Vocabulary Test

We grew up in the kind of neighborhood we lived in last year. Where there were always kids running around, your neighbors had a key to your house and everybody was happy to help you watch your kids. So sometimes I'd head down to the neighbors house down the street.

I've mentioned these neighbors in the past, the Hippies everyone called them. Would you like to know why?

She breastfed, didn't smoke in the house and they made her kids wear seat belts in the car, unlike everyone else who would literally let us try to "surf" in the back of a conversion van or sit in the front seat on the arm rest so in case we were in an accident we could be easily ejected through the windshield.

I BET THEY DIDN'T DRINK AND DRIVE EITHER.

Hippies.

So one day when I'm 4-ish my mom leaves me at this neighbor's house, in spite of their really wacky lifestyle, and runs out to do errands or smoke crack in my baby sister's face or something normal like that. 

While she's out, the neighbor calls my mother and says, "Something's just not right with Melissa today."

My mother asked for more information, "Is she sick?"

"Well no, it's not that. She just doesn't seem herself. She has a touch of melancholia."

I know my mother is the butt of a lot of my jokes and I accept that someday I will be the butt of Maddie's jokes. But my mother is a reasonably intelligent woman who maybe didn't have a huge vocabulary back in the 70's. 

I don't know what my mother thought I had, she didn't know exactly what melancholia was but it sounded a little like cholera or melonoma so she raced home to pick me up from our neighbor's house ready to rush me off to the ER or call an ambulance if that's what it took to save me from this horrible illness.

She arrived terrified and breathless, with my sister strapped to the roof of the car (she wasn't a hippy). She raced into the house to evaluate the situation and found me sitting on the sofa, quietly.

"Does she have a fever?"

"No, she just seems a little quiet today."

"Wait, you called me because my kid was quiet?"

Fucking hippies.

Comments

[Eleanor]

Oh goood Lord,how you always make me chuckle!
You actually reminded me of the days in the mid 70's and would sit at the top of my grandparent's staircase watching drunken adults dance around the house on holidays.
What happened to those days?
Don't ever stop doing what you do.
Because some of us appreciate it.

[The Bug]

That's a great story - and a sign of things to come. It's interesting how some traits are with us our whole lives. I was a "daydreamer" in grade school (Dana does not pay attention in class). I still made good grades. But even today I don't pay attention - drives my hubby crazy.

[RebeccaLand]

I so very much enjoy your posts.
Thank you Melissa, if I may call you by your first name. If not, please try to channel your inner hippie so you can be comfortable with strangers calling you Melissa rather than Mrs....
Again, I'd thank you for your writing since I always "get" something out of it.cornball poster comment
Best to you and your loves.
-r

[RebeccaLand]

Channeling inner hippie self: "using HTML tags while commenting on a blog in 2009 will not show tags for comedic reference", has been archived. I'm 37, my name is R and I know I should have known better.
Best-
r

[Michelle]

How was she able to call your Mom while she was out running errands?

I wonder what we do now that our kids will look back on and think is irresponsible. Perhaps the teflon pans?

[Jennifer]

Ah, yes, the blissful ignorance of the 70s/early 80s. I remember making a swing from the seat belt that was attached to the car's ceiling and swinging from it... While the car was moving.

[amy]

that's just too funny :) It does make you wonder about what our kids will make fun of us for letting them do today. I'm sure 20 yrs from now kids will be in booster seats until they turn 18 and they won't be those scary backless booster seats. 5 point harnesses all the way. They can buckle up their prom dates for safety :)

[Marcie]

This made me laugh out loud. I can not tell you how many times my mother spoke about the "god damn hippies" in my house.

[Lisame]

I loved this Melissa - too cute.

My dad (who has four daughters) would sit at the head of the dinner and ROAR while slamming his fist on the table "YOUR GONNA GET HAPPY AND YOUR GONNA GET HAPPY RIGHT NOW!" (see: veins popping, red face)

As we grew older this became so funny to us.

[ella]

Isn't that funny that breastfeeding was taboo back then. Even my ex-MIL scoffed when I told her I planned to breastfeed my daughter. Cuz you know only poor people did that.

We had some hippie neighbors in the 80's that strapped their kids into car seats! My mother thought it was cruel. LOL!

And oh how I remember riding not only unseatbelted in the car but in the shelf area above the backseat, that space in between the trunk and rear window. I called it my bunkbed.

Good times, good times.

[Erin@TheLocalsLoveIt]

Hippies Rock.

[Jenn]

Laughing my ass off...

Also, just watched a documentary on Woodstock last weekend--I don't think that word would have been in their vocabulary, either.

[Belle]

Well geez, the definition of hippy has certainly made a 180!! Now the seat-belt parents are the conservative boring folk. :)

[tonya]

This cracks me up. My parents were military, but Dad had some hippie tendencies left over from his teen years. One was driving VW camper vans for many, many years. Some of my fondest memories center around the adventures we had all over the world in those vans, my brother and I running around and raising hell as Dad drove. We had the BEST times. More than once, I've looked in the rearview of my own van and chuckled at how times have changed. In my state, kids have to be in a booster until they are nine. I know it is for their own safety, but I do wish my kids could know the joys of motoring down the highway in a VW van complete with a fridge and a stove and a bedroom that pops out of the roof. That trumps a flip down DVD any day.

[Franca Bollo]

Those "fucking hippies" got a lot of things right.

[MarthaB]

I really love reading your blog. I just wish that it would all show up in my Google Reader. Any chance of that happening?

[KYouell]

I think that my mom & MIL think that I'm the "fucking hippie" -- I hope someday they look back on the weird stuff I do (eating organic, avoiding trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, not having a car) as, well, not *so* weird.

[Shannon]

I'm trying to figure out who the hippies were. I guess we were sort of late to the neighborhood.

[hannah]

FYI -- your fav shoes at old navy: http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=26201&vid=1&pid=681152

[mpotter]

funny stuff!!

i love coming here.