Things Remembered and Unfinished Thoughts

Remember the "I'm not listening game"? I used it a lot in elementary school. It's a game for two. The first player plugs their ears so that they can't hear, and then sings, or shouts in a sing-songy sort of way, "I'm not listening!" The second player attempts to tell the first a piece of information that the he/she would rather not hear. For example, Tommy's mom wants him to clean his room. Tommy doesn't want to clean his room, so he decides to play the "I'm not listening game" with his mom. In certain circumstances, player one will succeed in blocking out the unwanted information, but it's a bit of a gamble. For example, if Tommy's mother gets tired of the game, like player two almost always does, then she may decide to give him a time-out. She may even warn Tommy that if he doesn't stop singing, he will have to go in time-out, but since Timmy's ears are plugged, he will not hear this warning. In this scenario, player one loses, and player two takes the victory.

Remember jell pens? When sparkly pink words locked in top secret diaries were the only ones that mattered, like adding glitter or color made your middle school thoughts any more important. I liked holding my collection of jell pens in my hand and admiring all the colors together. Blue jell for when i was sad or sleepy or when the weather was rainy. Red for the summer, for when I painted my toenails with mom's Avon polish and framed my newly decorated feet in a crisp clean pair of Old Navy flops. Pink was the basic color for everyday writing because as a middle school girl, most days are pink, scandalous and exciting. There were jell pens that smelled too, scented pens. Or multi-colored jellies. The color might change from orange to purple mid-word. I always liked the way tie-dye jell pens looked, but writing with them was too ambiguous. I wanted to write LOVE in all caps with red jell pen not pink, and I couldn't sit around scribbling waiting for red to come out of my tie-dye pen. There was too much to say to waste that kind of time.