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If we’ve missed you on this serendipitous who’s who list of active Plusporans and #CHECKIN visitors, just yell! 💕

? first ?

In case anyone's been confused by my posting/delete/reposting.., I was confused re: which day it was by a conversation I had IRL. It turned out my posting schedule was indeed correct, but had already corrected it. Without an edit function, I had no option but post, delete, repost, delete and post again. HUGE APOLOGIES! I promise to get more sleep and schedule in more time for #checkin for the remainder of my week!

@Stefani Banerian 🏆 You are indeed first!

most childhood memories are of big news events; many were the bad things that happened. I do remember writing the date into some fresh concrete, and later realizing, upon seeing it years later, that it was the day Nixon resigned.

My favourite childhood memory is also my earliest: I woke up in a cot in an unfamiliar bedroom, but my mother was right there to give me a cuddle. I was probably a year old. Later, I decided that a particular room in my grandparents' house had the right lighting, shape, and air of déjà vu to be the same room I remembered. My mother tells me I'm wrong, and she doesn't recognise the remembered event particularly; but I cling to it anyway.

@Adrian Colley You're wise to not discredit infant/baby memories. A surprising number of us have them. Since, they are visual and tactile memories they can be surprisingly accurate.

I told my kids a story from my childhood when they were still in elementary school. I was born in the early 1950s. The story:

We still had home bakery delivery when I was about 6 or 7. Delivery was by horse-drawn wagon, about 3 days per week. Bread, rolls, various other baked goods. When the company decided to switch to trucks, our route driver quit. His reasons? "I'd be warmer in a truck, and wouldn't get rained on in truck, and I'd probably be cooler in a truck in the summer, most likely. But the truck can't do two things the horse can: the horse knows the route, and the horse knows not to step on or run over kids. I don't need the added worry of having to drive the truck."

I got a wide eyed response, but no real comment. About a week later, we visited their grandmother (my mother). The first thing they just had to tell her about turned out to be that story. Followed by a chorus of, "Gramma, Dad told us a big, fat, lie, didn't he?"

You should have seen the look on three little faces when she replied, "Nope. That was entirely true."

Did I get to enjoy some quiet satisfaction? Nope. Their response: "Geeze, Dad, you're OLD!"

@Su Ann Lim One of my most magical days as a kid was happening upon a fâté. The was a pony and trap there and the owner asked me to take it for a spin and look after it while they got something to eat. I wish I could trap that feeling in a bottle. It's one of my fondest memories.

@Su Ann Lim. Ever since I was a wee child, this has always been my impression of August... 'Temperature-Wise.' It's a runaway train, on fire! o_O (lolololol :-)

🚈🚆🔥🔥🔥😂🤣

@Joltrast what a special memory to savour, always!!!

@Rob Anybody a most satisfying story!

I have memories from when I was 2-3 years old, because we moved from an apartment to a house in another part of the city.

Among those memories are watching Captain Kangaroo and JFK's funeral. Also a pet chipmunk named Alvin (yes, after 'Alvin and the Chipmunks'), and the corner market (which is still there).

A new edge to saying "the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train" D:

Good Morning :D! Literally up watching the weather and waiting for a tropical storm to drown us and throw off tornado warnings today, lol. Hopefully i fall asleep sometime very soon as its 5 am here, and i could really use the rest.

Carrying my baby sister home from the hospital in my arms, sitting in the front seat of my dad's old Rambler, wedged in between my parents. I was not yet 4.

Good morning! Not really a childhood memory, But I do remember my holiday trip to Norway and Finnland 2 years ago. That was really an amazing trip. So glad I was able to do and did it. Was a a really nice time. I miss it!

Sorry, @Su Ann Lim, @Carsten Raddatz (劉愷恩). I hope I didn't 'de-rail' the thread with this bad pun... :-)

Hmm, the official 2020 calendar (dunno if its the canonical version of it) has more to come.

.jpg "Hotlinked image of a gross cartoon calendar putting major catastrophic events")

Trains won't be much of a problem at all then. Also, puns won't matter.

B0rked image references will, though.

.jpg "enter image title here")

Hahaha, images with brackets in the title filename screw up pluspora's parser. So, this is similar, but teh Yellowstone Eruption does not feature. Are we disappointed.

@Rob Anybody That's fantastic! It's a better perspective than the usual assumption, which is that you must be old if you remember using VHS.

