Return of Memoryfest - Day 7/31

[bironic]

I owe some of you comments and will get to them, but not tonight. Am sick, I think. Or have a bizarre mid-winter allergy, which I suppose wouldn't be too bizarre after all, seeing as how it hit 70 degrees today.


7. Kindergarten

When I was five or six, my father needed to go to L.A. on business, so my family took a trip there. We visited the La Brea Tar Pits museum. Inside were exhibits on the pits, life-sized models of woolly mammoths and animations of extinct animals deep in the tar, straining to pull free. Outside, you could walk up to a railing in cement over a squared-off fossilized tar pit far below. I remember not wanting to go close to the edge, afraid I would fall in. My parents tell me I was terrified I would get stuck in the tar.

About the Memoryfest

Comments

[nicocoer.livejournal.com]

0.0 eeep-y!

When I was little, we would visit my grandparents at the trailer that I would call home in my middle school years. There, we would spread blankets out in the grass and listen to my grandfather tell us about the stars in that faded brittish accent of his or listen to books from my mother's childhood.

There was one book that is very important to me that I can't remember the name of but which set a small fire in me. The story Was of a girl who found dolls in her attic, and then told the stories of where the dolls came from. I see this as the Origen of my intrest in History and Archeology. While the focus changed (From Victorian to Civil War to Egyptian to Medieval) the pull never did.

~N~

[nicocoer.livejournal.com]

PS: I have a thank you to you on my LJ. *falls over*

~N~

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Feel better, sweetie. ♥


Most little kids are afraid of things like the dark or big dogs or being left at the store by their parents. When I was very young my biggest fear was chemical and biological warfare. I remember watching the news during the Iran-Iraq War in the late 80s, hearing about Saddam using chemical weapons, and being absolutely terrified. I can specifically recall reports about the poison gas attacks in Halabja. That happened less than two weeks after my fourth birthday.

[roga.livejournal.com]

Me too - small things scared me occasionally, but the Big Fear was always Saddam Hussein, lurking in the background. Forget regular warfare with missiles and fighter jets; it's the gas masks and Atropine injections and the fact that a strong wind and moisture in the air can cause more widespread damage than a bomb. It was the fact that BC warfare seems so easy, and so unpredictable.

Thank god that now that Saddam's gone nothing like that can ever happen again.

Okay, so I may not be completely over that childhood fear.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Gas masks in and of themselves are frightening no matter how old you are, I think, let alone what it means when people are wearing them.

nothing like that can ever happen again.

If I took away only one lesson from studying the Holocaust, it's that anything can happen again if we let it. Unfortunately, we have to keep constant watch and educate new generations to make sure history doesn't repeat itself.

[roga.livejournal.com]

It can, I know. That was me trying on sarcasm. One of the scariest things about BC warfare and terrorism in particular is its unpredictability - all you need is one unstable person who thinks it's the right thing to do.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Sorry -- couldn't tell about the sarcasm, and wanted to make sure....

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Gas masks in and of themselves are frightening no matter how old you are

OMG. My favorite episode of Doctor Who with the Ninth Doctor features people who have gas masks AS THEIR FACES. Like, they're not wearing them. They're organically attached. F. R. E. A. K. Y.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Seriously. :( It's still my big fear, too, more than bombs and guns and what have you. Eurgh.

Though I can't say that I don't feel a little better now that Saddam's gone. Kind of like how someone might feel if the neighbor with the big dog that bit you moves away but there are still other big dogs in the neighborhood...

[roga.livejournal.com]

You're right about that; it is a relief, and one can only hope a replacement doesn't pop up for a long time.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

A sign of a gifted child if ever there was one.

I don't remember watching the news during the Iran-Iraq war, but I do remember tuning in to reports on the Gulf War, with missile attacks and gas masks and burning oil fields.

The tar pits thing was a pretty temporary fear, as was my unease over an illustration of a black hole in a kids' astronomy book I had. Terror-wise, I skipped from that sort of stuff and E.T. straight into mortality (haven't yet recovered from that one).

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Mortality itself has never ever frightened or worried me. As a matter of fact, it's always kind of fascinated me. (I like going to wakes... Funerals, not so much, because they have a much more permanent and somber feeling and it's truly the final goodbye. But I go to wakes for people my parents knew and I didn't even meet, just to observe.) Suffering on the way out, however, is a big fear.

(Also, ET freaked me the hell out, too. I still hate that movie.)

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

I remember that my little brother was terrified at the beginning of the first Gulf War. My mother had to make up a silly song about Saddam Hussein ("Saddam Hussein, you are a great big pain, we will send you down a one-way lane,") to make him feel better.

