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| No, that isn't me, but I was close |
I've been growing my hair out the last few months in
anticipation of Halloween. Normally a clean cut guy, my hair was really getting
wild. The end result was being able to dress up as Pippy Longstocking for a
party last Saturday and then for work yesterday and handing candy out last
night. I certainly got some funny looks.
So what is this entry going to be about? Halloween? Pippy
Longstocking? Cross-dressing? Living in suburbia? Probably none of them.
The Pippy Longstocking costume took me back though, back to
the days when I was a kid of nine or so. I have some great memories from
childhood, and one of those memories revolves around summertime and a thing my
parents used to do with my brother and I. Mom and dad bought this package of
movie tickets where a mom could drop the kids off in front of a movie theater once
a week in the afternoon. If I remember right it was on Wednesdays. Just like
that, mom dropped us off downtown and my brother and I would enter the Murray Theater
with about 500 other kids and watch a flick. Good old Murray Theater. An old school theater. You know, where if a
tall guy sat in the row ahead you could pretty much forget about watching the
movie. Gum under the seats. Sound systems that popped and cracked like campfires.
Godzilla was a mainstay of those summer movies and so was
Pippy Longtstocking. She wasn't my favorite to be honest. I always kind of
resented Pippy back then because she was a girl and she could beat up boys.
But enough about Pippy. And enough about the Murray Theater.
It occurs to me that most parents probably wouldn't drop their kids off at a
theater like that nowadays. Literally just dump them into a big, dark room with
half a thousand prepubescent miscreants with just an 70 mm projector to babysit.
Certainly the days before cell phones. A mother could be unaware of where her
kids were for hours and not worry all that much. On a good summer day a boy
could leave in the morning and go missing until dinner, and if he was on time
when dad was home and hungry, he was fine. I remember that.
I wonder if we are smarter these days or dumber? I'm not
pushing one or the other necessarily.
I did just get my hair cut though.
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