Tocky on 26/11/2017 at 03:03
Here is the one of the night I came home from the service.
I told Dad not to saddle me with my kid brother and his friends that night. I knew when I got together with my cousin Rodney that crazy would ensue but he insisted. I had to take them to the drive in movies before we went to do our thing, which was celebrate at The Abby, a local back alley bar in Oxford, Mississippi. I really meant to go easy knowing I would have to pick them up later but I was so happy to be done with the Air Force awhile and I have never been one for moderation. Ever. As much as I can do or get away with at any moment is always who I've been. Don't trust me with responsibility at a time like that.
We had a great time. Loud music and conversation and girls I hadn't seen in years to dance with. We had been killing glasses of beer poured from a pitcher when my smartass cousin filled it full of tequila. I killed it just as I had the beer. I leaned back so far doing so that my chair fell over backwards and the glass clinked against my teeth as I hit the floor still in my chair but I held the empty glass aloft and proclaimed "did not spill a drop!" I should have. I should have dumped it all out. I realized that soon. Oh shit, I had to pick up my little brother in a couple of hours and I was snockered.
Sneaking out I walked to a tin shed next to the alley bar and went around back to puke. I knew I would have to sober up so I stayed there in the cold of a November night slumped in a sitting position with my back against icy tin. That would do it I thought. The bracing cold and wind would knock all that alcohol into a back portion of my brain in no time. I fell asleep.
I awoke shivering. How long? I really was more sober but how long was I out? I made my way around the shed and discovered the bar was closed. Oh hell. After midnight. Where was Rodney? Nobody was around. How long after midnight was it? I walked a circuit of the bar block and even went to the courthouse square in Oxford but I could not find him. Maybe he got lucky with one of the girls. He was ugly as sin but tall and funny and fearless as a maniac and some responded to that. I would have to go without him. He was in the back seat asleep when I opened my car door.
We drove to the drive in. I know that is horrible. It was a different time but I knew better. Sure it was closer to Donald Draper devil may care but driving toasted and picking up my kid brother was wrong and I knew it. I was going with the flow though. Music blasting I pulled into the drive in and checked the concession stand and all was dark. They must have gone to one of their friends houses just back of it in the subdivision I theorized. Say that frost covered grass looks awful tempting. I cut several donuts and figure eights on the slick frozen grass. It was great. I was one hell of a driver.
Then I decided to burst through the tall grown together Arbor Vitis that lined a section near a side road. I was fearless and having fun. I was king of the road and showing out. I swung around and flew through them like Steve McQueen and slid sideways on the gravel road beyond still punching it in perfect control and... slid right up to the side of a cop car. Oh fuck. Nothing to do but roll down my window and speak to him.
Do you know what time it is? No idea, sir. Oh I got a lecture about how my brother and his buddies were shivering in the cold and had been waiting for me hours after the drive in closed. All I could do was hang my head and look sheepish. They were all getting warm in the back of his car while they awaited Dad who had been called to come pick them up. Before he could even finish his berating Dad pulled up mad and disheveled from being woken and having to drive twenty miles at that time of morning. To top his anger off they still wanted me to drive them home.
I got out of that one as I have everything in my life by the luck of the Irish though I only have Scots in me. Well, English, Cherokee, and Chickasaw too but it's more lyrical to leave those out to end the story on.
Tocky on 29/11/2017 at 04:39
This is the story of Johnny Indykacko. I'm pretty sure I told it at some point but it's one of my favorites.
When we were kids we loved scary stuff. Halloween carnivals at school where you could fish for candy with a clothes pin as a hook or touch the cold wet surgical glove filled with ice water in the dark as they intoned "this is the dead mans hand". We had seances where we urged the long dead ghosts of Indians to "give us a sign" as we then crept a hand up the back of our favorite neighbor girl and pandemonium would erupt. In those days a ouija board was a thing of mystery and fun rather than evil. I miss those days. Folks knew what to take seriously and what to dismiss as just innocent fun.
