice in small businesses.)

I was so upset that when I got into the car and told Mama I started to tear up, and I shut myself up in my room and cried when I got home. After awhile Mama came into comfort me, and told me that she and Papa would be willing to pay my insurance bills when I was unemployed. Soon the shock and sadness was replaced by a bitter anger.  I had taken every change, every scolding, every shortened hour and heavier work load, the heat of the ovens in summer, without a word of complaint. I've worked my butt off for them, even managing to squeeze the duties of a 20-hour work week into an 8-hour one. I walked to work through a freaking blizzard for heaven's sake! And this was how they chose to repay me, by betraying my trust, spitting in the face of my dedication, stealing all that time and work from me, and making me look like the one in the wrong on to top it off.

Well, I decided, someone like that didn't deserve what I'd given them. And I became sort of very bitterly satisfied at the idea of them trying to handle the immense workload I would leave behind by themselves, of how I would never again have to fold their stupid boxes, fill their stupid dressing containers, or take out their stupid, stinking trash ever again. Then, in defiance, and to affirm what  Mrs. Hudson in Without a Clue would say, "good riddance to bad rubbish", the family all went out to Frisch's for dessert to celebrate my not having to go work for those psychos anymore.

But I would still like to give them a good smack in the face anyway.

Little star,
You seem so fragile and so cold,
A brittle bit of silver dressed in gold.
Faint glitt'ring point of distant light
Can you see me?

Little raindrop,
Falling, swift and soft as dancer's feet
Tinkling like sad bells, so light and sweet,
A sound so full of heartbreak and delight.
Can you hear me?

Little snowflake,
Soft as lace, more fragile still
Drifting slowly past my window sill.
Chip of ice, so cold and white
Can you feel me?

Little bird,
The smallest speck against the sky
So much life unlived, so soon to die,
You sing a silent song, so dark, so bright.
Come to me.

Little prince,
The humblest vessel for a mighty heart
A soul that splintered and was torn apart.
Reach for me, oh fallen knight
Let me save you.