Update and Flashback

It's Sunday afternoon, I'm at a local cafe where the young male bartender won't stop talking to me, making focusing on this a little difficult.  He's also already referred to "Biden and those criminals" (apparently because of the bombing of Serbia 30 years ago), and mentioned, inevitably, that he's ok with "the Gays" in America, but he doesn't understand "why they have to shove it all in our face?" According to him, "it's fine, but it's not natural, right? We know, men and women, get together to make children, so we know being gay is not natural, it's not normal. Right?"

I murmured noncommittally and turned back to my laptop.

I always wonder if it occurs to these people that a truly significant part of the world clearly disagree with this logic, so maybe they should at least hesitate before pronouncing it so enthusiastically.

Guess not.

Anyway, to get this out of the way: One week done, still no word from the Czechs about my appeal. That's not surprising — I would have estimated only about a 5% chance I would hear from them within the first week, and I assume only about another 10-15% chance I'd hear from them this upcoming week. But none of that has stopped me from checking my email 30 times a day. And if I don't hear from them this upcoming week I'll start putting a lot more pressure on each passing day.

Ah well.

Let's stop and think for a moment about some of my shopping options here.

We could start at Luka's Butik

Such exciting options we have here!

But we have the latest fashions from Milan too!

------------------------

So on a radically different subject ...

I was thinking of ... if I could live permanently in one day of my life, what day would that be? No need to raise objections — I understand many people wouldn't want to stay in one day, and the many other problems with this hypothetical. I know, I know. But ... humor me.

I'm not so much thinking of a specific day — no wedding days, or "that day my Dad took us to Disneyland," or anything like that. I'm thinking of ... a particular time in your life when you felt in control, happy, satisfied, and good.

My mind, in fact, went to ... let's say the fall of 1976. I'm nine-and-a-half years old, still going to school at the Mary Mitchell Elementary School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My parents are both still there, and together — a couple months away from the news that we would be moving to Germany, with all the disruption that would entail. I was smart, safe at home, with an absolutely unchanging routine: Reading a lot, but also watching Batman reruns and the Spiderman cartoon each afternoon on TV, plus the semi-annual Monster Week on the 4:30 Movie, and then morning cartoons before going to Michigan football games with my Dad on Saturdays), as well as playing football with my friends every afternoon after school. I was both popular and successful at school, and although I would go home for lunch each day, I would stop back at my friend Erik's house on the way back in the afternoon with 2-3 other friends to watch a couple old Popeye cartoons before going back.

I was in the "Math B" group — the more advanced group in the class, though I once got in trouble when Luke and I were allowed to go back to our desks because we understood something the others still needed help with, leading Luke to say to me "there should be a Math C group!" which I thought was so funny I decided it needed to be said loudly, to the class, which got me in trouble, despite my protestations that it was actually Luke who said it first!

At some point, either that year or the year before, someone introduced soccer to us, so we picked that up pretty much full time during recess, in the process abandoning "tag" and its many iterations (Freeze Tag, TV Tag, etc.), which had occupied us before. As I was fairly athletic, this was fine by me.

I doubt I was the most popular kid in class, but I was close enough that I never worried about it or felt excluded in any way. Teachers loved me, as did the librarian at the Loving Branch, where I went often to pick up new books, which I tore through. I went to sleep each night playing records — usually a Mr. Rogers record, but sometimes Peter Paul & Mommy or something else. I also would sometimes sit on the sofa and listen to a record with my Mom — I remember in particular Helen Reddy records.

I had Beef Fondue on my birthday every year — my choice, of course — and three or four times a year my Dad would bring home fresh Fish & Chips from Lucky Jim's for us all. My mother's recipes that I loved included Topsy-Turvy Pie, Pork Chops Creole, and meatlof, and my Dad would pitch in sometimes to make tortillas and beans. On those nights when my Dad would make his Chinese food for guests they would make me a hamburger first (also my choice). On Christmas morning every year my Mom would make her beautiful Cinnamon Rolls.

One of my Dad's feasts, once I got over myself and started devouring them

Sometimes, on a Friday or Saturday night, I would gather with some friends to play Ghosts in the Graveyard or another variation I can't remember — one person hiding behind somewhere along a path the rest of us were required to run, starting and ending at a local willow tree, jumping out and trying to tag us. If he or she succeeded, then the two of them would hide in the path for another iteration, repeat and repeat, until there was only one un-"zombified" person left, forced to run the route by him-or-herself one last time. If that person made it uncaught, he or she "won." I don't actually remember any of us ever winning, though who knows. I do remember the people whose houses we were running among opening windows to yell at us to keep it down, which we always thought was unfriendly. But it was scary and thrilling, late at night.

In short, I was confident in my world and my friends, no real insecurity or uncertainty beyond the norm. My parents were together and — to my eyes, at the time, at least — comfortable, and I had everything I needed, in terms of food, clothes, love, and entertainment. I was confident in my intelligence and never really struggled at school, and was surrounded by people who liked me.

Table-top hockey in the spring air — image source John E. Stuckey 😀

Yeah. It's probably cheating to go so far back — far rarer would be periods in adulthood or even as a teenager when I felt so confident and secure. But whether it was my father's experimenting with photography (a period during which he came and turned the spare room in my classroom into a darkroom and taught my classmates how to use it, which reflected awfully well on me), or watching The Six Million Dollar Man with him every Friday night over popcorn and one — one — class of Coke, or sitting on the sofa and listening to I Am Woman with my Mom or spending a Saturday night at Luke's house or playing table-top football with Matt on a Sunday afternoon or loving every Gamera movie with the song about how much he loved kids they showed during Monster Week or having my Dad take me to the movie theater to see The Sting or Logan's Run or Star Wars ... 

Yeah. The fall of 1976 was dynamite. I'll take it. Man, the life I thought I'd live then, and ... if I could have bottled that confidence and comfort ... it would be pretty good.

I'd love to hear what your favorite/best time was, either with comments here or in personal messages.