I have been meme smacked again. I am answering both of them below.

Meme I: Five Things I Miss From My Childhood, from Kathy

Thanks, Kathy, for tagging me with this one. I am a bit of a nostalgia hound and this one was fun.

1. I miss being brown. I miss living before people cared about sun screen. I spent every Summer toasted a golden brown. I gleamed with health. I ran everywhere and all of my clothes had holes in them because I was that kind of a kid. We didn't have car seats for kids. I remember being allowed to stick my head out of the window of my parents' huge Oldsmobile and the wind sucking my breath away.

2. I miss sprinting down the street after the Good Humor truck as it spewed forth its horrible jingle. I would clutch, in my grubby little hand, enough money to buy ice cream sandwiches for my sister and me. My feet were always bare and I remember that the pavement on the street was always hot and I would try to run on the front of our neighbors' lawns so not to burn my feet. I was barefoot a lot. I wear socks and shoes now. I miss the hard little leather feet I had.

3. I miss my dad being young. I miss my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. I don't feel like elaborating. Do I need to?

4. I miss my sister being so gullible that she would hold her breath, on my instructions, as we drove past the local cemetery. I told her that if she breathed, the dead souls could come into your body and haunt you and that the only way to get rid of them was to eat liver. My mother would actually slow down and drive past the cemetery as often as possible because she said it was the only time we were quiet in the car.

5. I miss or maybe am just nostalgic for a time when we were allowed to be kids, when we weren't over scheduled with dance class and martial arts and gymnastics. When we could have the luxury of wasting time in play, in digging in the backyard looking for dinosaur bones, in feeling like our lives stretched out in front of us like an endless Summer punctuated by trips to the pool and bike rides to get ice cream at the end of the day. I miss that sense of wonder and of the time given to us to develop our imaginations, to realize and believe that anything was possible because we had the time to dream it. Seems like a paradox, but we as children then were better able to take advantage of our time by wasting it than by squeezing it and manipulating it in order to fit in as many different activities as our parents think the Harvard Admissions Office will look favorably upon. I miss being allowed to be a kid. I miss that on behalf of all the kids I see around me. My kids, I think, are going to have that. I hope. *fingers crossed*

The rules:

Remove the #1 item from the following list, bump everyone up one place and add your blog's name in the #5 spot. You need to link to actually link to each of the blogs for the link-whorage aspect of this fiendish meme to kick in.

Villainous Company
Pirate's Cove
Fistful of Fortnights
Cake Eater Chronicles
Random Pensees

Next, select four unsuspecting victims, list and link to them. Get the plank ready.

Nope. I rarely do that. If you'd like to play, jump on in. This one was a lot of fun.

Meme II: The DVD Collection, from Margi

Margi asked me to do this and I always try to do whatever Margi asks.

1. Total number of films I own on DVD/video:
Like Margi, I'm not sure how many we own. Probably somewhere between 30 and 100. I doubt we own more than that, but I have been surprised in the past by little things like this.

2. The last film I bought:
“Danger UXB”, I think. My wife gave it to me as a present. I heart Danger UXB and I recommend it every chance I get. It is about 14 hours long and it chronicles the adventures of the British Army in defusing UneXploded Bombs (UXB, get it?) which fell in London during the Battle of Britain and were in too senstive a location to be allowed to explode.

3. The last film I watched:

Umm, I'm not really sure. I don't get time to watch a lot of movies. We don't really let the kids watch television too much so it would have to be when they are sleeping. If they are napping, I'm doing errand stuff -- cleaning or cooking or napping myself if I can get away with it. If they are sleeping, I'm usually too tired to focus on a movie. Maybe the last one I watched in full was the Lion King in Norwegian. That was interesting.

4. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

Auntie Mame, with Rosalind Russell

Animal House, which I watched like 30 times in order to prepare for going away to college

Blazing Saddles

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Zero Mostel)

Saving Private Ryan, which I saw in a theater in Oslo and it was only with the greatest self-control that I stopped myself from standing up at the end and shouting at the whole theater -- "Did you see that? Those boys died for your freedom!" I can't tell you how close I came to doing that. And yes, I cried at the end.

5. Tag 5 people and have them put this in their journal/blog:

Nope. I rarely ever do that. If you'd like to play, jump on in and self select.

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