This video is meant to introduce (and give you ideas for) your Paper #3 assignment in the post below. Be sure to respond as a comment to the question at the end. I'll also post some questions for Chapter 8 of Bourdain's book by Thursday.
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Nancy Mairs, circa 1988 For Tuesday: Mairs’ On Being a Cripple (142-151) A few words I might look up if I were back in college... ... -
Be sure to read "Paper Tiger" for next week and watch the video below, which discusses the importance of context for creating co...
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Here's your second Writing Workshop video, about 17 minutes...I know that might seem annoying, but hey, at least I'm not talking f...
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ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, my siblings and I used to live on a farm in the country. We would always run around and explore the land and go places we probably shouldn't have gone. My dad had a tree stand for hunting and he would always tell us not to get on it so we wouldn't fall off and get hurt, but we climbed up it and got on it anyways. I remember there was all kinds of snakes, spiders, and even scorpions out there. Looking back on it, I'm surprised none of us got bit or stung by anything. One time we even swam in a pond where later we realized there were snakes in it. My parents were not the best supervisors. Looking back on it now, I realize it was kind of dangerous and I would never go swimming in that pond or do a lot of what we did as kids again.
ReplyDeleteThis is fascinating--how much raising kids has changed in a decade or so! Do you think this was more a generational thing, or more where you grew up? My parents were the same, they had no idea what we were up to, and we did crazy stuff just like this. But today I never let my kids do this! :) That might be an interesting thing to write about, actually, for Paper #3!
DeleteMy mother tells me every now and then when I was little I would rip the fuzz off my blankets and make a makeshift moustache until I would fall asleep with pile of fuzz under my nose. I can't really shy away from this since I don't remember doing it but I don't think I'll be trying it again. Some other things I've noticed about my younger self with all the pictures my mom has is that I was super photogenic and girly. The girly part might have been overdone because when I was born my dad brought a blue blanket to the hospital and people would always ask her if they could hold her baby boy. She was a bit frustrated. I joke with her all the time that she used up all her lifetime film and pink outfits when I was younger which is why I rarely wear pink and hate pictures now. To end my ramble seeing a photogenic me is quite weird to me. And for people who know me, it would be quite weird for them too.
ReplyDeleteThat's fascinating, that you were both more girly and still experimented with mustaches! That's true with a lot of people, though: we start out more one way or another, and then slowly go the opposite direction. I was very athletic when I was younger and identified strongly with playing soccer, but nowadays I never play soccer and couldn't be less interested in sports in general (well, except soccer--still enjoy that!). It just shows that we're never fully formed, we're always growing, changing, and adapting. Even who you are now might change dramatically 20 years from now. All we can do is embrace it!
DeleteWhen I was younger me and my friend would go into the woods behind my house and begin to play around in them. The strange part was that my parents were perfectly fine with this and now that they're a bit more mature and experienced with raising children they would have never let me go in the first place. These woods were so dangerous with tiny bear trap like contraptions that our neighbors would put out to catch animals, to homeless people straight up living in it, not to even mention the wildlife that consisted of skunks, snakes and even bobcats. How we didn’t die is surprising now that I’m reminiscing all of it. At the time when me and friend would go explore these woods, it wasn’t a matter of if we were going to live or die, but instead it was like an adventure. At the time we were in this innocent stage of our life that we didn’t really feel that anything had intent to harm us so that could explain why we enjoyed the whole time that we were in there.
ReplyDeleteYes, isn't it funny how parenting has changed in a such a short time? When I grew up in the 80's, most parents couldn't care less where you were as long as you came home by dark. We did some insane things, very dangerous things, and sometimes even got hurt (I got partially impaled on a spiky fence!). I know parents are too clingy and cautious today, but what's the happy medium? And why has it changed? Too many hurt kids? Or a more dangerous world?
DeleteOne thing that my family did, and still does, is eat carrot cake on Thanksgiving. All of my friends think it is super weird because it is not a pie or your "traditional" dessert for Thanksgiving. But it is huge for my family. My Mawmaw makes it every year, and every year almost the entire cake is eaten, and whatever is left is taken home and eaten for breakfast the next morning. Yes, another strange thing, all leftover deserts, my mom, step dad, and I usually eat for breakfast the next morning. We all have a sweet tooth and there is no sense in wasting good cake! Or making cinnamon rolls which have almost the same amount of sugar! Plus the cake has carrots in it, so we consider it a semi-healthy food!!
