I Want You to Think of Your Childhood Blankie

Hold it. Press it to your nose. Now follow along.

Jul 11, 2024

Growing up, Mr. Schneider who-lived-next-door had a George Clooney smile and two dainty lady Dobermans with pointy ears and nonexistent barks. He would mow his lawn with a bandana sweatbanding his brow. He was generous with his time, and he made my parents laugh.

Mr. Schneider had a motorcycle. He owned a bar not ten minutes away, and on a few occasions — the exact many I don’t know, my hippocampus was still play-dohing deep ridges and long-term library storage units — he’d tighten the chinstrap of his smallest spare helmet and cycle me over to his bar for a root beer.

(Let’s needn’t worry about the childhood safety alarm bells of a five year old perched on the back of a motorcycle, protected only by an absurdly ill-fitting helmet, on her way to a bar with a not-of-kin adult male. It was the 90s!) ((*Laughs in ska punk.*))

We always beelined to sit front and center, right up at the bar. I remember the brown faux woodgrain of its countertop, the dim, divey navy blue light. My feet dangled like ribbons perched on the bar stool, clutching my cold glass. Two hands always. Eyes wide, ice clinking with every leg kick.

Everyone was so nice to me at Mr. Schneider’s bar. Mr. Schneider was so nice to everyone.

At some point Mr. Schneider moved away. He sold the bar. I couldn’t have been more than eight.

I think of him sometimes. Rather, I see Sprecher root beer on sale in the grocery store, and I think of him.

Growing up, my neighborhood had an annual block party. Everyone brought a side dish but pooled money for the meats, grilled by a cohort of the mens standing around clutching sweating cans of Miller High Life. Moms sat with their feet in inflatable pools complimenting each other’s gardens, joking about inept last-minute family visits, sharing physical (physical!) photos of recent vacations to Door County picked up just that morning from Walgreen’s photo department. (*Sighs in outdated retail.*)

There was a pinata at our block party, always. We all grabbed bats from our garages and waited in line for our swing. When the candy burst, usually thanks to one of the neighborhood teens, we made rivers with our little limbs, the same older kids knowing to hang back and let that childhood thrill of collecting half-melted candy take center stage. We must have looked like ants over a dropped picnic chip. When night fell, someone brought out fireworks.

Growing up, I remember flickers, never full scenes.

I remember the taste of the wooden paddle-looking spoons that came with those tiny ice cream cups (Cedar Crest, strawberry or chocolate choices only). I remember the itchiness of the collars on my Catholic school-mandated polo shirts I couldn’t wait to get home and change. I remember the bunk beds in the orange bedroom with the ever-blasting AC and cigarette-tinged air of Mairead and Liam’s house at the end of the block. I remember whole afternoons spent playing Cops and Robbers before one of us dared to see who could climb highest up the Gracie’s backyard pine tree, perfect in its low but strong but evenly spaced branches. (It was never me.) I remember the sting of its sap if you got it in a cut, the linger of that green-nettle smell on my jeans. I remember walking to the same Walgreens where we ordered photos with my sister and buying Choco Tacos with the few bucks tucked into birthday cards (RIP Choco Tacos, you absurdist legend of an ice cream treat). I remember the glistening gold trim of the Milwaukee Zoo’s merry-go-round. How I liked these ride’s animal replicas better than the zoo’s actual tenants because looking at those actual tenants, either napping or pacing, blank stares in black eyes, somehow held me very, very alert but very, very sad. I remember not having words for this sadness. I remember going home and playing zoo with my Beanie Babies but never keeping them long in their block-and-Lincoln Log cages. I remember the fabric hug of my favorite white blankie, the trace of my fingers on its worn threads. I remember crying watching this scene in The Land Before Time on our red plaid couch. I remember the two bean bags in our basement, one black and one blue. I remember my sister loving to wedge me between them sandwich style, my body making up the middle, then sit her full weight on top. I remember the sparkles on Tinkerbell’s wings printed my favorite childhood t-shirt. I remember picking the cereal but saving the Lucky Charms marshmallows for that ceremonious, sugar-lance, perfect last bite. I remember worrying what everyone thought of me. All the time. (Does that ever end?) I remember sometimes throwing up before school starting in fourth grade because the pangs in my stomach wouldn’t otherwise go away. I remember the haircut I got the week before eighth grade, blunt dirty blonde bangs swoop-scissored access a pimpled forehead. (I wanted to look like them but ended up looking like this.) ((*cries in pubescent angst*)) I remember wallpapering my bedroom, floor to ceiling, with photographs cut from National Geographic magazine, speckled with Frank O’Hara poetry I blitz printed while I (thought) my parents were asleep. I remember my rock collection. I remember my shell collection. I remember crush after silly crush, laughing at their not-funny jokes, smiling at their wormy comments. I remember smiling so much at everyone a middle school teacher told me it was actually a little weird. I remember scribbling bad poems, copycat poems, copycat story snippets, character snippets — snippets of angsty literary anythings — in primary colored notebooks. I remember hiding each notebook beneath my mattress. I remember wanting no one to see. No one to know. No one, for once — please, I bet you, just once — to guilt or judge or mock or misunderstand (to misunderstand — the worst of them all). I remember trying. Hard.

Nostalgia extracts an essence. The rest of the past’s cluttered details get thrown out.

You hold these pieces. Each is meaningful, but not whole, yet they are wholly a part of you. There’s something so achingly frustrating in this, and maybe even dangerous. Like driving while only able to look in the rearview mirror.

This is a self indulgent post. I appreciate the eyeballs drinking in these words. Writers nod emphatically and often to how much their readers mean, but this time it’s especially true. I’m not trying to prove points. You honor me with your own nostalgia. You genuinely do.

So now it’s your turn.

Close your eyes. What plots along your mind’s map as you retrace your youngest self? Can you still smell that favorite stuffed animal, the one you clutched so hard while you slept — while you dreamed — it slowly then all at once lost its shape? It barely matters how much time has passed. I bet you can.

I rarely drink root beer these days. I rarely ever drink any soda. It ain’t good for me, and it’s easy enough to cut out. Few other vices are.

No one tells you how precious nostalgia is, but how it’s a rose stem with sometimes painful pokes. I know it’s not all peaches and cream.

That’s okay. You learn to laugh. You remember how to hold the bouquet in such a way to avoids any real cuts, to marvel at the precious remaining petals no matter how far away the vase. Or you at least try.

You can always go grab a drink at a local bar afterwards. Ask for Mr. Schneider. He might give you one on the house. 🎱

Silly Magic Eight Ball

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