The Most Mischievous Of Nights

 If you know me at all from my main social media, you'll know that Halloween is my life. 

All of my Halloween nostalgia and stories can be found on my main blog, along with countless other spooky things, if you're into that. I wasn't expecting to write much about Halloween here, since it's all there, but there is one funny story that I thought might get a chuckle out of anyone who follows me solely for the inner child stuff:

My silly history with "Goosey Night", as it's called in my area of New Jersey...Otherwise known as Mischief Night, Devil's Night, even Cabbage Night in some places...the night before Halloween.

The night before Halloween, at least when I was growing up, has always seemed to be famous for mischief and pranks. Sadly, the kids in the neighborhood I grew up in often took it too far and partook in actual property damage. We had brush fires set, mailboxes and car windshields smashed, and I will never forget the year someone took the time to dig up two mailboxes and switch them. It was truly a wild time, and one my parents dreaded.

I never gave much thought to actually taking part in Goosey Night myself, until the year I was in fifth grade. 

I got to school that morning, and suddenly all the kids in my class were hyped for it. These would have been ten and eleven year olds, so I doubt they were planning anything major. It seemed to be just silly toilet paper and egg pranks. 

Being the person that I am, always so excited for and eager to celebrate Halloween, I found myself suddenly wanting to partake in Goosey Night as well. To me, it suddenly sounded like an extension of Halloween itself, and for that reason, I needed to celebrate it, especially when it seemed like everyone else I knew was. 

I went home and asked my mother, figuring she had to understand, given my obsession with Halloween since the age of four, but she absolutely forbid it, and in hindsight, I don't blame her, given the level of damage that was often done in our neighborhood. I don't know where I thought I was going to go, anyway, as a ten-year-old out on her own, but I was very upset.

My father actually would "patrol the streets" most Goosey Nights, trying to discourage delinquent kids from coming near (though I think most of the mischief happened after we'd all gone to bed), and that was the year I started to go with him, figuring it was a way for me to at least be out and about on the night before Halloween. And I discovered one tiny act of rebellion I could perform: I always had tissues in my coat pockets, and that night, when I thought my father wasn't looking, I tossed them into the night. 

It turned out, later, that my father had in fact seen me doing this and when he questioned my mother as to what it might be about, he was rather amused when she told him. 

I suppose my spirit struck a chord with my parents, because the following year, I was actually given permission to partake in Goosey Night. But there were conditions: I was not allowed anything that would make any sort of real mess. I was only allowed to take some toilet paper and put it on the trees on our own property.

It's silly to think about now, but at the time, it was exciting to me. That year on October 30th, I changed into all black, filled a black-cat-head shaped treat bag with a few rolls of off-brand toilet paper that my mother had gotten on sale and hadn't been impressed with, and set off from my deck to the little ornamental trees maybe fifteen feet away on our property, looking over my shoulder as if the cops were on my tail. It's worth mentioning that I also did this in broad daylight, and no neighbors lived close enough to have even been able to see me. I guess I was just dedicated to playing the role. 

The whole thing took probably about ten minutes, and I doubt I went through even one full roll of toilet paper. But I was proud of myself for having participated in something new related to Halloween, and after that, it became a silly yearly tradition, for a couple of years. One year I actually got brave enough to sneak two eggs outside, but my conscience got the better of me and I put them back. I'm not sure what I would have egged, anyway.

Though my interest in Goosey Night faded just about as quickly as it came, I can't help but look back at this every year and have a good laugh at my younger self's expense.

Birthdays, A History

With my birthday (September 8th) having passed earlier this month, naturally I've been doing some reflecting on birthdays past, as I tend to do around any special occasion. 

It's always weird to really think about the fact that your birthday, while a big deal to you and the people in your life, is really just another day to the rest of the world. It's also always been weird to me to think that every day is actually someone's birthday. I remember my mom having that conversation with me when I was about six-ish. It seemed fascinating and outlandish at the time, to think that someone was celebrating a birthday every single day. But it makes sense, obviously.

I grew up in the 90s, when Nick Jr. was a thing and was hosted by a character simply called "Face". He was, literally, a face, who often changed colors, and would introduce the shows and shorts within the programming block, and sometimes just pop up in between with a fun little anecdote. One such anecdote was a daily reminder that "Today is someone's birthday!", where Face wore a party hat and had a little blower in his mouth, and would wish a happy birthday to any of the lucky birthday celebrants watching, on that day. I was, sadly, always in school during the Nick Jr. block on my birthday, and it didn't air on weekends, so I actually never got a chance to be wished a happy birthday by a 90s childhood icon. 