ReplyDeleteYes, this is fascinating--I've heard of other people who do this, and carrot cake is the best, anyway! I like the idea of eating cake for breakfast, since this is really no different than eating donuts or other pastries for breakfast, and yet people think it's odd. I know Europeans often think we're insane for doing that. But I could embrace this family tradition!
DeleteI have always been picky about what I eat, but when I was younger I would not eat spaghetti sauce at all. I still don't eat spaghetti sauce that has meat in it, but as a substitute I would put ranch on my noodles. Looking back that is the most disgusting thing I think I ever ate. My mom would sit my noodles off to the side and then I would put Hidden Valley Ranch on them. Hidden Valley isn't even a good ranch! I don't eat ground beef and I hate onions, so I didn't eat spaghetti sauce. The only choice I apparently thought of for a sauce was ranch. I don't eat spaghetti sauce now but I do put butter and parmesan on my noodles. I think that is a WAY better option, but I am almost certain my family bullied me about the ranch and that's why I stopped using it. I am very grateful my family did that because the thought of using ranch as a spaghetti sauce as an 18 year-old is unbearable.
ReplyDeleteWow--how interesting! I love how when we're younger, something that grosses us out leads to an even grosser alternative! My youngest son always dipped his french fries in his vanilla Frosty from Wendy's rather than using ketchup (which he still finds disgusting). But it begs the question, what IS the right way to eat pasta? If it tasted good to you, maybe ranch is just as sensible as spaghetti sauce? You should try it again! :)
DeleteWhen I was a kid I would eat just about anything and my parents said that I was the least picky person they knew. There were two things that I would never eat as a kid and that was cheese and chocolate, two things that every kid loves. My parents would always present it in different ways or in different ways but I would never eat it. My friends always thought that I was weird for not eating either of them but I was perfectly fine not eating them. As an "adult" I could not see myself living without either of those things now but as a kid I would just not touch them.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that fascinating! I've heard that many kids don't like chocolate, however, because it does have a very strong taste that takes a little getting used to (my 14 year-old still largely refuses to eat it). But usually someone uninterested in chocolate hates a lot of other things, too, so you're willingness to experiment is very interesting. I wonder what made you change? Time? Or having people pressure you into trying it again and again?
DeleteWhen I was younger, me and my sister would used to go into our garden and see how many snails we could collect. This in itself is now a strange thing to do to me but i see it quite often among children. However, what me and my sister did with them was even worse and honestly disgusting. We would eat them as they were, without the shell of course. My parents would always tell us off and I can see why. I don't know what made us do it but when i was younger i didn't see anything strange about what we were doing. Now I wont even touch snails.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is fascinating--not something most people would imagine doing, but I think for kids it makes more sense. Kids don't have that sense of "gross" that we develop, largely because we're taught what is and isn't acceptable. And since many people eat snails, why not eat them raw like this? I wonder what attracted you to them? The taste? Their size? Or simply because it was a kind of game? It would be interesting to know why you stopped: whether because someone convinced you it was wrong, or you lost the taste for it?
DeleteFor a little while when I was younger, my family used to set up two Christmas trees. Even today, I have no Idea why we did this. I just remember that decorating the house was a very long and tedious process.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I wonder why...you really don't know? Was it because you had people in your family who wanted to decorate it differently? Or was it simply more fun? You should ask your parents! They don't do this anymore? When did it stop? So many questions...
DeleteWhen I was younger my mom would make this soup called caldo and she put chicken in the soup and I would love to eat the chicken fat on the drumstick. I would eat it all the time. Looking back at it now makes my skin crawl because that's so gross to me now. But when I was little I thought it was so good for some odd reason.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, I loved chicken fat when I was little, too, as gross as it sounds now. I find it fascinating that kids don't have the same taboos about food that we get once we're grown...and similarly, kids can't appreciate some of our grown-up tastes. But many people continue to eat chicken fat as a great delicacy! It's not just for kids! :)
DeleteI had some friends I used to write fanfiction fanfiction with. Not really sure why I used to think this was cool or we didn't find it weird, but it seems pretty self explanatory as to why that is odd and I no longer do it.
