When I heard that Judith Kerr was at the Mountain
to Sea book festival in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown area, the
name rang a bell. After all I was once a school librarian and why of course she
is the author of a number of children's books. The one that stands out in my
memory is ‘When Hitler stole the pink rabbit’.
I can still remember the rows and rows of the said book on the library
shelf. It is strange that I didn't read them as a child, only as an adult.
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is a semi-autobiographical story of a young girl and her family
escaping the Nazis and the journey they made. Basically it is about the experiences
of childhood that remained edged in her psyche.
What are my experiences of childhood? Simple pre-internet fun that I
still hold dear.
Things like the VCR player and the diskette or floppy disk are quite
alien to the current generation. We played more outdoors and our friends were
few but real as compared to virtual friends. Even the food we consumed was
simple – I hardly heard of the terms sugar-free, gluten-free, fat-free or
dairy-free.
In fact when I visited the Shannon Hydro electric dam recently, the tour
guide said one young visitor was more amazed by an object on the table than the
actual dam itself. The object in question was an actual telephone. He had never
seen one before and thought that mobile phones have been in existence since the
last century.
I miss speaking and hearing my own dialect. Other than my family members,
I don’t have anyone to converse with in that dialect. There are so many
ditties, proverbs and phrases peculiar in every dialect and when I recall them
they are usually in my mother’s or father’s voice. It is very strange but I can
remember my parents’ voices so clearly, as if it was only yesterday that I saw
them last.
Even ear piercing was so different thsse days.
I remember as a child we had to wait till the goldsmith made his rounds.
Then all the female children would gather in a neighbour’s house. We were
excited and afraid at the same time. The grandmas present there told us it was
nothing more than an ant bite. When it was my turn, I sat on a stool. The
goldsmith held a gold earring that was open like a fish-hook. He rubbed some
alcohol on the ear-lobe, held a thumb-size piece of ginger behind the ear and
very swiftly jabbed the fish hook through. Then he pulled the ginger away and
with a pair of pliers bent the straight end that had gone through the ear lobe
into a curve. It felt like an ant bite alright. A big nasty ant.
Then there was this experimentation with audio equipment and
photography. I bought my first Sanyo tape recorder and Kodak camera when I was
13. The tape recorder was so magical and I remember recording my own voice and
then sending the cassette to my pen-pal. In those days snail mail
correspondence was novel.
The camera had wound up film inside. I had to bring
the used roll to the photo studio for developing and then wait for a week to
see how the photos would turn out. Initial shots were either over exposed or
under exposed. There was no instant viewing or deleting or photoshop.
I bought a handheld dymo label maker and took great pride labelling my
personal possessions, even my tumbler. No one called that Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder.
There wasn’t a week that couldn’t be enhanced by the Princess Tina
magazine. A random browsing through e-bay showed that some of these are still
around! I had a good collection of vinyl records as well and album covers were
works of art to be admired. Even the sleeves of the records had printed lyrics.
In terms of fashion, flares and platforms were the order of the day. Wide
collared shirts and tie-dye t-shirts were fun too. I even had my hair done like
Sandy’s in Grease.
I loved the Bazooka bubble gum, pink soft stuff that could be coaxed to
become big balloons. The only fear was my mother telling me that swallowing the
gum would bring about a possible death.
Then there was this must-have: macramé plant pot holder!
For every generation childhood experiences are different. I could only
imagine what my parents’ childhood would have been through the stories they
told me. Likewise my children would have a totally different set of childhood
memories too.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PRINTED THE NEW STRAITS TIMES MALAYSIA 9 APRIL 2017 http://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/04/228616/unique-childhood-experiences