My brother was a bit on the serious side though. We could always poke him with a bit of lore or a made up on the spot story that he would accept as gospel. We often went too far just to see how much he would swallow. I was always a bit ashamed that he would not get the joke. I loved him and wanted him to see the world as I did, an adventure to wring the living daylights out of in every way possible. Being so staid and gullible just did not fit in with my sense of hot damn lets have some fun. He was always a good, loyal, and devoted brother though.
There was a deserted house across the rural road from us grown up with weeds but still containing tables and chairs and the scattered remnants of clothes and various papers and detritus of habitation. Ah what a haunted house it was just waiting to become. It was large with wrap around porches and high ceilings. It had fireplaces and enormous windows like the vacant eyes of malevolent spirits. Perfect.
My cousins and I had already explored it many times reading letters and trying on left behind hats or eating cherries from the tree out back. We had pranked each other with jumps from behind doorways or clothes stuffed with newspaper to look like someone at the kitchen table. So we were ready to pull the one we did on my brother. Primed for it you might say.
We told him there was a strange fellow by the name of Johnny Indykacko who lived there. He slept in the chimney standing up. He stomped about looking for children to beat. He wore a stew pot on his head and his greasy hands were claws ready to rend flesh. He was always staring out at our house from the dark windows ready to come and take anyone unawares to his basement and claw them to pieces. The very name of Johnny Indykacko struck fear in my brother and we laid it on thicker with every telling. "He hates it when you call him Kacko IndyJohnny!" So of course when we dressed up as him in overalls with pot on head and face covered with a sheet and let my brother meet him he accidentally called him that. Anger and furious stomping ensued as my brother ran screaming away.
We made a dummy of legs and boots and stood it in the fireplace. Didn't he want to see where he slept? We added a back story of how he killed his family. We scared him every chance we got. It was fun. We took pride in our inventiveness. Blood (ketchup on the door) was because he had killed recently and a warning to stay away. We tried to drag him inside to see scenes we had set up with various degrees of success. He swallowed it all.
Then one day when it was just me I played the part of both brother trying to show him something inside the house and once inside, and quickly dressed as Johnny while in a closet, came out to chase him with ominous words of destruction. He ran. He ran all the way home. I followed. I had never done that. He had always been safe once he crossed the road before.
At our house he turned and screwed his courage to the sticking place as they say. There were apples on the ground, many of them green next to a swing set we played on. He picked those up and held his ground. I came on with my best growling thunder and stomping thinking he would flee as always. He did not. He held. He hit me square in the eye with his first throw and I was yanking off the sheet yelling it was me and not to throw again. He was astonished it was me. So well had we played the role that he never guessed. He had given me a black eye to wear for a week but I was proud of him.
That is my brother. A little on the literal side but don't bring anything bad to his door step. He stops there.
So... nobody has a story for me?
Tocky on 2/12/2017 at 04:25
Come on guys, you've got stories I know you do. How about you southerners? Renz? Flannery O'Conner said southerners don't tell stories they just remember things. Somebody remember something.
Ah hell. With the spate of groping idiocy of late it's gotten me to thinking about my own missed signals with women and whether anything I did could have been interpreted as an abuse. It should every man. Lucky for me the act of sex has never been the end goal and so could be curtailed at any moment. There are of course many things females have done which puzzle me to no end.
Tech school at Wichita Falls, Texas was a blast. The NCO club at Sheppard AFB had these drinks called hurricanes about half the size of a bucket and we would down them too easily. It is here that I was kicked out (of the bar) three times for various offenses which I may relate in terms of another story down the line. Remind me to tell you about the alphabet soup incident later. Anyway this was near the end of our stay as the final test was the next day.