ReplyDeleteAh, but you're leaving the best parts out! What kind of fan fiction? What show? What books? Why was it fun at the time--and what made you outgrow it? Most writers do flirt with fan fiction before striking out on their own. Even I wrote Star Wars fan fiction (long before it was called fan fiction) when I was younger! It was much easier to dive into, since all the characters, the stories, and the universe was already there--you just had to take it in a new direction. It's much easier to start writing with someone else's world than to invent your own.
DeleteWe wrote anime fanfiction, and there was no 'best' part about it haha. We managed to have over a thousand people regularly reading our Soul Eater fanfiction and it was honestly an affront to god.
DeleteWhen I was younger, instead of eating my salad with dressing like any normal person would do, I would eat it plain. Now don't ask me why I didn't like dressing back then because I have no idea. Looking back though I cannot imagine how I ate just plain lettuce and liked it. Nowadays, when I eat salad I have it decked out with all types of toppings and I cannot think of ever going back to plain lettuce.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting--a lot of people seem to have a story like this, about how as children we resisted what was 'normal' with something that now seems 'abnormal,' but at the time made sense. It's fun to imagine why we learned to see things so differently!
DeleteThe weird thing my family has done and still does is our untraditional Christmas. Every year on Christmas Eve night we open all of our presents and then on Christmas day we open one from Santa. When I asked my mom about it she said it was because me and my five siblings couldn’t wait till Christmas. I don't know why she didn't just make us wait the one day, but now I like getting my presents early. My best friend Sarah thinks we’re weird because of this, but it is just normal to me.
ReplyDeleteYes, my family does the same thing--it feels more special to do it the night before, and then you get that one extra 'Santa' gift the next day. I think more people do this than we realize. I always assumed it was just us! :)
DeleteWhen I was about seven or eight, my younger brother and I would take "pool baths." We would only be allowed to do this in the summer of course when our swimming pool was open, but our parents would let us take a bath in our pool. This was definitely not an everyday thing but sometimes this was the easier alternative to fighting with us to take a real bath. To an eight and six year old everything is more fun in the pool including taking a bath, we even brought our shampoo with us. Looking back on this, it does seem kind of strange, but also brings back fun memories. -Braden Schroeder
ReplyDeleteHa, I did the same thing--but worse I did it in my friend's pool! I didn't have one, and I enjoyed doing it in a pool much more than a bath or shower (since there was more room to play). I'm pretty sure the shampoo screwed up the balance of the pool, but I don't think we ever told his parents!
DeleteWhen I was younger, my brother, my two older cousins and I would put on a play every Christmas. We would spend ours working on writing it, making props and learning it. We always had the help of our grandma and we would show the rest of the family when we had our Christmas party. Funny thing is, it always turned out to be such a disaster. Looking back now I am sure not many families did that but it always brought great memories.
ReplyDeleteHa, that's fascinating! Wow, do you have any of these recorded? That would be so much fun to look back on. I wonder what inspired this, and how you learned to do it--and if you got better as the years went on. That's just an example of kids being artists even before they know they are!
DeletePerhaps not the weirdest thing ever, but when I was a child me and my sister used to collect bugs outside. I don't understand why we did it looking back. We would even take them and try to build little habitats for them and try to keep them as pets.
ReplyDeleteYes, I did the same thing, but only with ants. I had a little ant terrarium for a year or two, and it seemed very self sustaining. Finally I dumped it back outside and they constructed their own ant hill which lasted for as long as I lived in the house. I wonder if they still tell stories about the old glass Eden?
DeleteI'm not sure my family ever did anything weird per se. Nothing I can look back on and call it weird anyway. We played a lot of games together and got rather competitive. I suppose others could see that as weird, especially since we would get the most competitive over CO-OP games.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of games do you remember specifically? Believe it or not, I think it's rare for families to play games together these days. So it would be interesting to know what games brought you together--or in this case, tore you apart!
DeleteWe played a lot of Wii games, since their controls were the simplest. I remember many long nights of us arguing over how to beat castles in Super Mario Brothers Wii, and stubborn grudges held over Mario Party 8 betrayals. We'd play Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and long games of Disney Scene It (A Disney trivia hybrid board game that came with a DVD to watch scenes on).
