After reading
’s “Manhattan, When I Was Young” I started to think about the things I used to do as a young teen, growing up in Western New York, before the internet, in summer when I was bored.My small upstate town in the 1980s and NYC in the 1970s were completely different, but there is something about the expansiveness of time in Handy’s essay, the way that when we were young, we might wander in our boredom, or be open to the minutia of the every day, or just kind of float, not knowing what we were doing at all.
I’m having a rare summer off from teaching and I’m letting myself float a lot. I’m not working on a book either, another rare and much-needed break.
As a type, I’m sitting in my granny (they shouldn’t be called this or I shouldn’t call them this) underpants, a tank top, and a bra—what I think of as a toddler outfit, (sans bra) but was also in my childhood, my father’s favorite lounging after work outfit. Tighty whities and a v-neck undershirt with sleeves. It’s a gorgeous June day, and I have my windows wide open. The breeze is excellent and the cats are busy stalking birds they can’t catch through screens.
My best friend in middle school, Doris, went to her lake house every summer, which definitely left me feeling lonely. I didn’t have a lot of friends in the neighborhood besides Doris. My street was mostly boys, who my brother played with, and who did gross things I didn’t want to do or feel up for, like spending the day in a swamp they’d found, catching snakes or climbing onto roofs to pick apples and throw them at each other. Once, my brother beat up? roughed up? shoved? another boy for accidentally hitting me super hard in my young tender left boob with an apple. I think we were all shocked when it happened.
A few times during the summer, my best school friend Cynthia invited me to her house to swim in her pool and stay over, which was heaven because she had a stay-at-home mom who was also my 4-H troupe leader and she made homemade chocolate chip cookies seemingly every day I was there, which we were allowed to eat just out of the oven, dripping wet by the pool, as long as we agreed not to go back in the water for 20 minutes. Aside from these outings, I spent a lot of time by myself, which I don’t think I minded.
Things I liked to do then:
I watched my shows. Did all Gen X latchkey kids have our shows? The Price is Right. My favorite games on TPIR were Plinko and the Yodeler. I loved the way the giant plastic plinko pieces slid down into their slots in seemingly no direction that could be foretold. The Yodeler is not called that, but he was a hiking man figure, kinda of Italian looking, who yodeled up a mountain as contestants tried to guess the price of various products. For every dollar or cent off, he yodeled up towards the cliff of the mountain. Usually he fell off. TPIR felt very California to me. I was born in San Diego, but only lived there for six weeks, so I was kind of obsessed with returning to it somehow.
The fake family bliss of The Brady Bunch. I loved all of their problems and how solvable they were, and Marcia and Greg were so dreamy. I loved Alice too, but couldn’t figure out why she would want that job or if she could ever have a life of her own. Three’s Company for its endless titilation and misunderstandings, an early dream of a throuple perhaps. Definitely something queer and poly in that apartment. The Regal Beagal. The Ropers. Larry. Again, the whole sexy California dream of it all. Also, wondering if I was a Crissy or a Janet or maybe even Jack. That apartment, the door into the kitchen. Eavesdropping on the other side of that door. How many plots hinged on that door.
Those blondes. Bewitched. A witch torn between two worlds, but committed to her husband, even though her mother called him Durwood and we all knew he was a drip. What happened while he was away at work was so exciting and silly. I Dream of Jeanie, early bondage play that I wished would turn dirty but never did.
Wonder Woman. Like many of us, I was completely and utterly in love with Linda Carter as Wonder Woman. She was so pure, so beautiful, and so good. My mom was a secretary for the first half of my life, so I must have liked the idea that behind a quiet woman was a lot of power. I sometimes watched The Young and the Restless and As the World Turns. I’d begun watching these at age six or seven with my then babysitter, so I knew the characters and plot lines, but there was a lethargy to these shows, the slow unspooling of plots, the way they lived entirely indoors and in small mid-Western cities—sometimes I skipped them because they made me feel trapped. Little House on the Prairie. Yes. I loved the battle between Nellie and Laura over Almanzo, and Pa was perfect to me too. Firm, but caring. Protective above all else. A real DADDY.
Baked. I loved to bake and my mom taught me to bake at an early age. I also did a lot of baking on my own, sometimes without her permission. For a while, I was banned from making brownies because I burned too many batches, but I started to pay more attention to time, and got that privilege back. Since my parents were at work, I could eat as much of the batter as a I wanted. I mostly made brownies, peanut butter cookies, and box puddings and jellos. Putting the hot chocolate pudding into the little glass Pyrex bowls, sliding them carefully into the refrigerator, and then waiting for the skin to form on the top was a ritual I loved.
Doing the dishes. It was one of my chores and I usually pretended to be in a Dawn commercial while doing them, pretending I was a overworked mom who found joy in cleaning her dishes and counters. I sometimes got in trouble for using too much dish soap.
Calling my mom at work. Those first teen summers, my mom hadn’t wanted to leave us alone all day, but I begged and said I would take care of my brother, though he was hard to keep track of when he was outside. I usually didn’t know where he was exactly when he went outside, unless he was in the backyard practicing soccer, which was often. I called my mom a few times a day, or she called me to check in, and talk about what the day was like. I remember calling her when I got my period for the first time. I’d been sweating in a purple sweatsuit I loved when it came. I was so excited. She reminded me where the pads were and talked me through putting one in my underwear. My dad mentioned it at the dinner table that night, and I wanted to die of course.