I was drinking that night with a guy I roomed with and two girls from my class who were friendly and fun loving giggly that liked to dance. Lots of hurricanes later we somehow got around to talk of the test and one of the girls suggested we all get a room off base and study all night. Well hell yeah anything that keeps the party going is great with me. We will ask each other questions and get it down then pass out a few hours to ace the test. It will be epic! I was in the epic stage of drinking at the time.
There was a bottle of wine I had gotten to drink with another girl I had recently discovered knew all the words to Rocky Horror Picture Show and I wanted to get to know but we missed our meeting somehow. Christine was her name and we sang "There's a Light" (over at the Frankenstein place) so well the rest of the flight (what a class is called in the AF) that was waiting for class to begin broke out in applause. Absolutely the only time I've ever received it for singing and I hold no doubt it was her lovely voice that brought it. Still it was a joy to sing with her and I've gotten completely off track. Anyway I said I could go get it and we would have a bit to drink as we studied.
There was where everyone started to get hinky about going except for one girl who insisted the two of us go anyway. Well I'm getting knowing looks from the other two and I'm wondering what signals I've missed. I have a personality that bulldozes it's way along paying slight heed to what others are about if they are not on the bulldozer too so I have to poke my head up and sniff the wind to figure what things are about. Oh. She wants me alone. Well that's cool. A little memory to take with us when we part.
So we get a room right off base and we drink the wine and fire questions at each other for a couple of hours and honestly I think we have it down pat. I'm just ready for bed at this stage so I get up and do my ten one handed push ups each hand (damn I wish I still had that body) that cracks my back and relaxes me and then go in to brush my teeth and when I come out and see she has taken her clothes off down to her skivvies I'm like cool so I take off down to mine as well and climb in bed.
We talk about our home towns and what life was like before and stuff and I move against her and kiss her and at first she is going along with it but then she stiffens and I ask what's wrong and she tells me there is a guy back home. Well I'm like what the fuck is this all about then but I don't say anything. She talks about him a bit and I'm thinking this guy sounds a lot like me so I remove my hand from her hip. I'm not going to blight my soul for sex. It would have been nice but I'm not the guy to push myself on her if that's what she is wanting so I close my eyes for sleep.
She asks me what I'm doing. I'm going to sleep. There's a test tomorrow. She knows. She wants to study all night. Seriously? It's already nearly two. Okay so I study with her another hour and it's pointless. We know all this crap. I prove to her she knows it. Finally we get some shut eye.
Next morning she goes on ahead to the chow hall while I get my book I'll have to turn in after the test. At the chow hall the two girls are whispering to each other and her friend is giving me the stink eye real bad. I'm like what? I even say "what?" to her. Well they continue the whispering and I'm confused as hell and sit elsewhere as the stink eye burns me between bites of omelette. I wouldn't want to get too close to that hen pecking party.
We all pass the test. I get a few marks taken off for picking snake bite to penis as my patients diagnosis (it could happen as evidenced by Jeff at the beaver damn many years later) but my chart was on point for it so even though I'm irreverent verging on stupid I pass too. Not that I was worried. Worry and me just have no acquaintance at that point in my life. I took some pictures of the whole class for my future photo album which I do have now and hugged both Christine and the girl I studied with and everything is fine it seems and all smiles. Even stink eye girl is hugging me.
Christine told me she just missed me at her room and had meant to be there when I came by and I figured she was just being nice and blowing me off sweetly but she gave me her new duty station address and I gave her mine and we did write. She was date raped shortly after getting to her new base. That was rough. I wrote her ten page legal pad letters saying God knows what but alternately pouring my heart out to her and trying to distract her with life in England stories. I swear I felt so sorry for her I was falling in love with her. You ever do that? Anyway she wrote back the most wonderful letters and sent me a picture I still have but then when she went home from where they had her at some recuperation ward thing (he beat her really bad too) the letters trailed off. I remember I so looked forward to them that I passed a female officer while reading one on my way back from the P.O. and got dressed down for not saluting. It pissed me off that I was so aching over this girl and this oblivious officer made me take a chewing but I stood for it.