DeleteWhen I was younger, I used to put ranch on literally everything I ate. I would eat it with the normal things like cheese fries, fried zucchini, pizza, and others along that line, but I would also make some weird choices with my food. At some point I even tried mixing it into my chicken flavored ramen noodles just because I wanted to see if I woudl like it. (I did not like it, would not recommend) As I got older, I like ranch a lot less than I used to and I cringe at some of the weird combinations I made a a child.
ReplyDelete-Tori Prince
Yes, a lot of kids go through a 'ranch' phase, and to be fair, it is pretty awesome. In a kids' mind, if it tastes good alone, it tastes good on other things--all other things! I wonder if that made you ultimately hate it, because it came to represent your childhood self?
DeleteWhen I was younger, for Halloween I would go house to house for candy, but now my town only does “Trunk-or-Treat”. I think this is kind of upsetting to think that most kids around my town will never experience my version of Trick or Treat. Another weird thing is my sister and I, when we were five to seven, would make colored-paper to make children’s books. Our only book we finished was about this “monster” (a blob thing that we could draw) and he went through this town to go to a Hannah Montana concert (because we had Hannah Montana stickers). I think this is cute, but I’d never make another like it. The weirdest was that I hated clothes at home until I was like 10 years old, but hey, I don’t remember why so I can’t explain it.
ReplyDeleteYes, isn't it fascinating to try to remember why you did things the way you once did, and why your brain worked that way? There are so many imaginative possibilities for kids, and they seem to dry up as we get older. Or maybe we do? That's why you have to stay vigilant and keep using your imagination!
DeleteA strange thing I did as a kid was drink "pop milk" my mother didn't want me or my siblings to drink to much pop because it is bad for you but we would be very persistent and beg so she would mix it with milk but at the time we thought it was the best thing ever and would ask her to make it for us thinking back that is kind of weird and I think I would just tell my kids no.
ReplyDeleteWow, that is unusual! I can't imagine those tastes would work well together, and I bet you would hate it now. But kids have a very different idea of what tastes good, which is why so many adult foods disgust kids, and why we can't believe we used to eat and drink what we did.
DeleteI'm laughing at this now as I remember it, I was a picky eater as were most children so I often found myself eating chicken. Most of the time this was mcDonalds chicken nuggets, but what makes it so peculiar is that I would use applesauce as a condiment for my nuggets. I don't know why I found it to be so good/ (I just tried it again was certainly better in memory) - Eriq Clark
ReplyDeleteWhen I was growing up we always lived a little ways out of town. When I was 10 we moved out in the middle of nowhere and our closest neighbors (other than my great-granmother) were about a mile away. My siblings and I would always be outside by ourselevs playing. My mom would be in the shower or otherwise preoccupied and we would be outside. I remember an incident where my sister got hit in the head with a baseball bat accidentally by my brother among other memories we made out there. Now days, kids can't play outside without supervision, even way out in the country, cause there are too many creeps just looking for the opportunity to snatch kids. Even when we would be visiting my Grandma in town we would play outside by ourselves and the kids from across the street would come over or we would go over there. It's sad to think that kids can't do that anymore. It's a scary world we live in and I would do anything to be able to go back to the days of playing "over annie" or jumping on the trampoline without a care in the world.
ReplyDeleteSomething I used to do as a child is play with my cousins as if we were adults. We used to think we were grown and made all of our own decisions, of course only in the backyard. We would tell each other that when we went home, our parents were the police and we had been arrested so we had to respect them and do what they said. This was a very strange thing we did now that I look back at it but I had so much fun doing it when I was young. Playing in the backyard and going "shopping" for food(grass and leaves) and bailing each other out of prison when we would finally get to see each other was a highlight of my childhood.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger my favorite food was cheese. Anything with cheese in it was bound to make me go crazy, I would eat bowls of cheese by itself. One day I ate so much cheese I had to go to the hospital because I was extremely backed up. Now as a young adult I cant stand to eat cheese, especially by itself. I think maybe eating as much as I did as a child explains my overwhelming hate for it now.
ReplyDeleteIn my early childhood, my family had this snack that is made by my great aunt Alice. It involved a banana cut in half with a spread of mayonnaise topped with walnuts. This contraption was seen as natural until I grew up to see that it actually was not. I have tried it and it does not suit my taste. My family on the other hand loves it. I have told my friends about this snack and offered then a taste. It did not end well for them.
ReplyDelete-Nora Gayler
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