remember

the clark brothers

my brother raleigh's childhood club was called "the clark brothers." it had three members, raleigh, who was "peedles clark," derived i assume from our surname peters. his friend michael hamilton was "ham clark." the third brother, despite gender issues, was my sister samantha, "dooles clark," thus named because her nickname was mandy and this became "mandooles" somehow.

two teams, or one?

on a hot summer day in england, i took a break from writing my dissertation and went to edgbaston to watch a cricket match. i got a beer and settled down to figure out the game. after watching the players all dressed in white for about ten minutes without understanding i decided to ask for help. as i was on my own, i turned to a guy sitting behind me and asked if he could please explain the rules.

he started in on wickets and batsmen, and scoring and after about three minutes i interrupted him. "i'm sorry,' i said. "first can i just ask, are there two teams, or one?"

[written 18 october; published 20 october]

go indians

when i was in elementary school in iowa, we sometimes went to high school basketball games on friday nights. i remember the smell of the gymnasium, and the warm honey colour of the wood floor.

[written 16 october; posted 20 october]

bread and board

my parents owned a store in conway springs called "bread and board," where they sold my mom's homemade bread and breadboards designed by my father. among other things, they sold a bread subscription, where people could buy six or twelve months of homemade loaves delivered to their home. each month, members got a different type of bread.

i wish i could buy a subscription now.

stinger

our neighbour was babysitting us the day i stepped on a hornet. i was about five, and playing barefoot outside on a summer's evening. i remember running down the front steps, and then screaming. our neighbour made up an outmeal paste and pulled out the stinger.

[written 13 october 2007; posted 14 october]

toddler speak

as a toddler, my little sister samantha ate "cheerlers" (cheerios) for breakfast, received birthday "presenks" and put "drip whip" instead of miracle whip on her sandwiches.

[written 9 october; posted 14 october]

views

from the balcony of our kirkland home, we looked out over lake washington at the seattle skyline and space needle. i miss the gorgeous sunsets.

[written 6 october; posted 7 october]

toy envy

in addition to his thor bag, raleigh also had a very cool evel knievil set. when you pulled on a rip cord and put evil's motorcycle onto a track, he did a 360 loop-de-loop.

[written 3 october; published 5 october]

sasha dolls

as a girl, i had a blonde sasha doll in a gingham dress.

if you touch this hammer....

i know next to nothing about the comic book character thor. in fact, i had to search the web to confirm he was indeed a comic book hero and not in some 1970s movie or tv show instead. what i do know, i learned from a bag that raleigh had when we were little. it was yellow, plastic coated, and if my memory serves me correctly, had some thor comic strips printed on its side.

somehow, long before raleigh could read, we latched onto thor as our superhero of choice, and we used what i guess was a modification of a phrase from the side of that yellow bag when we were playing. we couldn't remember the whole thing, so we made up a word in the middle. although i've never seen it written, the word was something like "emp-a-size" and our phrase was this: "if you touch this hammer, you will be emp-a-sized" into thor."

as an adult i've often wanted to find that yellow bad and find out whether that phrase was even on it, and if so, what that missing word was. now of course if you search the web for "if you touch this hammer" you get back a dozen links to the lyrics of mc hammer's "can't touch this," which is of course a different thing all together.

[written 1 october; published 2 october]