Anyway I don't know what the hell the point of this one is except what the hell was I getting the stink eye for? I was good. Wasn't I supposed to be good? What the hell were they talking about? Did I make a pass untoward? We were in our damn underwear in bed chrissakes. I just don't understand women at all mostly. I also don't understand men though. Why would waving your junk like a worm at a fish get you a bite? Why the hell can't men just have fun on a date? It leads to sex often enough. What the hell is wrong with the world? I don't understand any of it. I hope Christine is okay and has put that awful bastard behind her. I'm afraid I felt as helpless and impotent in my rage at that rapist bastard as I do at all meaness and there is no telling what I said in those rambling letters. I hope they helped but hell, look at this rambling crap, do any of you know what the hell I'm trying to say or why this sticks with me after all these years? Life is really fucked up sometimes.
PigLick on 2/12/2017 at 05:05
I have a few stories but essentially I cannot be arsed typing them out, sorry.
Tocky on 2/12/2017 at 06:05
Damn it Pig, do I have to go get drunk with you to get a story out of you? We would likely just make a new one in that case anyway.
I've gotten to the point in my life where all the stuff I used to not think about or worry over is now coming down on me. The world just isn't what I thought it would be at this point. What the hell happened exactly? Was I a part of why it isn't like it ought to be? I was a hedonist when I should have used what few gifts I had to better the world. I was given a great gift the day those two shells misfired in that old rabbit eared shotgun (I'll tell that one again too) and I've wasted it. I could have made some small contribution to science. I won the damn chemistry and biology brass danglies in high school. I could have gone into government and been a voice for the little guy against the shits we have there now. I could have gone into the space program. I recall the show "are you smarter than a sixth grader" when they asked an astronaut a math question and I answered it but he couldn't and I was like what the hell? I flunked college algebra because I rarely made it to class that early but yet still did two page problems I no longer understand and crap I was an idiot still for wandering from thing to thing instead of doing what's right. I could have written a novel that helped the world understand itself. I coulda been a contenda.
I wasted my life like a pagan. And yet I didn't. I could have done so much to help the world but I was a wastrel having fun. I'm not even sure if I really do regret it. It was so much fun. I know I owed more than I paid. I took more from life than I gave. In the end I buckled down and supported my family. I raised two great kids and that helps the world in a way. Still, I know I could have done more. The world turned to shit while I was having fun. At least it feels like that when I drink and think. I hid from the world by having a good life when I should have been butting heads with it. I owed it more.
Is that what I was supposed to learn? Is it my fault I let assholes ruin the world because I wanted to enjoy it? Will I die confused or happy? With ultimate entropy does anything matter? Somehow it does. Somehow the world all hinged on me and I blew it. Ah hell, I'll regret even writing this tomorrow.
Somebody tell me a damn story.
Pyrian on 2/12/2017 at 07:11
Here's a slice of my life from back in 2006. I wrote this in my LiveJournal at the time:
Pyrian in the City of Sin
Now, I'm generally regarded as intelligent. But I think... Slowly. Powerfully, perhaps, and my recall of random facts is good, but in terms of dealing with people - or even thinking of what to say - the gears grind ponderously. I'll figure stuff out far too late, and god forbid someone tries to be subtle, or even just indirect. On top of that, I'm stupid about women. I don't know why; I mean, I'm inexperienced, but not THAT inexperienced. But I never know what a woman does or does not want from me, pretty much ever.
So... Last night I went to the Vegas strip just to look around for a bit. I was quite tired, and needed to get up early today so I wasn't planning on staying out late. My parents were already asleep so I was on my own, which I kind of like because I can walk briskly and go where I want. I watched the Bellagio fountains, checked out a few promenades, and made up my mind to see the Mirage volcano eruption at midnight.
