Week 16 (a): Time Warp

This is my first entry for Week 16 of LJ Idol: Wheel of Chaos. This week we have to write two entries. The topic for this one is "kako no ashioto," a Japanese phrase which translates to "footsteps of the past" or "footsteps in the past."

This morning, my son, KFP, asked me what life was like before the Internet. My husband and I explained several differences: talking with friends on a landline; looking up information in a library or with an encyclopedia (often several years out of date); planning weekend activities by using the newspaper's movie ads; reading magazines like "Consumer Reports" for product reviews.

KFP wouldn't remember, but we vacationed in the 1980s for one week when he was a toddler.

The private cabin we rented near Raystown Lake, seen from the back yard. Some people are on the second-floor deck, leaning on the wooden railings. Surrounding the wooden structure is a large grassy back yard and many deciduous trees, aleaf with green.


At least, that's how my family jokingly referred to that vacation: staying for a week at a rented cabin on Raystown Lake in Central Pennsylvania, without WiFi or cable television. With its country kitsch decor, the cabin, indeed, seemed frozen in time in about 1985.

Ever since we've been adults, my siblings and I have often planned a summer vacation together, inviting our parents along. Though they were divorced, my parents remained friends and could cohabitate in a large rented house along with the rest of us.

My brother's kids were about 5 and 7 at the time, and my son, KFP, was just over a year old and still a wobbly walker. My brother arrived early and saw that the cabin had virtually no baby-proofing. The baby gate we'd told him we were bringing would never have bridged the opening at the top of the double stairway on the second floor.

So, my brother pushed the wide coffee table in front of the stairs to serve as a movable barrier, after counseling his kids that they were not allowed to stand or play on the coffee table. It was the sort of solution that we Gen Xers could remember from our own childhoods, and it worked surprisingly well. Looking back, it was a little fraught with possible danger, but we were all younger then, and the adults either moved the table aside or were able to climb over it (!!!).

Fortunately, we didn't have to use those stairs very often, because there was also a flight of steps to the second-floor deck, which was easy to close at the top with our baby gate. So, just in case you feared that this story would end with a precipitous fall down the stairs, rest assured that it does not.

The second floor was where we spent most of our time, as it housed the kitchen, living room, most of the bedrooms, and a bathroom. (In fact, I don't really remember the ground floor, because I think the bedrooms on that floor were occupied by my brother's family.) Hewn of wood, the walls reminded us of the wood paneling in our childhood living room.

My dad reads a book to KFP, who had hair curling around his ears before his first haircut. My dad was wearing his favorite light-blue polo shirt, which was his way of dressing casually. You can see a little of the wood paneling behind him.


This is perhaps a good time to remind people that, contrary to popular belief about the 1980s, most households didn't immediately update their homes to reflect a 1980s aesthetic of bold geometric shapes and bright colors. If, like my parents, they purchased and decorated their home in the 1970s and then had children, when the 1980s rolled around, and those kids were either pre-teens or teenagers, the 1970s decor still covered the walls. Or, in the case of wood paneling, it was built-in and not easy to change.

During our 1980s vacation, we soon realized that activity planning was more challenging. My sister had wisely printed out some options, but when we wanted to find out about hours or parking, we had to call the attractions using the landline. (Most of our cell phones didn't work when we were at the cabin.)

For the first time in at least a decade, we found ourselves looking through the phone book when we needed, for example, to find a local grocery store. We showed my brother's kids how it worked, but I'm not sure any of it made sense to them. KFP, of course, was too young for such considerations and was spending his time playing with toys on the floor.

We spent some sunny days on beaches along the shores of Raystown Lake, but we were sometimes more surprised by dicey weather than we would have been if our cell phones had given us access to the Minutecast rain predictor from our favorite weather app. Watching the clouds roll in and the sky darken, then gathering our stuff to go, felt more like old times. Look, kids. Weather prediction once you left the house meant relying on your eyes, your ears, and your gut.

KFP in his blue wet-suit style swimsuit and floppy blue beach hat, with a blue pail on the beach at Raystown Lake on a sunny day.


When we had a completely rainy day, we discovered the problem with satellite TV. Turns out that the very weather that brought us inside to the television was super-bad for satellite service. We gave up on broadcast television and perused the collection of VHS tapes on a nearby bookshelf. I forget what we chose, but it was a 1980s family movie that the adults had seen many times. Soon, all the kids lost interest, so we turned it off and played some board games.

Again, not too different from a rainy weekend in the 1980s where, if you had no other plans, and nothing good was on TV, you'd pull out Scrabble, or Trivial Pursuit, or my family's favorite, Parcheesi. I would often win Parcheesi, due to both luck and my intuitive form of strategizing. My Dad would usually win Trivial Pursuit, due to his mastery of Baby Boomer facts which, at the time, made up the bulk of the questions.