An example of a Face birthday bumper 

That was the thing about my birthday, in childhood. It was always so close to the first day of school. In my area, school usually starts right around Labor Day, which falls on the first Monday of September each year. Sometimes we'd go back for a few days, have that Monday off, and then restart the following Tuesday, or sometimes we'd go back immediately after Labor Day, but never late enough that I had September 8th off. I don't believe that my birthday ever fell on the first day of school itself, but I know it was the second or third day a few times. My mom was usually pretty good to me about allowing "mental health days" here and there, but no way would I ever have been allowed to miss school that early on in the year! I recently looked through the calendar on my phone, and realized that for my entire school career, 1992 through 2005, I only ever had my birthday off three times, which would have been my ninth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. I don't remember my fourteenth birthday at all, actually, which is weird because I have many very vivid memories of the year that I actually was fourteen (my freshman year of high school, 9/11, my grandfather's death, the death of my first pet, and an evolution in the way I thought about Halloween, to name a few), but I definitely remember that my ninth birthday party was Casper themed, and I got some Beanie Babies and a Gymnast Stacie doll. I remember the dress I wore on my fifteenth, and settling for Scooby Doo plates when I couldn't find Halloween ones yet. My aunt bit her lip at some point during dinner and talked about how much she hated the taste of blood. 

The one perk of being in school in my birthday, though, at least in elementary school, was that we were allowed to bring in cupcakes for the class, and, for that one day, I got to feel popular, as every other kid wanted to be the one to help pass the cupcakes out. It's funny how competitive kids got about things like that. The two things that stick out to me most about my elementary school birthday cupcakes, are the bear sprinkles I was so excited about in kindergarten, and then, in third grade, having a boy, who was actually brand new to our school, hand back his cupcake at the end of the day and say, "Next time, don't bring chocolate. I'm allergic to chocolate." As if a) I was going to have another birthday the following week, and b) I possibly could have known that having met this kid maybe three days earlier. Sometimes we would celebrate in small ways after school, maybe a special dinner or a shopping spree. My aunt took me on some great birthday shopping sprees over the years, first to Toys R Us, and then to favorite clothing stores or even the mall as I got into my teen years, always with some Halloween shopping thrown in. One year, I believe it was my thirteenth birthday, we actually hit a piece of scrap metal that had landed on the highway on the way back from a discount designer clothing store and a Michael's, and were stranded on the side of the road until my uncle finally came by with a spare tire. The year I turned twelve, and had just started middle school, my mother actually put together a little pre-party for me on the night of my birthday, as the transition to a new school was taking a stressful toll on me. She picked me up a few small gifts from some local shops. and we had some little pastries that night ahead of my actual party on the weekend.

 

The bear sprinkles from my kindergarten cupcakes!

I absolutely loved birthday parties in my childhood. When it came to my birthday, one of my favorite things to do was go to this little local store, called Lorraine's Party Surprise, and choose my birthday party theme for the year. That store was an absolute dream to me in my childhood and I think there's a part of me that will always wish I could have grown up to run something like that myself. The store was far from huge, but it was jam-packed with everything you'd need for a perfect birthday party. By the front registers, there were boxes full of party favors and noisemakers, and the aisles were just bursting with so many different themed party supplies to choose from. I was always so excited to see what they'd have from year to year; choosing my party theme was probably the second biggest decision-making time of my childhood, aside from choosing my Halloween costume. And I absolutely loved how everything coordinated. Dinner plates, dessert plates, cups, napkins, goody bags, centerpieces, tablecloths, even cake decorations. There were popular characters, and some more original designs. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is the theme I chose for my fifth birthday: An image of a ginger-colored cat in a black dress, holding up a hand mirror. I wish I could find a picture of it now. I also remember a puppy and kitten themed party from another year, I want to say maybe my sixth. I had just really started learning how to use the phone that year, and this was way before smartphones. My parents had managed to find wrapping paper that almost matched my themed supplies, and I insisted on keeping a piece to hang on the refrigerator. Someone in my family called that morning to say happy birthday, and I remember holding up the phone to the refrigerator after describing the wrapping paper, and saying, "Look at it!", much to my parents' amusement. I don't remember when, exactly, Lorraine's closed, but the last time I remember being there was when I was thirteen, and actually was planning a first birthday party for my aunt's dog. (One day I'll go deeper into my obsession with party planning...I literally always wanted to be celebrating as a child and would find any excuse to throw a party be it for a pet, a doll, etc.)

This isn't exact but looks a lot like the wrapping paper I remember.

Something else I remember well about my childhood birthdays was how overly excited I'd get about opening presents. While that certainly wasn't the only thing I cared about when it came to celebrating, I would go absolutely crazy when the guests first arrived, sometimes before they had time to even take their coats off and settle in, desperately wanting to open my gifts. I'd get excited to the point of hyperventilating, and, needless to say, it drove my relatives crazy. And so, my mother decided one year, I believe it was either my seventh or eighth birthday, to make my party a surprise.

