A few weeks ago while driving this song came on and I remembered that This was the very first 45 that I’d purchased for myself; my Brother and I rode our bikes to the mall and the single was purchased in Spec’s music. I was eleven years old and I believe it set me back about .95 cents.
Is that an appropriate record for an eleven year old? Not even a little.
This was NOT my first 45 though; It was the first one I paid for. You see, I had an inside to free music and I’m not talking about The Columbia House Records where you got 49 records for a penny.
My Mom was a waitress at a local restaurant and they had a Juke Box. When the 45’s were swapped out for newer songs, Bev brought home the old 45’s and I thought I was The Shit with my amazing collection of 45’s. Not only did I know the A side of each one, I also knew the B side and I believe that right there made me extra cool. In hindsight, it makes me wonder what Bev did to earn those records…*hmmmm*
I had a decent little record player and when friends would come over to visit I would make them listen to both sides of my records. I know that sounds bossy because it was.
Anyhoo, I loved music back then, just as much as I do now. I wonder if I still have my first Purchased 45.
*runs to upper cabinet where old records are stored*
Snap. I don’t have the Exile 45, but I do have a few others.
Randy Newman, Steve Martin, Rod Stewart, Melanie, Meatloaf, Lipps, inc.
I wrote my name on almost everything I owned back in the day…I needed a label maker before they were invented.
THIS was one of my favorite songs and I can’t help but sing along still to this day.
some people say I’ve done all right for a girl…😳
BTW I fell down a rabbit hole while looking up Melanie and her Brand New Key song. She wrote that after eating her first meal coming off of a 27 day fasting. This song has absolutely no innuendo; It literally is about rollerskating.
Anyhoo, I’ll be mostly MIA this week as we have our Big Charity Event this weekend and we’ve got a not.so.healthy.dog that I’m hoping to get some resolve on this week. Please send good mojo in Lillie’s direction.
Do you remember either of those songs? Do you remember your first record that you bought?
*I originally shared this post many moons ago, (2010) but I felt that since I just shared my dilemma regarding Anatoli Anole this week, you should know that I don’t loathe all lizards* (thanks Nance for naming the Azzhole)
As a kid, you could find me playing outside all the time; if I weren’t creating shenanigans with the neighborhood kids, I was creating my own adventures.
I spent hours and hours in our yard unattended or roaming the neighborhood, also unattended.
I loved catching bugs and stray cats, bunnies critters, but catching lizards, well catching lizards was my jam.
I was proficient at capturing without harming and I loved them so much. I was the self proclaimed lizard whisperer.
When I was about seven I found this beautiful bright green lizard. He was a gorgeous specimen!
I believe it was love at first sight for both of us.
He was so docile as he crawled up and down my arms and he loved sitting on my shoulder, like a Parrot lizard.
He was my constant companion for A Full Day.
*CUE THE SUZ AND LIZARD FUN MONTAGE*
I had visions of our life together: playing games, reading books, traveling the world.
I found a jar and made him a home and we had our first sleepover; it was epic.
The next day, I thought it would be a great idea to take him to school with me because surely, he would get lonely at home all alone. (Was I wearing homemade pantyhose? Probably.)
Being the girly tomboy that I was, I put him in my purse and headed for school.
I only shared my new lizard with a few friends that day as I did not want to risk getting into trouble. I’d already hit my quota for classroom spankings.
Sadly, later that evening, I realized that my lizard had perished. I was beyond crushed because all our hopes and dreams for the future were just as dead as he was.
Maybe it was the the long commute on the school bus that did him in? Maybe living in my purse wasn’t the right environment? Perhaps a diet of grass wasn’t enough?
Devastated, I buried him in the yard and performed The Eulogy that he clearly deserved.
A few days later I went to pay homage to my now deceased friend and WHAT IIN THE ACTUAL HELL?
He.Was.Gone.
The burial site was wide open and my lizard had risen from the dead!
Like Jesus.
It was a miracle of epic proportions! He lives! He lives! He lives!
I was elated and for days I looked all over for him, but sadly we were never reunited.
I never forgot our time together though, he was my favorite lizard and could never be replaced.
In hindsight, maybe he was not so much ‘Jesus like’ as much as my cats were excellent excavators.
XOXO
Your friend Suz, the critter hoarding hawt mess in the making.
I have dreams at least twice a month about hairy legs. My hairy legs. In my dream I’ll be somewhere in public, look down and the hair on my legs is about 1/2 inch long and I’m horrified. In some dreams I only had hair on the backs of my knees, which is really interesting if you think about it.