Both my husband and my sister's husband had to spend some time away from the rest of the family that week, because they had to do things for work. Because they couldn't connect at the cabin, they drove to a local cyber cafe to get their work done. And yes, it was 2011, and while most cyber cafes had shuttered by then, this town had such negligible Internet access that this one did good business. (It's like a time capsule within a time capsule.) Who knows if it would still exist today, in 2025?

Being cut off from the rest of the world didn't bother the kids back then the way it might today. None of them were old enough to have their own cell phones, especially not my sister's first-born, who was still growing inside her mother. None of them relied on electronic devices for entertainment yet. In fact, my brother's kids enjoyed reading to their little cousin. We took long walks together and found a toad in the backyard. My mom spent hours sitting at a picnic table in the grassy yard, drawing what she saw.

A greenish-brown toad perches on my nephew's thumb, who is otherwise not visible in this shot.


My mom, wearing a light blue bucket hat, with her paper taped to a portable board, lost in thought as she works with colored pencils.

My mom's pastel drawing, labeled "Farm Wagon," of one of the old decorative wagons that sat at the edges of the lawn.


We spent a very silly evening convincing my son that all of our noses made different sounds. He toddled between us, beeping our noses to see what sounds we'd make: from a high-pitched beep to a loud honk. When nighttime came, he didn't want to go to sleep while everyone was still hanging out, and he would writhe on the couch as he tried to keep his head up. But I would gently remove him from all the noise and fun and take him to the bedroom, where I'd coax him to sleep with mommy hugs and songs. (And, admittedly, watching his favorite "Caillou" DVD on a portable player I'd remembered to bring.)

While he doesn't remember it, for that week, my son experienced the good parts, and some of the bad parts, of the 1980s. You had to work harder to find reliable information and hope that things hadn't changed by the time you used that info. You were largely cut off from the larger world, but if you had supportive family and friends around you, you didn't mind as much. Consuming media wasn't always an option, unless you owned the media in question. When bad weather hit, you'd be even more isolated, but board games often came to the rescue.

Reflecting further, I'd add that you didn't have an easy way to connect with people outside of your immediate circle or area. So, for example, while I shared my love of "Monty Python" with my brother and a couple of friends in high school, it wasn't until I went to college that I realized how many other fans existed, not just at Penn State, but around the world.

For anyone who differed from the mainstream, it was harder to feel seen. I kept a lot of my opinions to myself back then, not realizing that some of my high school classmates were doing the same thing. Only when we connected later on Facebook did I realize that we'd all been just a little bit intimidated to let our freak flags fly.

I'd tell my son that, if he really wanted to experience the 1980s, we could try to book that cabin again. But I realize now that wouldn't quite be the same. It's different to go to a remote location when you're used to being connected than it was for us to live that way, back in the day, when we'd never known anything different. As we'd trodded at a snail's pace through the 1980s, we saw the bright shapes of the future expanding around us as a glorious promise.

My husband walks with KFP, who was just a little nugget back then. My husband had to lean down to grasp his hand. KFP turns back to look at the camera with a curious glance.

Week 16(b) - There Was Only One Bed

This is my entry for LJ Idol: Wheel of Chaos. This is my second of two entries, this one on the topic "There Was Only One Bed."

On New Year's Eve 1999, I attended a party at West Chester University with a bunch of art majors, and at the end of the evening, several of us ended up in bed together. But before we get to that, let me set the scene.

The party took place at the off-campus place of my sister's good friend from high school, whom we'll call Tatiana. Even though they'd gone to different colleges, they tried to see each other during holidays and breaks. As I remember, Tatiana shared her place with one or two roommates, and she introduced us to her girlfriend, so maybe that was one of the people who lived there.

My sister was home for the holidays, and I lived in my hometown, having finished college and grad school and burned through my brief first marriage. I was dating someone, but he was out of town for the holidays. So, knowing I had no other plans, my sister invited me along. I was relieved to be spending time with her and Tatiana, whom I knew as a witty, creative person and a loyal friend. It was much better, I reasoned, to spend time with my sister than be a third wheel at my mom's New Year's Eve plans with the woman she was dating at the time, or falling asleep in front of the TV with my dad in his apartment over his medical office.

Tatiana rented a place on a quiet street. I remember it as a free-standing quaint house of only one floor, but it's possible that the house was a duplex and that there was an upper floor that was a second apartment. All I know is that the kitchen was large and filled with delectables that the guests had brought; much better than the food you'd expect from a college party. The alcohol was a cut above, as well. Tatiana was practicing her bartending skills in hopes of getting a job in a local restaurant to help with bills.

Her living room, where we all hung out, reminded me of a dance hall, with wooden flooring and plenty of space. Music played throughout the evening, and I spent time admiring the fantastic collage that Tatiana had made on one of the walls. She'd covered it with images pulled from magazines: arty photos, landscapes, and celebrities she admired. Because she's a tall woman, Tatiana was able to cover most of the wall without even stepping on a stool.