We often had barbecues and things over the summer, so I thought nothing of it when aunts, uncles, and cousins from both sides of the family came over about a week before my birthday. In fact, it was likely Labor Day weekend, making it even less conspicuous. The plan was a plain old barbecue that weekend, and my birthday party the next. The only thing that would have even been slightly suspicious that morning was that my mother told me she would have to use the tablecloth I chose for my birthday party (I believe it was just plain purple that year; I can't for the life of me remember what my actual party theme was.) as she had misplaced the one she had initially bought for that weekend, and we would get another one before my party. 

When my relatives arrived, all seemed as usual. I played with my cousins, but kept getting annoyed that they seemed to be whispering amongst themselves quite a bit. I was a loner at school and often left out; my cousins were really the only other kids I felt comfortable with and close to at the time, so I remember us fighting throughout the day over the fact that they seemed to be keeping secrets from me. When my mother came downstairs to mediate one of our arguments, though, I swore I heard my cousin Michael whisper to her, "When are we going to have the surprise party?" I don't remember if I really thought anything of it, or just assumed he was confused as to which weekend we were supposed to be celebrating my birthday, because when we finally went back upstairs, and there was a cake on the table and balloons and presents around the room, and all of the adults yelled "Surprise!", I absolutely was surprised. It was a moment I would relive over and over again in the coming weeks, and still brings a smile to my face whenever I look back on it. The fact that my cousins, who were, for the most part, younger than I was, were tasked with distracting me and entrusted with such a secret, and didn't give it away even at the height of an argument, is honestly very impressive. 

I remember getting balloons at that party, a bouquet of sorts of traditional "Happy Birthday" mylar balloons, that floated up to the ceiling, and I treasured them and played with them until they deflated, even going so far as to name them Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. I don't remember specifically what they looked like, but I remember how much fun I had with them during their brief stay in my home. 

(I remember one of the balloons having roses on it, like this one.)

The following year, while visiting my grandparents for a weekend, I also had sort of a mini surprise party with my relatives on my father's side of the family. They chose a Lisa Frank Kittens theme, which I absolutely loved, and I remember getting a handful of different Barbies, including one that came with a dolphin that made a funny noise (Baywatch Barbie, I think.), and a more collectible "Dolls of the World" Barbie from Ireland that all my relatives were obsessed with. I'm not even sure if I, myself, really wanted the doll, but my family insisted that I should have it in my collection since we were of Irish heritage. This was also the year that, on my candles at that party, I wished for a stuffed toy of a dog named Nuzzle from a TV series called The Puzzle Place. I never did get it in my childhood, and I never forgot that. Later on, in my most angsty, dramatic moments in teenhood, I would cite this as proof that things never worked out in my favor, and that wishes did not come true. I used to tell that story often, and one year, a good friend that I met online, through childhood nostalgia, actually finally sent me a Nuzzle plushie, dressed in a pumpkin costume, too! It was such a fun, full-circle moment. 

Birthdays I've had throughout my adult life, I don't tend to remember as many details of. The only thing that really sticks out in my mind is the year, somewhere in my twenties, when I woke up to a power outage due to a blown transformer near my old elementary school. I do my best to make the day feel special, still, often visiting favorite places or treating myself to something special, but I do miss the old days of family parties and wishlists and themed decorations. 

There truly is nothing like being a kid. 

Napoleon, The Puppy Who Conquered My Ten-Year-Old Heart

 In honor of National Dog Day on August 26th, I recently revisited a favorite movie from my childhood, that I'm not sure if many others will remember:

Napoleon.

Napoleon is one of those movies from my childhood favorite genre, "adorable talking animal goes on an adventure and learns a life lesson". This genre seems to more or less have been lost since the 90s ended, and that honestly makes me feel very sad when I think about it.

Napoleon was probably my absolute favorite of the genre back in the day, even though it was far less widely known than movies like Homeward Bound or Babe. (I loved those movies as well, even once wrote my mom an emotional letter about why she should buy me Babe: Pig In The City on VHS, but Napoleon is my standout.) It was apparently released first in Australia in 1995, and didn't make it to its US direct-to-video release until 1997, which would mean I was ten years old when I first saw it. I believe my first time becoming aware of it was at the home of a woman who used to babysit all of the neighborhood kids. I can't recall now if I actually watched  it there, or just saw the VHS cover, but I remember renting it from the local video store shortly after the fact, and it became my go-to movie for quite awhile. 