Riding my bike around the block several times. Occasionally, I took a longer route, but mostly that was it. My brother and I were pretty freaked out about getting kidnapped by a guy in a white van, so I didn’t venture too far. There was also a bully down the street who had it in for me, so I hardly ever rode past his house. I think the van thing was also from T.V. or actually kidnappings that got a lot of tabloid attention?
Pretended I was in Color Guard. I had older babysitters on my street who were in the Color Guard, and though I never tried out, I could do the wooden gun twirling thing pretty well because they’d taught me. I didn’t have a wooden gun, so I used my brother’s aluminum baseball bats and tried to get as many twirls as I could. I got up to about 30 at one point. My mother had been a majorette and I had a baton too though I wasn’t very good with it.
I just googled what Color Guard is and found this from Gainesville Texas Independent School District, “The purpose of the color guard is to interpret the music that the marching band or drum and bugle corps is playing via the synchronized work of flags, sabres, rifles, the air blade, and through dance.” I had no idea until today. Also I believe them because Texas is a cheerleading state, the home of the beloved to me show, Cheer, so yeah.
Look at my father’s porn mags and get worked up. My father had subscriptions to Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. They were sometimes on the coffee table until my mom yelled about them, but mostly in a pile in my father’s den which was always open. I learned a lot about sex (or thought I did) from the weird soft core couples scenarios in Playboy. Penthouse Forum was of course fascinating. The cartoons in both (did Penthouse have cartoons?) freaked me out because I often didn’t understand them, but it seemed like the woman was maybe the butt of the joke or getting harassed. There were also dirty Santa ones which I disliked because I didn’t want that for Santa. Hustler was baffling and scary and I mostly tried to not look at it, though of course I did. Sex seemed alternately fuzzy and gross. I looked furtively so my brother wouldn’t catch me and often felt a kind of queasy lust afterwards.
Did my hair and make up. I had started reading Seventeen and had a subscription. One great thing about my parents is that we were all allowed to have two or three magazine subscriptions. I was eager to learn the lessons of beauty, style, and behavior that Seventeen imparted, so I often spent time trying out the hair styles and make up in their pages. Middle school was not terrible for me, so I believed at the time the magazine had steered me in the right direction.
Read novels. We went to the library every week and I always had a pile of books. We were also allowed quite a few Walden Books purchases at the mall, so I read whole books in a day. It’s something I still love to do when I’m really into a book. I spent a whole day and part of the night totally in that world, sitting in one of the comfortable arm chairs in the living room or the family room. I’ve recently read that this kind of deep, lost reading is a form of disassociation, which makes sense to me. I love getting lost in novels. I was probably reading a lot of Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High then. I think I was also pretty into V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic series. Those books were so twisted. So much incest. Why? I guess incest is a way bigger thing than anyone thought, but V.C. Andrews knew.
Eat weird things. My mom didn’t have a lot of junk food in the house. At least not yet. We hadn’t worn her down yet like we did in high school, so I would sometimes eat strange things to achieve some kind of sugar rush maybe? Like spoonfuls of Tang. Like spoonfuls of Nestle Quik. Just the powder until I couldn’t take it anymore. Pickles. I’d eat too many and then have to lie down. A few times, my brother and I made gross concoctions to feed each other blindfolded until someone gagged or said uncle. There’s probably some disordered eating stuff in there, and it did feel kind of primal. I still like to eat when I’m bored.
Play Barbies or Cabbage Patch Dolls. I was very into my dolls until far into ninth grade when I forced myself to stop playing with them to try to be cooler. Didn’t work. I preferred to have a play partner for doll work, but if bored, I’d get all of them into new outfits and try out a few scenarios. Sometimes, if my brother was super bored he’d play Cabbage Patch Dolls with me.
Call my dad at work and ask him to bring me office supplies, which he always did. My dad loves office supplies.
Set up the sprinkler and run around in the backyard in our bathing suits. I didn’t love this, because it was so inferior to having a pool, but on very hot days we would do this. Something usually went wrong with the hose (many times we didn’t turn off the water and the hose got a leak) and my dad got pissed off.
What did you like to do in the summer when you were bored?
Enjoy the typos,
xoxo
Carley
I love this Carley. I definitely had "my shows" which I especially remember watching as a treat when I was home sick. I also loved the Price is Right and especially Plinko. I remember some other game shows like Hollywood Squares with celebrities I had no idea about out. I remember that Price is Right was on at 10 and after that I liked Perry Mason which was on at 11 and after that sometimes the soaps. Mornings also had reruns of Who's the Boss. Only in junoir high did I start watching shows that were more current like Cosby and Family Ties. I like to think even then I sensed something rotten in the Cosby show's performance of family values whereas I always had the sense Michael J fox was a good egg despite making a convincing smarmy right wing teen. Outside of TV my sister and I had elaborate games of playing pioneer, writing "plays" and playing endless boardgames. I also liked to read encylopedias somewhat in order. I didn't discover any porn but I hid Sweet Valley High books in a drawer as if they were, and later I would change the channel when people came in if I watching certain shows that in retrospect were not that embarassing at all. Now with my kids having everyone one one screen agreeing on what to watch feels so wholesome . . .
My dad always brought me office supplies, too! We were not allowed to watch tv growing up, so I spent most of my time outdoors. Our yard had a portion of woods and a small creek, and I found the old dump behind the house next door and spent many hours excavating old Avon face cream jars, silverware, etc. Lots of gathering (poisonous) berries, bark, various pods, to "store for the winter" lol.