We Have Brought Culture to Our Street!

I remember coming home to have my socks checked by mom. More often than not, they were black. Not because I wore black socks or that I had no shoes. I have just been playing “10-20″ at school. You know- that game usually played by girls where you jump around a length of garter as it gets higher and higher.

When we still lived in Holland, my sister and I taught the kids on our street how to play that game. We bought a length of neon pink garter and showed our Dutch friends Antoinette, Leonie and Anouk how to play it. They liked it a lot. And since they were really tall people, I thought that they only needed to get the hang of it and they’d be able to beat me everytime. I was wrong. They ARE tall but they haven’t got my mad skillz! Haha.

Then one day, as we were driving along our street, coming home from a movie, we saw this bunch of girls hopping up and down with a piece of neon green garter- they were playing 10-20. And that’s when it dawned to me: We have brought culture to our street! hahaha.

I’ve been recently frequenting this blog that talks about trends from the 90’s. And it’s got me thinking about my childhood. I started recalling details such as what I was wearing at one particular day and what my 2nd grade class adviser’s full name was down to what pattern was on my socks on a particular day. And that’s pretty scary. You see, I haven’t got a photographic memory. Far, far, far from it. I even forget things I told myself to remember yesterday. So finding out that these long-forgotten specles of memories are still there in my head somewhere came as a huge surprise to me.

Polly Pockets, My Baby-All-Gone, Totally Hair Barbies.. my toys then definitley reflected what kind of child I was- completely girly-girly. Princess Starla and Jewel Riders, Sarah the Little Princess, Sailormoon.. Dana and I were talking about Sailormoon just a few days ago and it was funny how much we knew about it and how completely normal it was to us that a character be named “Chibyusa” or to yell “Moon Crystal Power… makeup!” It all sounds so silly now.

As I talk about this, I realise there’s just way too much to cram into one entry. So maybe I’ll just make a category for this and gradually write down all these startlingly vivid and detailed memories as they bubble up in my mind’s murky memory pool.. they might start fading away and it will be a huge shame if they do. And thus, the birth of a new category: “The Past, Revisited.”