Then I got hopelessly lost in the eternal twilight of the Venetian. (I kind of regret never taking a ride in one of their canal gondalas, but whatever.) Being male I refused to ask for directions and eventually just headed for the nearest "exit" sign. About half a dozen one-way doors and three startled looking employees later, I emerged in the shipping and receiving area in back. Sighing, I hoofed it double-time (and that's double MY time, which means I was practically running) to return to the Mirage for the show.
Finally back in front of the Venetian, I paused at a street corner for the light maybe a minute or so before midnight. Also waiting for the light was an attractive young woman on her own. She struck up a conversation, asking how my night was going.
You probably already know what she wanted from me. Why didn't I? I met her alone on a streetcorner in Vegas at midnight. Helllloooo? Are there any brain cells in here?
Well, aside from that she was not exactly a walking stereotype. She was dressed well but modestly, and chatted amiably about nothing in particular. I told her my getting-lost woes and commented on going to see the volcano fountain. She asked me what I was doing later, I said regretfully that it was time for me to go to bed.
"In that case, why don't you let me come tuck you in?"
The following roughly duplicates what went on in my head:
*Error-does not compute*
*Error-does not compute*
*Error-does not compute*
"...What?" I asked. I had heard her perfectly well.
"In that case, why don't you let me come tuck you in?" she repeated.
*Error-does not compute*
*Error-does not compute*
*Processor note-Tired and have to get up early-ABORT CONTACT*
"I'm sorry," I declined.
"Enjoy your volcano, honey," she said so sweetly I didn't catch the implied "fuck you" until long after.
She was walking away when I figured out I'd been offered and declined sex with a hot woman, but she was out of sight when my mind finally ticked over into realizing that what she wanted from inside my pants was almost certainly in my pocket and not in my boxers. The thought process went something like this: "Wow, I got propositioned by a beautiful woman! How flattering!" "It wasn't your scintillating conversation that attracted her, moron. I'll bet she noticed the silk Tommy Bahama, though." "Ohhhhh... She's working!" (The part of my mind which best understands people despises us all.)
I kind of wish I'd found out how much she cost. I'm not sure I'm at a point where I'd hit up a hooker, hot and sophisticated though she was. Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to compare the price to what I spent on Gabriella the night before. (What kind of a stripper stage name is Gabriella, anyway? I want my stripper to be named Charity, so I can claim her as a tax write-off.)
Oh, and the Mirage's hourly flaming volcano fountain thing was pretty cool.
Tocky on 2/12/2017 at 15:26
Now that was a cool story, Pyrian. I've priced hookers twice. Once was in Pahrump near Vegas. It was just for the lark of it though. I've always felt a mixture of morbid fascination, pity, and humor when talking to those in the sex trade. I know Bob Seger celebrated them in "Fire Down Below" but it just seems a degradation of both parties to me somehow. Ultimately you played it well knowingly or not. You came off as kind and human and she came off as the sort of hard she has to be to do what she does.
The first time I priced hookers was in Mayfair, London when I was with the degenerates. We had gone to Soho to see the sex shops and maybe get a laugh. I was singing "Werewolves of London" like a touristy idiot is what prompted us to go. Then we got talking about the hookers and Jack said they were all in Mayfair instead so we went around pricing them from house to house saying increasingly odd things like "and how much for all my buddies at once with dildoes aaaaaand a live snake?" until we were chased off by the bouncer guys. I swear one of them looked like that guy Jaws from Moonraker. It was a progression. We didn't start out with live snakes and baby chicks. Best I recall they ranged from sixty to one hundred sixty quid back in '80'. The price wasn't why we went of course so I'm not real clear on it.
The Pahrump thing was me and my old high school buddy. We were going to see his inlaws when we passed the Chicken Ranch so I talked him into going back. I got a picture of him entering and told him I was going to use it as blackmail but then had him take one of me at the gate as well. Inside I had trouble articulating why we were there. We just want to see the merchandise... no I mean the stuff for sale... no I mean... Kevin helped me by filling in "souvenirs".
