There’s a classic board game in America called Trouble. It’s a fairly ordinary advance-around-the-board-first-one-to-reach-End-wins game. The thing that makes it so cool is the Pop-o-Matic dice roller in the center. It’s a little plastic dome enclosing 2 dice, and when you press down on the dome, it somehow “pops” the dice, automatically rolling them for you (and keeping them from ever being swiped to use in another game whose dice have gone missing, thus causing them to go missing, too). This post kind of reminded me of it.
pop!
Back before I dislocated my jaw I used to be able to pop it if I opened my mouth wide enough. (shut up, ozswede). It was a bit addictive, like cracking your knuckles or your back. Once, at work, in front of our IT Helpdesk guy, I stretched my neck to the left, whereupon it made a loud cracking noise, and then to the right, repeating it. His eyes got very big, and he said, “whoa” just like Bill & Ted.
pop!
We watched the first fourth original Star Wars movie tonight. Talk about pop culture shock! It was the first time my kids have seen it. They are 7.5 and nearly 6, and I wasn’t sure if they were still too young, really, although some of my friends let their 4-year-olds watch LOTR, which I thought was a bit much, but hey, whatever. Martin kept asking me all through the movie if the robots and aliens were real, or just people dressed up, and what kind of shots the guns were firing, and whether they were real and were they really killing people and remarked that he didn’t really like Leia’s hair and that it wasn’t very nice of her to call Chewbacca a “walking carpet.” Apparently, answering “it’s just a movie, honey” wasn’t getting through. Karin asked me at the end of it what Skywalker looked like and where he was, and when I boggled at her a little bit, and told her that the blond guy was Luke Skywalker, she looked at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about and then she asked me why Darth Maul wasn’t in the movie. sigh. I doubt, somehow, that they would be at all impressed by my 1978 official Star Wars fan club poster or my Darth Vader head necklace.
pop!
When I was a teenager living in Europe, we took my dad’s mom on a trip to the Costa del Sol. We went by train via Paris (my mom will have to verify the logistics, since I didn’t keep that sort of thing in my long-term memory apparently, and I’m winging it a bit here). In Paris, we did all the big sights: Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower. In the elevator of the Eiffel, coming back down, we shared the elevator with Bob Newhart and Don Rickles. Since my pop was a big fan of both of them, we knew who they were and recognized them. My dad talked to them all the way down in the elevator as if they were neighbors and good buddies, and I wanted to melt into the walls from teenage embarrassment. Gawd, daaaaaaad!
pop!
Good grief, could I possibly date myself any more with this post??
pop!
Pop-related Things I Like: Classic Coke AND Pepsi Max* (so sue me), bluepoppy, Pop Goes the Weasel, Orville Redenbacher, Pop Will Eat Itself, Pop Rocks, Hop on Pop, Pop-Tarts,** BrainPOP, pop-up stoppers, pop-up books, popsicles!, homemade bubble recipes.
pop!***
Sad Pop-Related Fact About Me: I have never been able to blow a bubble with bubblegum, despite countless attempts and one-on-one tutoring.
*You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the girl.
**ohmigod, look at all those new flavors! Frosted GRAPE! Cinnamon roll! French Toast!
***Why are the tails of my italic p’s in ‘pop’ missing??