Romper Room

Romper Room is the first television show that I remember watching.  It was designed for preschoolers and featured children playing games and learning from the Do Bee and the Don’t Bee, who—as I’m sure you can imagine--were great moral teachers. 

Each episode ended with the hostess looking through her Magic Mirror and saying, "Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?"  Then she would say, “I see Billy, and Carol, and Meghan, and …”

Each week, I waited and waited for her to say, “I see Susan.”   According to the Social Security Administration, in the year I was born the name Susan was the second most common name for a girl, so you’d think I would have heard it often, but I only heard the Romper Room lady say my name one time.   I was always hoping to hear it again.

I wasn’t alone.  Children all over the country yearned to have a woman they didn’t know see them and say their names.

We haven’t changed.  Instead of Romper Room we have an Internet full of applications—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, just to name a few--where we’re looking for people to see us and say our names.

But we have a deep need for connection that isn’t satisfied by the Magic Mirror or Facebook or any of those other apps.  At least I do. 

Romper, bomper, stomper, boo.  Tell me, tell me, tell me, do.  Magic Mirror, show me the way, how can I join my friends today?  I see …

When I was a kid ...

© Dmitry Kuznetsov | Dreamstime.comThe other day I was mentioned to someone that calculators were just starting to be used when I was in high school.

My comment was met with disbelief and scoffing, so I looked it up in Wikipedia.  Assuming that Wikipedia and I aren’t in some sort of collusion to obfuscate calculator invention dates, it confirmed my memory--pocket-sized calculators were not around until the ‘70’s.   I graduated in 1975.

Then I started thinking about some other things that were different when I was growing up:

• I wore a dress to school every day, no matter what the weather.   I walked to school, and on very cold days I wore pants under my dress and took them off when I got to school.  In 8^th grade the dress code changed to allow jeans.  That was revolutionary.
• I thought wearing a t-shirt with branding or an advertisement was weird.  T-shirts were plain, tie-died or screen-printed with a picture before the 70’s. I can remember actually feeling my opinions shift as branded t-shirts became ubiquitous.  (I had a similar shift about smart phones in January of this year.
• Phones were attached to the base unit with a curly cord.  The base unit was attached to the wall.  Sometimes the base unit had push buttons, but sometimes it had a dial.  You had to stand by the phone to talk. AT&T had to be called to install a phone in your house.
• The big coffee brand battle was between Folgers and Maxwell House.  Coffee shops did not exist--cafes did, but not coffee shops. 
• Our family went out to eat a few times a year, mainly because Dad thought it was important that we learned how to behave in a restaurant.
• Gasoline cost about 25 cents until shortly before I got my license, when the universe conspired against me and prices shot up to over $1.00.  In the 25-cent days, I remember gas wars, with stations undercutting each other and cars lined up to get the cheap gas.

Every generation has a list like this.  My grandparent’s list showed much more change than mine does:  electricity, TV, telephones, cars, air travel, civil rights. 

I wonder what my kids’ list will look like?

Between Pitches (not the baseball kind)

© Brailescu Cristian | Dreamstime.comI sing about a quarter step flat.  It’s kind of embarrassing, but I started singing that way in junior high church choir – when I sang on pitch I couldn’t hear myself, so I shifted my pitch ever so slightly.   

I was young and certainly didn’t understand what I was doing, but it’s still embarrassing because, uh, singing on pitch is pretty much the most important part of singing.  Now that I’m an adult I know better, but still have a difficult time singing exactly in tune because of that early habit.

Today in church there were different kinds of voices singing around my quarter-step-flat effort.   Some voices were a little ragged, some too operatic for the style of the music, some in tune and beautiful.

I started having the same thought I’ve had many times before: “When we get to heaven, I won’t sing a quarter step flat and everyone else will sound better, too.”  Sorry, yes, kind of arrogant.

But today I had a different thought:  When we’re singing around that glorious throne, maybe our voices won’t change, but our hearts will have—so that we will hear the beauty in every voice, like God does.

There it is!

© Vladimir Igonin | Dreamstime.comOur youngest grandchild (so far) is 18 months old and learning to talk.  She’s being raised bilingually, which means her native language is Spanglish.  She says, “I want agua agua agua.”  She can say both “thank you” and “muchas.” 

For a long time we couldn’t figure out what “ah tuh tah” meant, then--doh—we realized it means “hay esta” which in English is “there it is!”  That explains why she would say it when we peeked around a corner or she found what she was looking for. 

(It’s very hard to listen in both Spanish and English, especially when the Spanish one knows is only in the present tense and only words useful on vacations.  “Donde esta el bano?” hasn’t come up much yet.)

But my favorite phrase to date is “oh nooooooooooo.”  What’s most endearing is the passion with which she says it; she puts her whole body into it: eyebrows raised, mouth pulled into a little “o”, arms outstretched, fingers splayed.

“Oh nooooooooooooo” can mean anything from “my ball rolled under the couch” to “I spilled water all over myself and Grandpa, upon whose lap I am sitting.”

Someday too soon she’ll use Spanish and English properly and stop spilling water on Grandpa. 

But I’ll always cherish these Spanglish days. 

I'd like to get all my news slow jammed, please ...