My daughter might have a Masters degree in psychology, but I’m usually great at analyzing myself, but the ‘dreams about hairy legs’ took me almost 50 years to figure out.
In real life, present day, I could care less if there is hair on my legs, but that wasn’t always the case and I believe this is why those particular dreams still come to me.
Put on your seatbelt because I’m driving the WAY BACK machine and I’ve had wine.
I believe my hairy legs memory starts when I was in first grade; you know how memories can become fuzzy over time. I remember walking to the bus stop and looking down at my skinny little girl legs and noticing the hair on them was unruly. Long and unruly.
I did what any normal person would do: I stopped walking and took care of the situation by licking my palm with saliva and ran it along the hair on my legs trying to smooth it down.
Crisis averted.
Only it wasn’t. That was just a temporary solution to the problem as I noticed either later that day or the next that the issue was still there.
WHAT TO DO?
I think I complained to my Mom many times about this and she poo-poo’ed my worries. You know how moms are.
Finally either I just i figured it out, or Beverly told me to do this: I used some Avon lotion to assist with he unruliness.
But in the end, this really only helped a bit more than my saliva. In my eyes the hair was an eyesore.
If you think I grabbed a razor and shaved the hair, you’d be wrong; Mom said I couldn’t shave my legs until I was 13, which is funny because there really weren’t that many rules being enforced in our home.
THIRTEEN? How will I survive that long? I felt like I looked like the Monkey my Mom always said I was. (I loved to climb on everything)
BLAME IT ON BEVFOR MY NEXT SOLUTION
My Mom was a waitress and she always wore knee-high panty hose under her pants along with her orthopedic nurse shoes.
Do you remember the L’eggs? All those plastic eggs are still sitting in the landfill..
My plan was pretty genius if you really think about it.
I remember finding a pair of my Moms knee-highs and putting them on. They came up pretty high, like to my thigh, but when I started walking, they would slide down my skinny little girl legs. Hmmmmm…how in the world could I get them to stay up?
I’m {almost} A GENIUS.
I found some safety pins and pinned the falling down knee-highs to my underwear.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
I remember walking to the bus stop wearing a cute dress, happy as a well fed monkey because my legs were now as smooth as silk when my plan suddenly started to fall down apart.
As I was walking, my underwear were slip, sliding down. I pulled them up, only to have them slowly slip, slide down again.
My plan had holes in it {just like my head} and I failed again to cover up my hairy monkey legs.
You do realize that I tried to invent Garter belts for kids, right?
Where I learned this Garter Belt idea from is beyond me, but since I didn’t have much supervision, I probably saw someone wearing a garter belt on HBO or at a strip joint.
I’m just kidding, we didn’t have HBO.
I HELD OFF TURNING INTO EDWARD SCISSORS HANDS UNTIL I WAS ELEVEN
Circa 5th grade.
I might have gotten over the hairy leg issue for the time being after my garter belt contraption didn’t work…but by the time I was eleven I took matters into my own hands and shaved my legs, even the backs of my knees.
If you think that shaving my legs was a smooth situation, you’d be wrong. I’m lucky I didn’t bleed to death because there was a LOT of blood as I was a novice with a razor.
Later that day when Bev came home and saw the crime scene in the bathroom she cussed and probably tossed one of those 10lb orthopedic nurse shoes in my general direction.
Hey, a HAIRY girl has got to do what a HAIRY girl has to do.
Not Letting History Repeat Itself
Well lo and behold, I gave birth to two hairy AND adorable little monkeys as well. They both begged to shave their legs early on, but I insisted that they waited until they were at least in middle school before they took to the razor. I recall we/they tried the NAIR hair removal cream first and almost died of chemical inhalation. (I can still smell it!)
I texted them yesterday asking how old they were when I let them shave and they confirmed middle school; so 11? 12? But at the beginning I would only let them shave from their ankles to the top of their knees.
Why? What is the thought process here? Did I want my girls to mimic a cricket?
I have no recollection at this point, but they both confessed that they currently don’t shave above the knee all the time. Perhaps I started a trend.
So shave share with me some deets.
Did you have hairy legs as a kid? If so were you embarrassed?
Have you ever heard of NOT shaving above the knee?
After typing that last line, I can NOW only picture someone shaving ABOVE THE KNEE and leaving the lower portion hairy. Guess what I’ll be dreaming about tonight…
Busy Bee Suz 