Napoleon is the story of a puppy named Muffin, who longs to be taken more seriously, and seen as "tough" rather than an adorable house pet. Outside of his owners' home, he frequently hears the call of the "wild dogs", and longs to run with them. He hates his cutesy name, begging to be called "Napoleon" by his mother. On the day of a child's birthday party at his home, Muffin jumps into a basket with many balloons tied to it, and winds up on a makeshift hot air balloon ride out of the city and into the wild, where he attempts to fully embrace the wild dog persona he's created for himself, officially as Napoleon. 

Napoleon encounters many different animals in his quest to find the wild dogs, befriending a tropical bird named Birdo, and running afoul of a cat who's completely lost her mind after living alone in the wild for so long, and believes every living being she encounters is a mouse. Eventually, Napoleon comes to find that the howls he's been hearing and believing to be the "wild dogs", have actually been coming from a lizard. Dejected, he heads off to find shelter from a desert rain storm, only to encounter what he believes to be two other lost puppies. After saving one of the puppies from drowning in a flood, their mother comes home and Napoleon realizes that he has been with the actual wild dogs. Typical children's movie life lessons play out, and after the wild dog mother agrees to let Napoleon stay, he realizes that he was happier back home with his own mother, and that he never had to prove his bravery by becoming "wild" after all. On the journey back home, he encounters a penguin with similar sentiments to himself at the beginning of the movie, and becomes the voice of reason. He soon reunites with his mother, who finally agrees to call him "Napoleon". The final shot of the movie is of the villainous feral cat appearing outside of Napoleon's home, finally acknowledging to herself that he is not a mouse but a dog, and that the dog must die. I've always wondered (and as a child, greatly hoped) that this was setting up for a sequel adventure, but that never came to fruition. From an adult perspective it's actually kind of grim that they ended the movie on that note, but then I've never liked a cliffhanger with no resolution. Regardless, the movie made me smile just as much at almost 38 years old as it did when I was ten. 

As per usual when I revisit a movie that I hyperfixated on in my childhood, I surprised myself by remembering so much of the plot, along with the lyrics to pretty much every song in the movie. My ten year old self was absolutely obsessed with the songs, particularly How Far I'll Fly and My Hills To Climb, and I was truly always singing them. When the former started playing in the movie, I immediately turned into a kid again, dramatically throwing my arms out and singing along as if I myself were a puppy flying into the wild. I'm not sure how long it had been since I'd watched the movie prior to this viewing, but I know it's at least twenty-five years. It's crazy to think of how old these childhood favorites are now.

If anyone else has fond memories of Napoleon, I would love to hear about them! And if you've never seen it but love cute animals and a fun little adventure, I highly recommend it for all the nostalgic puppy-love feels.

My Not-So-Little Obsession With Littlest Pet Shop

 Today I'd like to take you on a journey into another of my most intense childhood hyperfixations. (Is it as intense as the one that made my parents believe I'd been molested ? Perhaps not, I don't think anything can top that, but still.) 

I was born in 1987, and was therefore pretty much the perfect age for the OG Littlest Pet Shop toys when they debuted in the early 90s. I've always been an animal lover, and there were so many different animals to collect, and so many fun little features. I have a very distinct memory of my very first one being a purple bird with a little cage, with a swing he could balance on, who'd flap his wings when you pressed his head.

(Not my picture, this is from an Etsy listing, but this is the exact one I had, and apparently it was actually a toucan, not a parrot.) 

One Christmas I got both what I believe was called the "Kitty Club Treehouse", and some sort of pretty igloo set with a bunch of husky puppies, and I spent all morning playing with them until relatives started arriving.

(Again, not my pictures, but these two sets, particularly the igloo, are things I could actually see myself rebuying one day.)

I was particularly obsessed with a certain line of horses, and my grandfather helped me collect them all from a local shop.

(I distinctly remember this one being the first one I got, and she remained my favorite even after I completed the collection. She's the only one who really sticks out in my mind.)

Another favorite of mine was a shih tzu from some kind of pet show line, which I pronounced "shy tazoo" at first. 

There even was a board game that I was absolutely obsessed with playing. Usually my mom would play it with me, and I'd beg her just about every night. You had to collect matching cards to be able to adopt one of the four pet figurines that came with the game, and I was absolutely obsessed with the bunny. If whoever I was playing with managed to adopt the bunny before I did, it broke me, despite the fact that I could very easily simply remove the bunny from the game box and play with her at any time. I don't actually recall having any other LPS bunnies, save for the little one that came with the igloo set, oddly enough. 

One day, though, just a few days after my eighth birthday, I came home from school to my mother telling me she had a surprise for me: Littlest Pet Shop had just debuted as a TV series!

I was over the moon. It came on just before I would've been getting home, so my mom actually recorded the episode for me and I couldn't wait to watch. When I finally did, though, I was incredibly thrown off.

