Reflection Tuesday ~ Musical Instruments

If you learned to play a musical instrument, tell me your memories of lessons, practice, and your music teacher. If not, what instrument did you want to play and why?

Me? After failing miserably in the fifth grade with the flute I moved on to another woodwind instrument, the clarinet.

My clarinet and I had many happy years together. I attended a school with a highly competitive music department. Competition was a regular occurence and I did not mind ithis since most competition was done as one orchestra against another. Now, on the other hand, I absolutely hated it when another clarinet player "challenged" my chair in the orchestra. The ability to loose my place on the second row if I lost a challenge kept me on my toes and I practiced a lot. I don't recall ever loosing a challenge.

What a glorious feeling it was when the conductor raised his baton and when it was lowered my 'note' came out as many notes! Magical! It stirred my soul! I have many silly memories of splitting reeds during performances, rendering the instrument useless, and 'faking' that I was playing . That I could do, but have me march across a football field faking it and I was all giggles.

I still have my clarinet but it only squeaks for me these days.....due to the player, not the instrument. Going to symphony concerts is one of my favorite things to do!

So how about you? Did YOU play an instrument?

Reflection Tuesday

What did your family like to do on weekends when you were growing up?

This may sound like a strange way to spend your Sunday afternoons but my family, all six of us, would pile into our car and go look at model homes.

We usually did this on Sunday afternoons as Saturdays were reserved for running errands with Dad and helping him with his chores. I was a "Daddy's girl".

To this day, I'm not quite sure WHY we did this because my Dad's job relocated us to a new state every three years. Although, I might add, within those three year stretches it was not at all unusual for us to live in at least two new homes within that area. My Dad used to tell us it was his "gypsy" blood that urged him on.

My brothers hated looking at model homes but I enjoyed it. As the boys got older they either stayed in the car or stayed home. I enjoyed it so much that I often passed hours and hours away drawing house plans and designing my own dream home. Imagine my shock when years later I married my husband who stays put in one state , in one house for years and years on end!

So how about you? What did YOUR family do on weekends when you were growing up?

Reflection Tuesday ~ Grade School Fads Part 1

My husband caught me with a glazed look on my face the other day and asked me what I was thinking about. I told him I was trying to remember what crazy fads we had when we were in grade school and junior high. At first I could not remember anything but then my mind was flooded with memories.

Will you take a walk with me back in time? Some of these fads may seem familiar to my younger readers, not because they were fads during their own school years but because they are now considered VINTAGE. And for my older readers? These crazy fads just might make all you VINTAGE ones smile.

Let me know if you remember any of these! Or, if there are some crazy fads you remember from the same time period then let ME know so I can blow away the cobwebs from my VINTAGE brain cells.

This teeny-weeny-skinny model ushered in the underweight generation, in my humble opinion. She was appropriately named TWIGGY and her face graced the cover of every magazine. Almost overnight our store manequins shrunk three sizes.

Mini skirts began the era of women's liberation. They reached their height of popularity around 1967. Virtually every young woman was wearing one, most as a sign of rebellion against '"the establishment".

At my junior high school we were only allowed to wear our skirts 3" above the knee. If your skirt looked suspiciously short then you were sent to the principal's office where you had to kneel on the ground and a ruler used to determine if your skirt exceeded the allowed three inches. If it was, guess what? A phone call was placed to a parent and you had to go home and CHANGE your clothes. If no parent was home? Tough luck, you had to sit in the school office all day! My how times have changed.

The long-legged look was in. As skirtlines rose in the '60's so did the height of footwear. Fashion was meant to accentuate the leg and boots did exactly that. The shorter the skirt, the taller and tighter the boot.

First we started with Go Go Boots. Does anyone remember Nancy Sinatra singing 'these boots were made for walkin.......? She was the poster child for Go Go Boots. Mine looked great with fish net stockings. Did you ever have a pair of fish net stockings? Fish Nets were my very first pair of stockings.

Then the boot got higher and higher, sometimes even going over the knee. I had a pair of white ones. These were strange boots made of latex or something. In fact, everything seemed to be shiny and plastic during that time. I couldn't wait to get home and pull, or peel, mine off. They made my legs sweat! I was relieved when skirts started lengthening again - my shapeless adolescent calves and chunky thighs didn't look very good in mini-skirts.

Granny glasses were short lived. I had a pair with interchangeable colored lenses to match my outfits. They were also called Ben Franklin glasses. John Lennon wore them. Ahhhh.......John Lennon wearing love beads, yet another fad.

And FLOWER POWER was everywhere. I had FLOWER POWER decals all over my clarinet case.

In the midst of all the LOVE and PEACE of the sixties there was always an underlying fear of nuclear halocaust. Bomb drills were conducted regularly in schools along with fire drills. Fallout Shelters were sold and some people even had them installed in their back yards. Do you remember....the RUSSIANS are coming, the RUSSIANS are coming!

Hope you enjoyed this brief look at the crazy fads I grew up with. Next week - Part 2.