My dad always went to work insanely early in the morning, long before my mom even woke up. So he'd leave his work shoes by the front door, so as not to wake up Mom fumbling around for them in the dark.

I routinely put Little People in his shoes, because I thought he'd like to play with them at work.

we had the farm - and the garage too I think. but No eating them.

and I did release the parking brake on our vw once. and I remember be threatened by one of the teenage clerks at the store ( i remember a gun, which seems crazy now) - never to do that again. Is it any wonder I waited 'til I was out of college to drive.

Sounds like there will be a Gay Marriage Admendment going to congress next week. Won't pass of course, just a little election year pandering. I don't think it will play as well this time around though. I think the religious right feels like they sort of got the bait and switch after the last election.

We have the garage, but it doesn't get played with a lot.

Going to the Senate, Gud. I can picture the Democratic ads this fall -- with all the urgent business to be conducted (Iraq, oil prices/energy crisis, and Katrina reconstruction/emergency preparedness, just to name a few), the Republican-controlled Senate chose to (1) sit in session for the fewest days in 60 years, and (2) argue about gay marriage.

Not that I'm gonna hold my breath waiting for any such ad.

In my mom's basement we still have the house and the barn and the garage and the camper and the houseboat. Everything but the houseboat was inherited from much older cousins, so I think a lot of it was wooden. My neighbor Laura had the castle, which was clearly the coolest.

And we used to have the ferris wheel, which played music and rotated and was awesome, and my mom sold it at a yard sale because she has no soul. Many years later she tried to get rid of just the garage because it's really huge and I vetoed it because, "Did we learn nothing from the ferris wheel?"

There was one LP figure I didn't like. It was this little kid with an angry expression and freckles and a baseball cap with a turned-up brim and he was clearly very mad about something. I have been told that a couple of times I started crying because he scared me so much.

I remember all this easily, but not what books we read in the 3(?) philosophy classes I took in college. There's a lesson there somewhere.

My mom's three older brothers decided to mess with Baby Sister's head one morning and snuck a dead field mouse into her shoe before she woke up. Luckily, she saw it before putting the shoe on, kept her cool and tossed it out the window, then proceeded to finish getting dressed and headed down for breakfast. The boys, disappointed that there was no girlish shriek from upstairs, craned their heads around to make sure her shoes were on, and she glared at them all and disdainfully stated, "I found the mouse." Gramma made the guys do extra chores when they got back to the farm after school.

It's just such overt pandering. I think there is a flag-burning admendment in the works too, but I'm not sure about that.

There was one LP figure I didn't like. It was this little kid with an angry expression and freckles and a baseball cap with a turned-up brim and he was clearly very mad about something. I have been told that a couple of times I started crying because he scared me so much.

I remember him! The Little People Bully!

Gordon had an orange body.

Someday, a zillion years from now, a generation of children will wonder why their parents sometimes yodel to themselves, "Gordon. Sooooooosan!"