The characters looked absolutely nothing like the toys. They were so stylized and strange to me. I was very confused as to how and why they were calling this "Littlest Pet Shop" when it didn't even appear to be taking place in the same universe. 

The series centered around five specific pets within the titular "Littlest Pet Shop": Stu, a bumbling blue dog, Chloe, a purple cat who was sort of the voice of reason and would often talk about her previous lives, Viv, a pink bunny with musical talent and a hat that held more than you could ever imagine, Squeaks, a monkey, the most normal looking of the five and the only one that didn't actually speak, and Chet, a yellow and blue horse who was established as being the newest member of the group in an early episode. They went on bizarre adventures, and often would get adopted out only to return to the shop. There's not really one specific episode that sticks out to me, unfortunately, but I'd love to see them all again one day.

As bizarre as the show was to me at first, it only took an episode or two for me to get absolutely hooked. I fell in love with the characters, particularly Chloe and Viv, and Littlest Pet Shop became my favorite show for its entire run. (Which apparently was only one season, but these things always feel longer when you're a child.)

One evening in early spring 1996, my mother and I stopped in Toys R Us after the family had been out to eat at a nearby IHOP. I can't remember if we had a particular objective or what, but I was super surprised to see a very small, carded plushie of Viv available on one of their shelves. I was super excited, and my mother bought her for me. I remember the back of the package showed that Chloe, Stu, and Squeaks were also available. It became my holy mission to find Chloe, which I eventually did, but I never saw Stu or Squeaks on a store shelf. I'm not sure why they didn't bother to make Chet, but I feel like every 90s cartoon series always had that one character that never had a toy made of them. 

Anyway, once I had that little Viv plushie, she became my constant companion. I have very vivid memories of sitting with her in the evenings and writing in my diary, telling her about my day, and just taking her along pretty much everywhere I went. 

Chloe was probably actually my very favorite character on the show, but I don't remember forming such an attachment to the little plushie of her once I had it. I was happy with it, sure, and we actually had a little secret club of sorts called "Scatland", where we'd sit at the very back of the hallway by my bedroom (right in front of my grandfather's bedroom door, actually) and write down "secrets" about my classmates and family members, AKA random things I learned, or things I suspected about them, such as who I thought might have crushes on each other in school, or the one time on the way to my grandparents' house when my father suddenly pulled over to the side of the road because he had to pee. I also have a very distinct memory of one of the secrets being "I suspect my parents still have sex." Hey, I was eight. "Scatland" also had two entities presiding over it named "Skidoocat" and "Windowcat", though I don't really remember what their functions were. "Skidoocat", I believe was regarded as a god of some kind, while "Windowcat" was his messenger, if I recall correctly. I have no idea how or why I came up with any of this, and these two characters were never represented outside of just images in my mind, though I think I did dream about them once. 

My final real memory of collecting anything Littlest Pet Shop related is of a small pink plush cat named Cupcake, who also became part of the "Scatland" roster.

It seems as though Cupcake here came out toward the end of the OG LPS run. I'm not sure exactly how or when I moved on from my love for all things LPS, but I do have a very distinct memory of writing in my childhood diary one day, years later, probably when I was ten or eleven, about realizing how much I missed it and how much simpler life was even then, though I was still a child. I think I very briefly tried to bring back "Scatland" in my tween years, but it was never the same. 

Littlest Pet Shop did make a comeback in my adult years, with far more stylized figures and a connection to Blythe dolls, and I did try to collect all of the spiders at one point, but I never got super into it, and it still weirds me out to think that this is the LPS that more people seem to know.

Anyway, my main inspiration for writing this post is the fact that, finally, after all these years, I've managed to find a Viv plushie of my own again. I've been searching on and off for her for years, but I feel like not very many of the cartoon plushies were made, as they seem to be extremely rare. Chloe is the only one I've seen pop up somewhat frequently. 

I'm very happy to have this little piece of my childhood back with me, and this has been super fun to relive. If anyone else remembers the 1995 LPS cartoon, please let me know!

Pet Shop: The Very Real Fever Dream Of My Childhood

 I feel like just about everyone has that one movie or TV show from their childhood.

Something that was a key element for them, but no one else remembers it. The piece of media that makes everyone give you strange looks when you bring it up, to the point where you start to question if maybe it was a very vivid dream.

For me, that movie is Pet Shop.

Pet Shop was released in 1994 (though Amazon says 1995, so I'm not entirely sure which is accurate, as I don't remember exactly what year I saw it.), by Moonbeam Entertainment, a production company that seemed to release many movies in the early and mid 90s with funky creatures, the most widely known probably being Prehysteria!, which I don't think I've ever actually seen. 

