It's been quite awhile since I have written a blog. I had planned on writing one sooner but lack of motivation, time, and suitable blog material was a major factor. Even now I am not so sure I really have a blog in mind. Most blogs I just sit down and start writing. I have tried to write blogs "in advance" with intentions of having a blog in all preparedness to post at any given time, but I have found that just doesn't work for me. I will sit and stare at that white screen and be totally blank. So I just sit and type and hope by the time I post the new blog that it somehow came together and made some sort of sense without too many typos.
I have noticed this week that there seems to be a theme in so many blogs. Blogs by Dixie, Mo, Victoria (aka Madge), Dolly, and I am sure there are others, that have visited the past in their subject matter, with comments, and memories, and all kinds of stories of "the good ole days".
I am a child of the 60's. No I didn't have love beads, smoked pot, attend Woodstock or protest the Vietnam war. I really was but a child. Out of all the memories we store away in vaults of time, it's odd how that some things just seem to stick in our young minds. It seemed like such a simpler time, a slower time, a more innocent time. In retrospect I think we did live in a magical time. Way back before the time of computers, iPods, cell phones, game boys, and a hundred and one other gadgets that now seem common place in our lives.
But we still had kewl "stuff". We had Mr.Magoo, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Partridge Family, Gilligan's Island and Marcia Brady. We had tricycles, hula hoops, romper stompers, pick up sticks, Lincoln logs, and Slinkies....well we did til we threw the Slinky in the toy box with the other toys and it no longer slinked. It was just a jumble of twisted wire that got stuck in Barbie's hair. We had games, lots of games that didn't even require batteries. Simple toys of which some survived and continue today.... G.I. Joe and hot wheels, barrel of monkeys and monopoly, troll dolls and paper dolls. I didn't really play with paper dolls much though, after punching out the perforated dolls from the books and their clothes, it wasn't long before they tore, got dirty,... got lost. I did have Colorforms though... those nifty vinyl magnetized bits of plastic that were like paperdolls. They stuck and clung to their plastic black plastic background. We all have some cherished toy that meant a lot to us, that we kept and played with for ages till it either disintegrated or was stuffed in some box to be forgotten in the back of the closet.
It doesn't seem that long ago, all of those nifty toys and cherished memories. Time flies faster than we give it credit for sometimes. Maybe September is just a melancholy time for a lot of us. Maybe it is just coincidence that so many blogs had a recurring theme in them this week. Out of all those memories of family, friends, tv shows, icons, and toys,...paperdolls came to my mind. I said I never really played much with paperdolls as a kid and I didn't.... but a few years ago when I was helping out a neighbor who was stricken with cancer, we played paper dolls. Actually we made paperdolls for one of her grandkids. She had loved playing with them when she was a child and she wanted to in some way create those same memories for her granddaughter. So we made dolls cut from old magazines and pasted on cardstock... and made their doll clothes out of bits of paper from old wallpaper sample books, and glued on buttons, and ribbons and lace. It was something my friend and neighbor could do between bouts of sickness and exhaustion,... make paperdolls.
Sometimes it is the smallest of memories or moments from our past that we hold dearest. I just never dreamed that I would be so much older when I played with paper dolls. Maybe times were simpler back then, or it could be it was just the distorted perception of the child in us.
Yeah, they really were the good ole days, and today is too....
Ok I admit, when I was bored at my grandmothers, I played dress up with my aunt's cut out paper dolls. But in my defence, there weren't any other toys around.
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