LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

When I was a young’un, I was very very smart. I read early and I was fantastic in school. I could
performed better in high school, but by the time I reached the end of my junior year, I knew all I could afford would be the state college. Since my grades were already good enough for that, why bother reaching for all A’s? But I was still smart. I cruised my way through college with a nice A-/B+ average. Could’ve done much better, but didn’t care to.

After all, I was smart.

Fast forward to present time. Names only stay in my head briefly. I’ve been teaching myself PHP unsuccessfully for, what, 4 years now? My vocabulary has become…has become…less gooder. I confuse words and muck up cliches. Consumer technology becomes harder and harder to master.

It calls to mind a book I read in middle school – Flowers for Algernon.

Summary:

• Lab creates drug that makes dumb mouse smarter
• Lab tries drug on mentally-challenged janitor.
• Janitor become super smart
• Mouse reverts to dumbness and croaks.
• Janitor realizes he, too, will be dumb again.
• Janitor becomes dumb again, but cruelly REMEMBERS he used to be smart.
• Tired of being pitied, he moves away from everyone he knows and starts over in a state home.

(isn’t it amazing that we all aren’t emo, given what they made us read in school?)

So in the “now” where my younger brother can beat me handily in Scrabble, and I’m my Facebook friends’ resident punching bag in Scramble, I wonder if I just grew into a brain that was very smart for a youngster and average for an adult, or completely losing it a la Algernon.

How about you? Do you find yourself dumbing down as you get older? Tell me I’m not alone here.

(I did a site search to see if I told you this story yet. I couldn’t find it, so apologies if this is the 2nd time.)

In 1980, the Phillies won the World Series. I was in grade 3, and my brother was 10 months old. The whole region was ecstatic. And there was going to be a parade! I really wanted to go and see Pete Rose and Tug McGraw. Other kids were being pulled out of school to go. But Mom gently told me no – my brother was too small to take into Philadelphia. But the next time the Phillies won the World Series, she’d take me.

I was bummed, but it was a fair enough proposition to an 8-year-old. Next time, I’ll see the parade.

And here we are…28 freaking years later. I’m frown with a job and a place of my own. I’m older now than Mom was in 1980. Pete Rose is banned from baseball* and Tug has passed on. And the Phillies are ONE WIN away from a parade. ONE WIN!

I already told (new) Boss that I WILL take off from work on the day of the parade. I don’t know or care who can or can’t come with me. I’m going to make my way to Broad Street and see the show. I can’t wait another 28 years.

I haven’t been more vocal about the Phillies because I’m just afraid I’ll jinx something and they’ll lose.

So let’s hope that by the end of the week, there’ll be Phillies parade pictures here!

Happy Monday!

*What a crock of crap that is, by the way. You have football and basketball players who get into and out of legal trouble ALL THE TIME and they’re welcomed back with open arms. Pete gambled, never betting against his own team, and he’s out.

< Did you ever smell an aroma that took you back years? The other day Max and I went for a stroll around the neighborhood. About 10 minutes into the walk, as Max stared down a squirrel, I encountered the scent of old treated wood. It may have been from the nearby telephone pole baking in the sun.

But it zapped me back to my early childhood. Every summer, MomMom would rent an apartment in Wildwood, NJ for my aunt, her daughters, MomMom, my mom, and me. This was before the boys arrived in the family. We’d stay there a week and every night we’d walk the boardwalk. That was back in the mid 70′s when you could still win cigarettes and liquor on the gambling wheels.

The rides, though definitely not high-tech by today’s standards, were the best. I fondly recall the little pods of kiddie rides that my cousin and I would ride. They were so simple. There was one with little kiddie cars that went around in a circle. The ride was shielded by a bold, primary colored canopy with lights beneath it. The steering wheels were ornamental and just spun around wildly on a bolt, but the horns were real. Actually, they weren’t horns, but a button that triggered a harsh, staccato electric buzz. I’d lean on that button until my finger hurt.

Occasionally on those kiddie car rides, there would be kiddie motorcycles. Something about them were taboo to the little kids. Maybe they did wheelies or some such thing. But you knew you had really “grown up” when you were allowed to ride them. I don’t think they had the horns.

A trashy cousin of the kiddie car ride was the kiddie boat ride. Same round setup. Same bold, beautiful canopy. But this time there were boats that went around in a circle. And ‘floated’ atop the most miserable green moldy water ever. As if the ride was filled up with water Memorial Day weekend and not emptied until after Labor day. You were taught from infancy to fear that water. Don’t touch it! The ornamental steel steering wheels were shaped like old-fashioned boat steering wheels.

It’s been so long since I’ve been in a kiddie ride section of a theme park — do these kind of rides still exist?

Even if they don’t…as long as I can sniff a telephone pole, I’ll remember them.