The guests were mostly art majors, as I said above, many of them LGBTQ, including another male friend, Brayden +, who had gone to high school with my sister and Tatiana. The party guests were great company: chatting and making jokes, dancing along with their favorite songs, and accepting me, the stranger tagging along with her much younger sister. (Seven years separate the two of us, although it seemed more significant of a difference back then.)

Behind my smiles, I was also harboring sadness. Not for my failed marriage, which had ended more than a year previously, but for a guy I was dating at the time who, for reasons known only to him, had gone to visit his family for the holidays and had not made any effort to contact me since he'd left. In those days, I didn't yet have a cell phone; nor did he. We could have emailed each other, or he could have called my place and left a message. But my emails fell into the ether, unread, and my answering machine remained empty.

You wouldn't know this, but saying that I was "harboring sadness" is also a bit of wordplay. You see, he called himself "Sadness" on some of the online forums he frequented: the sort of message boards that attracted people like him, who were former punks and forever renegades, still wearing leather jackets and bleaching their hair as they approached 30, but without any real prospects or current art/film/music projects to brag about. Someone like that could be charming enough for a while to entice people like me, who were, admittedly, on the rebound. It would take me a couple of years of off-and-on dating with this psychic vampire before I finally gave him the proverbial Doc Marten on his backside and then painted my windows shut.*

As it turned out, I wasn't the only one missing someone. A girl with black swirling curls lacquered to her forehead lounged on a couch, telling anyone who engaged her in conversation about her boyfriend, who had been a drummer in the band Bloodhound Gang before they became famous.

Famous is the kindest possible way to put it, because they were mainly known for "Fire Water Burn," which was three years old at the time of the party. No other hits or successes followed, so I think most people, even then, would have considered the band a one-hit wonder. Not to mention that, admittedly, her beau had left the band before that single was even recorded.

But, if the other guests shared my view of the Bloodhound Gang, it didn't show. They were very kind to her about her missing boyfriend who, for whatever reason, was not at the party. I believe she made some vague reference to him being away on tour, but she didn't mention the name of the band, so I guess they weren't even as famous as the Bloodhound Gang.

I don't remember talking much about Sadness at the party, because I was aware that the more I talked about him, the worse he would sound. Why couldn't he just call me? Or answer my emails? There was no good reason that I could think of, except that he probably wasn't thinking about me. To me, that was worse than if something bad had happened to him, making him incapable of reaching out. I mean, if he'd been in an accident and acquired amnesia, for example, he couldn't be blamed for this cone of silence. And, likewise, I couldn't be blamed for holding out hope for a guy who clearly didn't deserve it.

The night wore on. The lighting in the dancehall living room was mellow as we made a giant circle, clinked classes together, and danced in the new year. Then, one by one, the guests started to leave. Those who lived within walking distance, that is. Tatiana insisted that no one who'd driven was allowed to leave if they'd been drinking.

That included my sister and me, plus the Bloodhound Gang girl, plus Brayden and about three others. Bloodhound Gang Girl stayed on the sofa where she'd been holding court all night and soon was asleep, sleeping on her back so as not to mess her hair.

The roomies disappeared to their own spaces in the rental, leaving the rest of us with our host. "OK, we'll stay, but where do we sleep?" someone asked timidly.

Tatiana thought for a moment, then directed all of us into her spacious bedroom, off the living room. In the center of the room was a king-sized bed, but no other comfortable furniture. A couple of the guys were resigning themselves to making do on the throw rug, but Tatiana would have none of it.

"We can all fit," she declared. "We'll just have to sleep sideways."

"I'm sorry, what?" Brayden questioned.

Patiently, she explained. "Everyone sleeps with their head on one side of the bed and their feet on the other side. It'll work."

We were a little unsure about the awkward arrangement at first, but we were also tired and did not want to test Tatiana's resolve about letting us out her front door. So after talking about the arrangement, we found ourselves arranged like human logs, side-by-side from the headboard to the foot of the bed. She was right; we all fit. We didn't have a blanket over us, because would have made it even more awkward. But the heat was on, and the warm bodies on either side kept us fairly toasty.

I remember being between my sister and someone else that I tried not to encroach upon. Back then, I could sleep through the night without waking up from hot flashes or emergency potty runs, so I did fine with this impromptu sleeping space.

Although I do remember lying there for the first several minutes, thinking of Sadness and what he was doing; whether he was thinking about me. If I'd had it in me, when I finally saw him again after the holidays, I would have told him that I didn't miss him a bit. "In fact, I slept with five people on New Year's Eve," I would have told him, and then refused to elaborate.


+ Not his real name.
* I literally did paint my window shut in my second-floor apartment, because he'd once let himself in that way when I was out. I thought he might kidnap my dog or something worse.

Watch on YouTube

The official video to "Fire Water Burn" by the Bloodhound Gang