They had a glass case of stuff off to the left. Kevin got a shot glass for his wifes collection and I got a hat because the sun is not my friend. One of the most expensive items was the list of stuff you could do, the menu, as it were. I don't recall any prices but the list of stuff that could be done was long. While we were there we got to see a group of girls line up for selection when a real John entered. When I say girls I mean that in the most loose way possible. These girls reminded me of a hot dog left on the rack in a truck stop all week somehow. In your head you are picking too but it just made me a bit queasy. It's like which horrible STD would you like sir?
Anyway I don't mean to be so judgmental and that's just my personal beliefs. We moved on to the inlaws with me a bit disquieted for awhile. It wasn't quite the bit of fun I imagined at first.
Chade on 2/12/2017 at 15:52
I can understand that Pyrian. In retrospect I can see I actually got a surprising amount of attention from girls in my school years, considering I was utterly determined to be an unsociable loner. I was so completely convinced no-one would like me that when anyone did approach me I would suddenly turn into a right little prick and do my best to drive them away. Looking back, I don't really regret the missed opportunities so much, but I do regret being nasty to people who were just trying to be nice to me.
Ok Tocky, I've been feeling guilty about the lack of stories for a few days now, but honestly I don't know how anyone follows up on yours. Anyway, tonight I remembered that I have an old diary I wrote back when I was ten, when our family visited Europe for six months while my dad went to France for an academic sabbatical. I didn't realise, but my Mum had kept all our diaries, and gave them back to us a couple of years ago. So I'll type out a few entries: spelling mistakes, self-centered ten-year-old attitude, and all.
So I was hoping to start with the plane trip over, but funnily enough plane flights aren't actually all that entertaining, especially when your author is ten years old. So we'll skip to exploring the forests of Germany. We spent most of our time in France, but arrived in Germany and stayed there for a little while in this little village right next to the Black forest IIRC. Well. I didn't really do emotion so much in my diary entries, I mean, not unless I was complaining, but let me tell you now that this was the most awesome thing I had ever seen. Here's a short diary entry I wrote after one trip into the forest:
28-7-94
Today we went for a walk in the forest and Mum brought the video camera as well as biscuits and a drink. Before we started we had a drink and set of. When we got in the forest I spotted a humunggos mushroom and Mum taped it. After a while we got to some huts and Ben, Nicola and Mum saw a mountain goat (me). Then Ben, Nicola and I played robbers and I fell down a slope of leaves which hurt a bit. Then we went walking again but soon the track got narrower and overgrown. So Mum and Ben councilled [ed: too much Tolkein] going back and back we went.
Huh, the entry looked a lot bigger in when handwritten with my very large and messy style from that time :p. Anyway, I remember my brother and I used to go off and play in the forest quite a lot, but that seems to be the only time I actually wrote about it. I wonder now if the rest of the family didn't go all that often, my sister was only a toddler at the time.
The other memory I have of Germany is the toys, funnily enough. I have a somewhat OTT description of a visit to a toy shop in Germany which I'll type up next.
Tocky on 2/12/2017 at 16:18
Thanks Chade! Those "huts" in the black forest, were they bunkers by chance? I've read so much Stephen Ambrose accounts of WWII and played several RPG war games that it springs to mind though you may mean Hansel and Gretel cottages. Did you venture inside? What a great place with such a storied history in any event. More please.
Starker on 3/12/2017 at 01:22
Ok, I'll try to tell you something about what it was like in the bad old Soviet Union. Though I'm not really a storyteller and it's all kind of a haze at this point.
Before I do, though, I'll have to say that it's not too late for anything until you're pushing up the daisies. I never thought I'd make it to a university, yet here I am writing a thesis. As the Chinese proverb says, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. Even if you only have 10 years left, it's still quite a long time and you can accomplish a lot in that time.