I don't remember exactly how I became aware of Pet Shop's existence. I believe it was through a preview on some other VHS movie I rented from the local video store, but I fell in love with the concept immediately. I've always been such an animal lover, and the transformed creatures looked so cute and fun!

Thankfully, the local video store had a copy, and I rented it, and became instantly hyper fixated. If I had to pick an absolute favorite movie of my childhood, aside from Hocus Pocus, which has been my favorite movie since I was seven, Pet Shop is probably it. A defining movie of my childhood that no one else has ever heard of.

 Pet Shop actually has some bizarre concepts within it for a kids' movie, and I kind of wonder now if maybe it was sort of a "horror training wheels" thing for me. The movie opens with an alien couple, dressed like something out of an opulent 90s country music video, landing at the titular Pet Shop and handing over an obscene amount of money to its drained, elderly owner to buy it from him. By the next morning, they've transformed the little hole-in-the-wall store into something that looks more suited to the Las Vegas strip than dusty, sad Cactus Flats Arizona.

 Enter our central family, the Yeaghers, who have come to town with the Witness Protection Program from Brooklyn, NY. This part of the story, though fairly central to the plot, went straight over my head as a child. I have no idea what I thought they were talking about, but I definitely didn't realize that the family was in danger because the father had ratted out a powerful Brooklyn mob boss. Looking back, I feel like this was an absolutely bizarre thing to put in a movie aimed at children. 

Anyway, daughter Dena Yeagher (who is also the only one in the family who ever stumbles over her new name) desperately wants a dog after having to leave her old one behind. (It's never mentioned why she was unable to bring him along.) She wanders over to the new and improved Pet Shop, where she chats with some other neighborhood kids. Unbeknownst to the customers, they're all being recorded on cameras around the store, with footage being sent back to the home world of the new Pet Shop owners, Mr. & Mrs. Zimm. 

Apparently human trafficking is alive and well on whatever planet they're from, because they're receiving bids on the shoppers, from bidders wanting to make the humans their pets. Dena and her three new friends from town, Mike, Alexis, and Nicky, turn out to be the most valuable, and the Zimms intend to lure them with four seemingly normal pets that can actually transform back and forth from alien creatures.

The creatures are Gizel, disguised as a puppy, Foobub, a rabbit, Pwing, a small lizard, and Trimblequoi, a turtle. (Fun fact: I thought his name was "Tremblecorn" until I finally watched the movie with subtitles.) There are fun scenes of each of the kids finding out their seemingly normal pets are actually strange alien creatures, and soon after, the four friends get together to try and figure out what, exactly, they've adopted, and how to properly care for them. 

At this get-together, all four of the pets suddenly start to become completely lethargic. After some attempts to feed them and get their energy levels back up, Dena finds an adoption contract in her backpack, that says the pets can be taken back to the shop if they're sick, to receive proper treatment from the Zimms. 

At the shop, the Zimms provide a trough of vitamins for the pets, returning to them to full strength. It's there that the plan to send the four kids back to their home planet as pets is revealed, and the kids are frozen with a third eye that Mr. Zimm hides under his ten-gallon hat. Meanwhile, after Gizel in his puppy form returns home without Dena, her father Joe sets out to find the kids, and is spotted by the two lackeys the mob boss that Joe had ratted out sent to find the Yeaghers. 

All sorts of hijinks ensue as the Zimms try to stop Joe from finding the caged kids, and the mob lackeys remain hot on Joe's trail. As the kids come out of their frozen state, Dena manages to have Pwing bring her the keys to the cages, freeing them. Mr. Zimm and the mob lackeys manage to enter the room at the same time, and through some quick thinking, Dena manages to send the two mob guys back to space in place of the kids, and Mr. and Mrs. Zimm take off, assuming they'll still make some money off of two adults, and the Pet Shop dissolves around them, turning back into the dusty little hole in the wall it was at the very beginning of the movie.  Dena comments to Gizel that she's unsure what to do when his energy runs out again since she doesn't have access to the Zimms' supply of vitamins, but Gizel somehow figures out that the "vitamins" are just simply Earth mud, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after. If the movie had been more popular or widely known, I kind of feel like it could have made a fun series, about the kids continually trying to hide the fact that their pets are aliens and stuff. (Although Dena's parents do witness the Zimms being beamed back up to space.) 

Pet Shop is currently free to watch on Amazon Prime, and I believe it's also been uploaded to YouTube as well, if anyone wants to watch this weird 90s hidden gem. You may not be able to appreciate its charm if you didn't grow up with it (my mother actually always said it was one of the worst movies she'd ever seen), but I'll always say it's worth a watch. During my most recent watch, I found myself almost able to recite the movie word for word. It's so crazy how it was so influential for me, yet I've never met another person who's heard of it! If by some chance anyone reading this also grew up loving this movie, please reach out to me. I would love to finally have a true nostalgic chat about it!