Here you go, @Carsten Raddatz (劉愷恩) :-)

good morning one memory comes to mind was staying at my aunts vacation home....a real primitive place in the Russian River area north of San Francisco. We did have electricity! the house was at least 100+ years old then and I think was never repaired or modernized except the inside toilet. My aunt had 5 children, mom had 2 and we all slept on mattresses (with sheets) in the big glassed in sleeping porch bedroom. Our job was to pick blackberries until lunch time bring them home and then we could go swimming. While we were at the swimming pond my mom and aunt would make blackberry jam, over a an old electric stove. The refrigerator was from the 1930s with that coil on top. and there was an old cocacola chest that held bottles by the neck and slid around on a track and every few days with my dad or my uncle would come to visit and bring ice to fill it. We kept watermelon and fruit in the melting ice . The grown up got the cokes! this was a place where they stayed all summer and we would come up for a week or two and go home and come back.....of course there was blackberry pies too. We did this for many years from when we could be let loose with out supervision from 5 or 6 up....we were all about 9-10 month apart in age....

I remember being in nursery school at age four, blowing bubbles... and discovering that if I slipped into the back porch, sheltered from the breeze, I could blow much bigger bubbles.It felt like I had invented a magic trick.

...memories as a child...this morning I was thinking of how, at the tender age of 13 walking into a local movie theater and seeing the last five minutes of the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind...and how magical and awesome was the view....

Must be something in the air,. I was thinking of checkin topics for my round and childhood memories are a big part of it.

Earliest memories are from when we lived out east when I was a toddler. Snow fort, walking on ice. I think there was a girl named Melinda who looked out for me outside of my mom wasn’t available. We lived in PMQs.

My Mom, my sister and I lived with my grandparents for 18 months, and during that span, one of my most vivid memories was of Mom reading “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” to me to introduce me to reading. Mom was the finest. So was Dr. Seuss.

Awww... what precious memories. See many of us have very early memories!

One of mine... watching how adults worked the child proof gate at the top of the stairs in the 2 storey house we were in at that time, and thinking aha! Sure enough, the next time I was left upstairs alone and could hear the rest of the family on the first floor, I waddled up to the gate, reached, released the latch, took my first step and fell headfirst down the concrete steps. I remember bouncing my way down on my head but what frightened me was hearing mom scream loudly, so I screamed too! I was so distraught she was so upset I don't remember feeling physical pain.

@David Calderon LOL you know you can't derail @checkin!

@Nora Qudus we weren't supervised from pre-school age either! well, not by humans anyway. I didn't realize until much later our pack of dogs which followed us whenever we went out exploring and playing, either by ourselves or with each other and friends, were doing guard duty. They were our playmates but it would have been challenging for strangers or other animals to have gotten close to us. 😂😂

I remember having fun making a racket on this toy! i didn't know how to actually make music, not just sound, until I was much older.

@Bob Lai hurray for Chipmunks! We wore their record out!

Of course you are correct! Point taken, @Su Ann Lim.

😁

I'm a bit confused isn't it Tuesday 4 Aug..!!
Or have i missed a day's check-in..?
:0))

It's Tuesday🙂

@Su Ann Lim kids and pain- I remember falling off a swing when I was 4 or 5, looking at my scraped knee and...not crying until until my mom made a big fuss. It's guided me towards trying to be as matter of fact as possible when checking on people who are hurt (I was a first aid instructor until this year.

@Corinne Howell I've totally messed up with the dates! Apologies. This is Tuesday's Checkin! I'll get it right for tomorrow.

No worries ..@Su Ann Lim..
I thought I'd lost a day 😳 as i was half asleep.. 😴 .... You all do a great job of hosting check-in 😃 blessya

There's one of the songs I learned as a syllabary, before I had words, called "Copper Kettle". I got in trouble for singing it in Nursery School - because it is all about how to make moonshine whiskey, not get caught, and it references the Whiskey Rebellion. Somehow my teachers there felt it was not appropriate for a 4-year-old to be singing. It's still a favourite in performance.

Here's a sound I suspect many of us recognize! 😆 https://youtu.be/SPWFlPfuDgo

🍦🍦🍦🍦🍦🍦🍦🍦

The Ice Cream Truck!

@Corinne Howell thank you for your patience and kind words. 😘

@Gaffer 😄
Is this the Copper Kettle song? You learned this as a 4 year old? Impressive!
https://youtu.be/cfMYEvHN7s8

I woke up this morning with a wooden 6' diameter cable spool in my thoughts. My nephew and I used to try to walk on the spool in the alley when we were kids living next door to each other. Literally. The apartments were in a house remodeled into apartments. There was still a door between out bedrooms.

But I have a better story that I don't remember, I was told about. My sisters are all 10 years and more older than I. They would have their boyfriends over and mom would be getting me ready for a bath. I would escape and run through the house embarrassing my sisters. Naked singing "running bare!" I didn't know the difference between bare and bear.

Well, I made it through another day's posts. I'm going to start on the second season of The Umbrella Academy now and enjoy my quiet night.

Earliest memories are probably cutting my head open on a nail that was sticking out of a pew and getting annoyed because the Sunday School served icecream and jelly touching each other.

