#42 - trapped in the closet.

so i'm staying in nh at the parents' house for a few days for the thanksgiving holiday. when i visit them, i usually stay upstairs in the bedroom that i shared with my younger brother for 13 years or so. these days, the room is now painted greenish-blue, is much cleaner than i ever remember it & is now referred to by my parents as "the guest room"...& i am now a guest.

since i left home at the end of high school, my parents have been nice enough to store a ton of pack-ratted junk from my childhood. through the years, my mother has got me to whittle down my horde of childhood possessions, but there are still a good amount here & there around the house--some boxes stored in the attic, a few boxes down in the basement & a number of random things in the closet of my childhood bedroom. a quick glimpse into the closet reveals:

bank pseudo-collection - there's a shiny silver piggy bank & a ceramic, hand-painted owl bank, complete with sad owl eyes (that i am amazed never got broke) & a square silver one that pretty much never got used. these banks are where i stashed my occasional scratch & the varied coins from around the world that my dad gave to me throughout the years. this tradition has apparently continued, as this thanksgiving, i watched my 16-year old brother sort through my grandfather's stash of quarters to find alaska quarters for both he & my grandfather's state coin collections.

polaroid camera - during my freshman year at b.u., they had a housing fair, where students would go & visit people at various fold-up tables, checking out the housing options & other campus services. one of my floormates, who was likely tipsy at the time, swiped this polaroid camera (& a porkpie hat that you were supposed to put on & then take polaroids of yourself wearing) off some table...& somehow i ended up with it. the whereabouts of the porkpie hat are unknown at present time.

1984 windham soccer association trophy - i played soccer, baseball & basketball every possible year of my childhood, up until high school, when i became too old for the town recreational leagues. i liked soccer & feel like i was fairly good at it & going into high school, i was planning on trying out for the team...until i discovered that i had to get a physical & for some reason that freaked me out & i didn't go out for the team...end of career...but in 1984, i was still riding high & i (& every other kid in the entire league) got a trophy for my skillz.

hardy boys books - the hardy boys books were the first series of books that i can remember getting excited about. they had intrigue, mystery & titles like the secret panel, the witchmaster's key, the secret of pirate's hill & the tower treasure. reading them eventually led to me writing a short mystery titled "mystery at skeleton's groove," starring all my friends & featuring both a fight scene with our nemeses--the shlack gang--and a concert in the final chapter by our mystery-solving band, the rock-its.

strat-o-matic games - strat-o-matic creates board games based on actual statistics from actual sports pro & college sports teams, with cards for all the actual players, based on how good or bad that player was in the previous sports season, so you could, if you took the time, recreate the 1986 baseball season, for instance. i tried to do this, keeping score of every game & compiling the players' statistics. because of this, i became really comfortable with numbers & learned how to do a good amount of math in my head, as i figured out players' batting averages & stuff like that.

random box containing - roddy roddy piper & the junkyard dog action figures, a new england patriots ticket stub, europe's wings of tomorrow on tape, topps cereal series baseball cards including the much-bearded trio of bruce sutter, greg luzinski & bill madlock, a calculator watch, a view finder reel from jim henson's muppet movie, a valentine from "jenna" (jenna moeckel?) telling me that i'm a great friend & urging me to keep being myself, a third place ribbon from the windham recreation department's family festival, a transformers booklet for evil insecticon shrapnel, a laminated photocopy of jake the snake roberts' autograph, a sketch of a croissant that was supposed to be colored in but wasn't with "33%" written on the sheet in turquoise blue marker...probably the grade i got for not coloring it in.

#42 - trapped in the closet.
snack: mrs smith's boston cream pie
drink: ocean spray cranberry & blueberry juice

a holiday at my parents' house always features a few pies. as far as pies go, i've never ever liked dry-ass pie crusts. eating them reminds my mouth of the feeling i get when i cut my fingernails too short & then pull on a fresh pair of socks, scraping my newly-exposed fingertips against clean cotton. pie crusts are akin to licking a paper towel in my book. you can put all the warm cinnamony apples you please on that pie crust, but it's still fingernails cross a chalkboard, people.

boston cream pie plays by a whole different set of rules though. for starters, it's more cakelike than 95% of pies, which means no dry-ass pie crust getting in the way of dessert time fun & there's just something about the texture of the creamy junk that drives me wild...& how can i not love that chocolate. my mom knows this, so she's always made sure to get a boston cream pie every holiday. tonight, all three present family members asked me if i wanted a piece of mrs smith's boston cream pie. i was all "chill, people. i'll get to my pie." eventually i had one. mmm, obviously.

& there's always some form of cranberry juice in my parents' fridge. i finished off the bottle of ocean spray cranberry & blueberry juice with my boston cream pie. tastewise, i'd have to say it's one of my favorite cranberry blends--not too sweet, not too tart...& it probably helped partially clean out my urinary tract, which is always a beverage bonus.