Hodgepodge Nostalgia

1. When the children of today grow up, what do you think they'll say about this period in time? What do you most hope they remember?
~ I am not at all sure what they will say or what I hope they will remember.  These are such turbulent and confusing times.  I guess I hope they overlook the bad and remember their childhoods the way we do....as the very best of times.

2. National Teacher's Day is celebrated in the US of A on the first Tuesday in May, this year May 7th...share how a particular teacher positively impacted you. 
~ Mr. Giotto was my homeroom teacher all through high school.  He was also one of the boys' gym teachers and a coach for football and track.  Mr. G was a hottie back in the day....a real Italian stud muffin....but that's not why I feel lucky to have had him.  As a homeroom teacher, he didn't actually teach us a class.  His duties were to take attendance and once a month when we didn't have Wednesday morning activity period to talk to us, sort of as a guidance counselor.  Most of the homeroom teachers didn't do that.  Mr. G did, though.  He took the time to get to know us, find out what was happening in our lives, talk to us, and listen.  He wasn't a whole lot older than us so it was kind of like having a big brother.  Once in a while on those Wednesdays he'd get our homeroom together with the homeroom of another gym teacher and we'd play volleyball and we girls would make snacks and bring them in.  We were pretty much family in Mr. G's room.  I didn't stay in touch with him, but to this day when I run into him anywhere he remembers me and I get a big bear hug.  

3. What's a dish your mama made, that if set in front of you today would whisk you right back to childhood?                                                                         
~ Hungarian goulash.  Mom used a recipe from a set of cards given as premiums at a gas station (remember when gas stations gave you things for filling up the tank?).  It has a lot of spices and wine and was really quite the gourmet meal back in the 70s.  Mom used to make it when we lived in the wildlife preserve and had a crowd of research staff and students to feed after a hunt.  I found the same set of cards at a flea market not long after Tim and I were married and I continue to make the goulash a couple of times a year.

4. Mother May I was a game we played when I was growing up...no pieces, parts, or plugs required. What games from childhood do you remember loving that were also pieces, parts, and plug-free?
~ Freeze-tag, Red Light-Green Light, Hide 'n' Seek, 

5. Besides your own mother, tell us about a woman who influenced you as a child?
~ That would be my grandmother, whom I called Nana.  I wrote about her (and my grandfather) here.

6. Mamma Mia! What's the best play or musical you've ever seen? 
~ It's got to be, hands down, Grease for me.  The movie with John Travolta and Olivia Newton John was HUGE my senior year of high school.  My class song was even "We Go Together" from the closing scene.

7. What are three smells that make you feel nostalgic?
~ Camay soap reminds me of my dad's mom's house.  There is a smell I can't describe, a combination of dampness, pine, and I'm not sure what else that smells like the log cabin up the road from my grandparents' house.  And fresh cut wood takes me back to hours spent in my grandfather's workshop.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.
~ Getting some more tests done today....an electromyography and nerve conduction velocity on either my arms or legs (I'll have it done to which ever extremities they don't do today on Monday).  It's another step in trying to find out why I'm experiencing tingling in my hands and feet.  I've already had a ton of bloodwork.  I had upped the dosage on my prescription over the weekend, but stopped taking it yesterday and last night went back to the lower dosage.  I did that because while I really like the effects of the lower dose, the higher one made my body hurt so much I could barely make myself walk across the room and yesterday morning my mind felt....well, not right.  I don't know how to describe it.  Sure hoping this gets figured out soon.  This getting older business is not for sissies!