Happy National Smiley Day!

 Not many people may know this, but today, July 6th, is, in fact, a holiday.

At least for me, and maybe two other girls if they even remember.

When I was in fifth grade, in 1998, one day the teacher split us up into groups to work on the project of creating our own holidays. 

Ever the loner, the only couple of friends I had in school weren't in my class that year, so I was grouped with two girls, Jamie and Amy, who were best friends. Jamie was nice enough, but Amy and I actually had some pre-teen girl beef between us already by that point, (it's a long story, one that's actually detailed a bit here in my main blog if you're curious, but I'd had a falling out with the "popular" girls after briefly joining their clique, and Amy had taken my place in the group when I was ousted.) so she wasn't thrilled to be working with me. 

The thing about Jamie, Amy, and I was that we were all on the quieter side; not one of us was assertive enough to take control of the situation and really come up with an idea. Finally, a far more outgoing girl who was sitting near us with her group, suggested we all write an idea down on a piece of paper and then she would pull one of them randomly and decide. That seemed fair enough.

My idea was International Animal Day, as I've always loved animals and I felt like that was a safe enough interest of mine to put out there publicly. Amy, for some strange reason, came up with Candle Burning Day, which absolutely baffled me as a ten year old at the time because my parents would absolutely never had allowed me to burn candles at that age. The winner, though, was Jamie's suggestion, National Smiley Day. 

At this point in the late 90s, smiley faces were everywhere. Clothing, stationary, toys...you name it, you could get it with a smiley on it. And I was obsessed with the trend, having several smiley t-shirts, a blue smiley coin purse that I took absolutely everywhere, and several little bean bag plush and bendable smileys. Amy was actually very disappointed about Candle Burning Day not winning, but I was thrilled with the concept of Smiley Day, and honestly thought all the other kids would think it was cool too, because it was such an "of-the-moment" trend. 

(Not my picture, but seeing this immediately took me back. I may have actually had some of these!)

There were specifics we had to come up with for the holiday, such as the color scheme (yellow, black, and red) and the official song of the holiday (I believe we chose Don't Worry, Be Happy.) And of course, it needed a date. I was chosen to decide, and I completely randomly chose July 6th. I have no idea why; I guess I didn't like being put on the spot and just blurted out the first thing that came to me. 

Either way, July 6th was chosen as the date, and National Smiley Day was cemented forevermore....or at least until we presented our projects. 

Our teacher actually said that a smiley holiday would probably be better suited to that dead, dreary period of time in winter, and I did feel a little silly for choosing a date so close to a real national holiday, but regardless, since whatever day that was in early 1998, I have never, ever forgotten about National Smiley Day on July 6th. I'm sure Jamie and Amy and the other kids in that class probably don't remember it now, but I always will. 

The only other holiday I specifically remember besides ours was a group of boys that came up with Mortal Kombat Day.

The Paw Paws & The Drama Of A Childhood Hyperfixation

 There is a very funny, to me anyway, story from my childhood that I've always wanted to write about somewhere. I don't think this ever made it into my old LiveJournal or Dreamwidth accounts, and it certainly didn't feel like something I could talk about on my Halloween-centric forms of social media, so I'm happy to finally have a place to share it. I hope someone out there finds this as amusing as I do.

I was born in 1987. I am a 90s kid through and through, but being born at the tail end of the 80s, also meant that I got to experience some iconic 80s staples in reruns and random finds at the video store. I was born too late for toy lines or regularly scheduled broadcasts of things like Rainbow Brite or the first generation of My Little Pony, but that didn't stop me from falling in love with them. 

One such instance was with a short-lived Hanna-Barbera cartoon called Paw Paws.

I'm not sure how popular this show ever was, but I found it through some random programming block on the USA network when I was very young, and instantly became obsessed. When I was a little, I had a fascination, almost a hyperfixation, with Native American culture, so combining that with cute, colorful characters really spoke to me. 

There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to how Paw Paws would air...It only ran for 21 episodes, so it was thrown randomly into whatever programming block it was in, sometimes starting right as I would have to leave for school. I always hoped to catch an episode, but I rarely was lucky enough. 

One day when I was about nine, though, everything changed. There used to be a cable access show in my area that would have these trivia nights, and you could call in and win a brief trial subscription to some premium television channels. My mother has always been very good at trivia (She even won a set of encyclopedias from Regis & Kathie Lee back in the day!) and one night she called in, and won a free trial subscription to Cartoon Network. 