Right, so Soviet times... I don't really know how to describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it. At times, it was kafkaesque and at times it was absurdly comical. There's a novel,
The Good Soldier Šveijk, that kind of gets in the right ballpark of how it felt. It's not about USSR as such, but it resonated a lot with the people of the USSR, especially in countries outside of Russia. It captures some of the idiocy and cruelty that an individual could experience as a small cog inside the big Soviet machine and also some of the survival and coping mechanisms. Alternatively, for something more visual, I'd suggest this Adam Curtis documentary about the tragicomical technocratic rationalism of Soviet society: [video=youtube;h3gwyHNo7MI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gwyHNo7MI[/video]
Above all, it was a time of scarcity. We weren't starving, but the shops were empty and if you wanted something, anything, really, you had to either know someone in the retail industry who could put things aside or you had to try your luck standing in long lines. Always the long lines. And if you wanted something really extravagant, like a car, you could not simply go to a shop and buy it, you had to first get a permit to buy a car and that could take years and years of waiting, unless you knew the right people to bribe. Otherwise, it was not rare to wait up to a decade for a permit. And then you could actually go and buy a car -- a miserable little box-shaped rust bucket that got way too hot in summer and way too cold in winter, if you dared to take it out of the garage, that is. So, what about used cars then, you might ask. The thing is, counterintuitively, used cars were much more expensive than a new one. You see, anyone who managed to buy a car was loath to give it up.
Pictured through a sepia-colored nostalgia filter: one of the beauties you could one day buy, if you saved up diligently.
(
http://www.1gai.ru/uploads/posts/2016-07/1469351945_9.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://www.1gai.ru/uploads/posts/2016-07/thumbs/1469351945_9.jpgPicured: typical Soviet garages. If you were lucky, you might have been able to rent one just a brisk 10 minute drive away from where you lived.
(
http://www.1gai.ru/uploads/posts/2016-07/1469351940_4.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://www.1gai.ru/uploads/posts/2016-07/thumbs/1469351940_4.jpgIt was also a boring time, filled with the kind of ennui only decades of stagnation can bring. More often than not there would be nothing on the television (static during the mid-day and at night), and especially not for children. A handful of movies and TV shows would get rerun ad nauseam to the point where people could recite large parts by heart. It was not until near the end of the era that we managed to pirate satellite TV and I'd be glued to the television watching grainy movies on Filmnet, a channel that showed movies 24/7 nonstop without commercials. Until then, though, children were treated to riveting entertainment such as this:
[video=youtube;MS5mxXtStOY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5mxXtStOY[/video]
Needless to say, we were not amused, but it's not like we knew any different either. We'd spend our days outside making up games and exploring the neigbourhood and tearing holes in our clothes -- which would get mended by our parents and continue to be worn, as nothing was to be wasted. And any piece of clothing that was beyond repair would end up as a cleaning rag or as material for mending other clothes. In any case, we had a lot of freedom to do what we wanted and we exploited it fully, doing all kinds of reckless things. It's all fun and games... until someone loses an eye or breaks an arm. I myself had to be stitched up a couple of times and almost drowned once.
Still, life could be quite boring if you were stuck at home and I was home alone a lot. My parents worked long shifts and my father would sometimes get home after I'd already gone to sleep. To pass the time, I'd read every book in the house. My mother worked at a book binding place and if there was anything that looked interesting among the defective books that were destined for recycling, she'd replace their weight in old newspapers or whatever paper material she could get her hands on. Also, books in general were relatively cheap, so we had all kinds of books lying around, some of which were way above my age level. I'd read the bible with all its bloodshed and genocide and I'd read Arabian folk tales full of all kinds of violence and weird poetic sexual metaphors. When I finally exhausted the contents of my home, I had already discovered the nearly limitless supplies of libraries. I'd take out 10 books or so at a time and I remember librarians asking suspiciously if I would really be reading all of them. In truth, I burned through them in no time. It was just the most amount of books I dared to take out all at once.