So, the Jesuits were right that if you get someone into church early it will stay with them for the rest of their life.

@Whuffo I saw there was a new season. Maybe I should join you.

@Dave Higgins better than mashed potatoes and corn touching. I find that disgusting as mom used to put corn in mashed potatoes. Ewww.

@Su Ann Lim I learned it as a syllabary, during the course of learning words; to me, at the time, it was just a collection of sounds sung to particular notes. My parents used it as a lullabye (be careful what you teach your children!) and I'd no idea (again, at the time) that many of those sounds had actual meaning. The version you reference is the song, but isn't much like the way I learned it. Here's a link to my version. I happen to like its simplicity much more than Dylan's version, but I'm biased.

https://youtu.be/xfCfusJj-pA

@Gaffer I prefer your version! You’re exactly right - many kids remember all too well what they are taught.

@Su Ann Lim Why, thank you! I have an album coming out in a few weeks on Bandcamp. It will be mostly lullabies, and (per my skew on things) most of them are dark, especially if the background behind the song is known. I'll be making a formal post when it's done, but Copper Kettle will be on it, believe me. It's one of the few I have that isn't entirely dark (just shady)...

My father sang "Suicide Is Painless" as a lullaby. His nickname for me until I was 6 or so was Flyspeck.

I love that Altman made $70K for directing the movie, M*A*S*H, but his 14yo son made over $1M for the lyrics to the song.

Hollywood is a random, random place.

@Gaffer I trust Suicide is Painless will also be on your album?

@Dave Higgins better than mashed potatoes and corn touching. I find that disgusting as mom used to put corn in mashed potatoes. Ewww.

My biggest potato irk is potentially gravy all over roast potatoes: the best bit of roasting is the crispy outside, so why deliberately make them soggy!

In Korean cuisine, a nice starter are roast potatoes chunks with oil - and you get the best of both, crunchy crust and additional flavours via the oil-heavy sauce they are served in (not: drowned in).

Sounds tasty, @Carsten Raddatz (劉愷恩); I'm definitely up for sauce with roast potatoes; I just want the choice of proportions and locations

@David Calderon and @Carsten Raddatz (劉愷恩) I really like these calendars!!!!

@Beej Cobalt. It's always nice to see what's just ahead. Umm, well, maybe not always o_O (Heheheh :-)

@UnclePirate (Stan McCann) Ick! Maybe the idea was to slow down your consumption of mashed potatoes.

@UnclePirate (Stan McCann) Yet another reason I'm glad I was an only child.

@Dave Higgins I absolutely adore potatoes. However, if gravy is on the table, then potatoes become an excuse to eat gravy.

I'm the same way with salad. On the rare occasion I eat salad, the function of the salad is to permit me to eat a huge amount of salad dressing.

I grew up on mediocre gravy, @Phil Landmeier (ᚠ), so I'm only recently getting into gravy with things.

@Phil Landmeier (ᚠ) Oh, I'm glad you feel that way too! :)

My mom was the queen of gravy! Yes potatoes with good gravy is da bomb

@Phil Landmeier (ᚠ) From 8 on, I was like an only child. Sisters married and brother in the army, it was just me and mom.

Then for a couple of years I had my nephew who is more like a brother. We are 6 years apart while his mom and I are 10 years.

@Dave Higgins It's worth learning how to make it from scratch, like I just did tonight. I saved all the liquid and juices from a beef roast I made a couple days ago. The roast was very lean so there was no fat.

Tonight I melted half a cube of butter and an equal amount of cooking oil, diced some onion, and got that simmering. As soon as the onions started to caramelize I began sifting in flour and whisking. Probably 4 or 5 tablespoons of flour. But you have to take your time, adding little by little and whisking so there are no lumps in the roux. Then cooked the flour for about ten minutes to a tan color. I wanted the flour completely cooked so there's no flour taste in the gravy. Also put some salt and black pepper.

Lastly, while the roux is hot and bubbling, I turned the flame to max and added the liquid and gelatin (cold) I'd saved from the roast. Whisking it together. The gravy immediately starts to form as the flour reacts with the liquid. I knew it would be too thick so I had milk handy to add in and whisk some more. I dumped milk in three times until I had the consistency I wanted, and I was done.

It takes time to make good gravy that's like velvet and has that lovely sheen on the surface. I spent 20 or 25 minutes making it.

While that was going on I was baking potatoes. Dinner was three baked potatoes, smashed open on the plate, and drenched with brown gravy.

@Su Ann Lim Life's not worth living with a dash of decadence here and there.

@Phil Landmeier (ᚠ) Right on!

Definitely, @Phil Landmeier (ᚠ); I like many more things now I make them myself rather than have a packet version served to me.

Unfortunately, my mother does not enjoy cooking and my father was impatient and rude, so I have a huge list of traditional British dishes that I didn't realise I liked.