I was absolutely ecstatic to have another kids' network to watch for a bit, as the Disney Channel was also premium subscription at the time so I was mainly a Nickelodeon kid. But I was even more ecstatic to find that Cartoon Network, at this point in time, had a daily Hanna-Barbera programming block that regularly included Paw Paws!

I felt like I'd won the lottery. My elusive favorite vintage cartoon was finally available to watch daily! I recorded some episodes, wrote about in my diary, and often even dreamed about the show at night. I was constantly playing at being a part of this universe, particularly a character similar to Princess Paw Paw, who was my absolute favorite. 

However, being that we only had a small trial subscription, my time with my beloved Paw Paws was limited. I don't remember how long the freebie lasted; somewhere between two weeks and a month I think, but nonetheless, the end came. And, if I recall correctly, the cable company actually pulled the plug just before what would have been my final episode of Paw Paws started. 

It's probably worth noting that I am neurodivergent and I get very attached to fictional things. I still do this as an adult, but it was even more intense when I was a child. So to say losing Paw Paws devastated me, was an absolute understatement. I literally had no idea what to do without my beloved Native American-inspired bears in my life every day. I rewatched episodes I'd recorded, of course, but it wasn't the same. 

And I guess, though I don't remember any specific details of this, it eventually got to me to the point where I was lashing out at my family, badly. I believe I blamed my parents for not wanting to pay for the premium subscription so I wouldn't have to give up watching the show. 

One day it finally came to a head; I don't remember how. But I did or said something awful, and my father pulled me aside and demanded to know what was going on with me and why I'd been acting like such a menace for the past several weeks. 

I don't know why I didn't just answer honestly, and say I was sad that I could no longer watch my favorite show. I'm not sure if it was some kind of neurodivergent brain response, or if, in that moment, being called out for my behavior, I simply felt stupid about it, but rather than just explain how I felt, I wound up saying this to my father instead:

"There's something bad that happened recently, that I've been trying to get around."

Needless to say, this worried my father greatly. We've never discussed it in detail, but I'm pretty sure, in that moment, he thought I was trying to say I'd been molested, or something along those lines. Looking back on it, it was such a dramatic thing to say, I truly don't know why I worded it like that, but I guess, I've always had issues with answering a question straight, especially if I feel like I'm going to be judged for my answer. And no one ever really did understand my deep connections to fictional things. 

My father immediately called my mother over and insisted we go into my parents' bedroom to talk privately. This again supports my theory that my father believed something awful had happened to me, and he thought I'd be more comfortable having a conversation with my mother about it. I just remember him saying that I wasn't allowed to come out until I told my mother what was going on. 

Truthfully, I don't remember much of how the conversation with my mother went, but I know I didn't flat-out tell her immediately that my problem was that I could no longer watch Paw Paws. I think I spoke in almost-riddles until she figured out that I was mad about my parents' refusal to buy a cable box that would allow us access to the premium subscription channels. My mother decided she couldn't tell my father this, I guess because she didn't think he'd appreciate a nine-year-old trying to make such a huge financial household decision for the sake of watching reruns of a short-lived old cartoon. I believe what we ultimately told him was that I was being bratty due to being overexcited about Christmas coming. How this was an acceptable answer after what I'd initially said, I don't know, but that's what I remember. 

The crazy thing is, despite my mother promising we'd get the cable box, and the fact that I know my parents talked about it, though not in reference to that little breakdown of mine that I'm aware of, I don't think we ever actually got it. I actually have no memory of ever seeing an episode of Paw Paws again besides the ones I'd managed to tape, after that day, until I was much, much older. I have absolutely no memory of how I moved on from it, or what my next big hyperfixation was, but once the initial drama of losing Paw Paws passed, I don't think I even really thought about it again until a few years ago, when I stumbled across a random Hanna-Barbera cartoon compilation on one of the streaming services. That brought the whole experience rushing back, and every so often I can't help but think about it laugh. 

One such time, I actually finally found out that there had been a toy line, something I absolutely would have died for during that phase in my childhood, and managed to find a plushie of Princess Paw Paw, finally, after all these years. I do hope to collect more eventually, but I'm happy to have my childhood favorite. (Though when I watch the show now, I'm pretty sure my favorite is actually Dark Paw!) I have a very distinct memory of dressing up a different teddy bear of mine in an outfit from a Native American doll I had in childhood and pretending it was Princess. I do also remember getting a Native American bear plushie from a local gift shop at one point, who I believe I named after another character on the show, Laughing Paw.

It's interesting to me to think that this short-lived TV series from two years before I was even born, that I doubt many other people would even fully remember, made such an impression on me. Every so often I think about it, and wonder if there's anyone else out there who felt a connection to it. It's not something I've ever really heard talked about, but it's definitely something I'll never forget!