Memory Monday- Shampoo and Shoelaces

Shoelaces

I wrote about this the other day on Facebook, but I wanted to expound on it. For a couple of months Ben has been asking me to buy some shoes with shoelaces because he wants to learn how to tie them. I've looked, but most of the cool looking shoes don't have shoelaces. Ben wasn't really needing new shoes and getting Jack's shoes on to leave the house is enough trouble that I didn't want to buy Ben shoes and have to tie them until he figured it out.

Ben started playing soccer. I ended up needing to buy him soccer shoes and he was very pleased that they had laces. I showed Ben how to tie shoelaces. As I was teaching him I remembered that I only know how to tie shoes one way, the 'Bunny Ears' way.

When I was five or six my parents tried to teach me how to tie my shoelaces. (I am pretty sure I was five and it was before I started Kindergarten, but I am not absolutely certain. I don't remember having velcro shoes until I was seven or eight. And I remember being very excited about them. Do you remember KangaROOS, shoes that had a zippered pocket on the side that you could put a coin or two in? I remember buying them at Christensen's Department Store in Five Points Mall.)

My parents taught me the traditional way to tie shoes and I just did not get it. One day I was visiting my Grandma and she introduced me to 'Bunny Ears'. Then she wanted me to practice and told me she would pay me a penny every time I successfully tied my shoes. I spent the afternoon at my Grandma's tying and untying my shoes. My aunt Gail stopped by with her roommate, Lark and Lark gave me a 50 cent piece for tying my shoe once! I think left my Grandma's house with about a dollar that day and, more importantly, the ability to tie my shoes.

Shampoo

Often when I get bored, I clean. It's something I've done since I have done since I was a teenager. My room was never clean, I never cleaned what I was suppose to and my mom wanted me to, but I would clean things like washing the walls or scrubbing brick.

I remember washing the walls a couple of times when my parents were out of town. I don't remember where my siblings were, but I was alone, lonely and I didn't know what to do, so I would clean the walls.

One time when my parents were gone and my siblings were around we decided we were going to surprise my parents by cleaning the carpet that they have on their covered back deck. We decided to 'shampoo' the carpet. And what should you use to 'shampoo' the carpet? Shampoo of course. We used VO5 to be exact. We dumped buckets of water on the carpet and thendumped out the bottle of shampoo all over it. We scrubbed it in and the tried to rinse it off by pouring more buckets of water on it. We quickly realized that wasn't going to work very well and ended up dragging a hose up through the house so we could rinse out the shampoo. It took a very long time and we probably didn't get it all. Bubbles probably appeared on the carpet whenever it got wet. I don't know if we ever told my parents what we did, but they probably had an idea. Parents are smart like that.