At the beginning of the second Gulf War, he was just eighteen and marching in Washington with a sign that said, "I Will Not Die For Your Daddy's Vendetta".

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

♥ to your brother.

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely older than y'all - my big fear when I was in Grade 9 was the Falklands War. In those days, any sign of conflict felt like the prelude to nuclear war and the end of the world.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

...But not the oldest one hanging around here, don't worry. :)

I wonder how differently the Falklands War affected people in Canada vs. the U.S., since we tend not to pay as much attention to conflicts that don't involve us, and since (I think) you've kept closer ties to Great Britain since becoming independent.

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

When I was in school, there was a sense that everything interesting happening was happening outside of Canada, so we learned a lot about the outside world. Plus, my mother and her friends were very politically active and I used to sit in the living room listening to them argue politics while the other kids played or watched TV.

And of course, we only repatriated the Constitution in 1982, so we were definitely still tied to Britain at that point.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Damn. A high schooler before I was even born. You're bordering elderly. ;)

Personally, I still think any sign of conflict feels like the prelude to the end of the world. :( I wish the world would stop being so damn scary.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I hope you feel better soon!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thanks, and the same to you.

[musicisbelievng.livejournal.com]

Since I was 3 at the time, I didn't think I remembered anything about LA or the tar pits... until I went back over the summer and again in October. There was a lot of "heyy... I remember that" going on.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

The outdoor pit probably wasn't that big or deep, yeah? But to a five-year-old it seemed a pretty big drop.

[musicisbelievng.livejournal.com]

It was pretty dinky

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I looked up photos of it last night (don't know why that didn't occur to me sooner) and saw what it's like there. It's pretty shallow, but the life-size mammoths and oil slick on top makes me feel less stupid for being afraid of falling in.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

That reminded so much of a Little Golden Book (I think) I used to have, about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. I think Brer Rabbit got annoyed because it wouldn't talk to him, and then kept hitting it until he got completely stuck. OK, that was random :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, I think I had the same one. Haven't thought about it in ages. There was a bit about a briar patch before that, wasn't there? And Brer Bear. Those stories were some of my least favorite of the bunch in the book, but I remember thinking the Tar Baby was cute, all saggy and silent.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

I thought the Tar Baby was really cute, too! And I always got really annoyed at Brer Rabbit for hitting it just because it wouldn't talk to him. Even if it COULD talk, sometimes you just don't WANT to. Leave the poor little guy alone, Brer Rabbit!

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember that too - "whatever you do, please don't throw me in the briar patch!". Or something :)

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

I remember my father taking us to the old Princeton University Science Museum; it was a dingy, perpetually empty room with a single, rust-coloured tyrannosaur skeleton reaching up to the ceiling. Everything was in shades of brown and rust, all the wood and books and dusty display cases. And running along one side was a huge window that looked out onto the startling green of the hill beyond the building, and I have the very faint memory of standing by the window and making up stories about previous lives I'd lived, in the time the museum was built, or the artifacts collected, or in made-up times that vaguely correlated with the fantasy stories I loved.

It's funny, I had to take rather a long virtual walk around that room in my mind before I remembered that.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I have very fond memories of going to the Museum of Natural History (NYC) with my dad when we were kids, and I'm sort of superimposing them onto your story. Hope you don't mind. I didn't imagine different past lives, though. That's cute. I did reconstruct dinosaur skeletons into living creatures in my head, though, and imagined them all running around in context like in those impossibly crowded (http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/beaverjf/internet/lesson9/dinosaurs2.jpeg) illustrations. (I used to have that poster on my wall. It's several feet long; that's a small piece of it.)

What is it with university museums? They all seem to be badly kept and deserted, even when they have specimens to rival those of popular city museums.

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

Hope you're feeling better!

I don't recall being frightened of anything specific when I was little (though there was a time when I was convinced Bigfoot would wander out of the woods and kidnap me), but I apparently enjoyed exploiting other people's fears.

One night my dad was giving my sister and me our baths. I would have been about 4 and S would have been 2. I went first, and as Dad tells it, after he lifted me out and put S in, I looked back casually and said to S: "Watch out for the giant snapping turtle." There was no keeping S in the tub that night.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ha! And so young. I love it. Your sister probably didn't, but hey. I'm sure she gave as good as she got when she grew up.

(Thanks for the well-wishing. I think today was the worst of it.)

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

I love Paleontology as a child as well, something I owe to Jules Verne's "The journey to the centre of the Earth". I remember declaring very proudly to my Dad that I wanted to be a Paleontologist. He said "What's that?" and I replied that it was someone who researched dinosaurs. Then he said that there's no money in that and I huffed and said "That's not what's important!" and marched out. I never did become a Paleontologist, but I did retain that belief.