Category Archives: Nostalgia

Clyde & Curly

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For as long as I can remember, my grandpa has had a collection of unusual pets.  We’ve had sheep and deer, elk and turkeys, quail and buffalo, miniature donkeys and llamas, dogs and cats, horses and camels.  While I’m pretty sure that I could write many posts about each of these animals, tonight’s post will focus on our camels.

I honestly don’t remember how long we’ve had Clyde–I believe my grandpa bought him at an exotic animal auction about 12-15 years ago.  He’s a two-hump camel, and he’s positively crazy.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a camel run, but if not, then you must put it on your bucket list.  It’s hilarious.  We got Curly, our one-hump, a year or so after Curly.  They got along well, and they hung out half the year at my grandpa’s farm and half the year with their “trainer.”

Another thing I’m not quite sure of is how we discovered that they like to drink beer.  I’m pretty sure it was a combination of my cousins and my grandpa who figured that one out, but boy, they do love the beer.  No worries, we never gave them more than a can or two at a time.  Interestingly, beer is the only canned beverage they like; once when we pulled up, Clyde came running over to the car, stuck his head in the driver’s side window, reached to the console and grabbed a can of Pepsi sitting there.  Upon drinking a sip, he immediately spit it out.  The jury’s still out as to his taste of Dr. Pepper.

The other day I randomly decided to google our camel, and lo and behold the following video popped up.  I have no idea who took this video, and the fact that they let Clyde chew on the can concerns me, but this is a recent clip of our baby Clyde (at the trainer’s house):

Surprisingly, my youtube search delivered quite a few other beer drinking camels around the world.  In fact, there’s even a song out there about beer drinking camels (see http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/davidmkidd3).  How random!

Sadly, my grandpa sold his piece of land (and almost all the animals that were living there) a few years ago, but we kept our camels.  Technically, Clyde now lives full time with his trainer (who has the acreage and the desire to take care of him).  The trainer is also their social planner, so Clyde and Curly have been involved in a bunch of different events and parades.  As a result, there have been multiple times when I was caught off guard by their appearance in random situations.

For example, last year around this time my mom and I were wrapping presents and randomly had the television tuned to E!.  At some point in the night, the show Wildest Weddings came on, but, busy with wrapping and catching up, we weren’t really paying attention.  This instantly changed when the show cut to commercial and said something along the lines of “and when we come back, you’ll see a wedding featuring the famous beer drinking camels of Oklahoma.”  What?!  Of course we paid full attention, and, sure enough, there were Clyde and Curly, the stars at the reception of someone who got married in our hometown.

Another time I was back home visiting my parents and went out with one of my high school friends.  We were out at a bar, and I met a bunch of his friends.  At some point, a girl came up to us and said “you HAVE to see these pictures I have on my phone.  You won’t believe it!”  I had no idea what to expect, but I cracked up when the pictures were of Clyde and Curly.  I don’t know what she expected me to say, but I can tell you that she did not expect me to tell her that they’re members of my family.

I’m very sad about Curly, but I’m grateful that he was with our family for so long and provided us with lots of joy.  I plan on going to visit Clyde while I’m home over the holidays, so hopefully I can get some updated pictures.  Mostly, I’m just grateful that I have the kind of family in which pet camels are just part of the norm.

On a somewhat related note, my grandpa also used to have a Zedonk (half zebra/half donkey) named Zed.  When I was about 23, I was watching Jimmy Kimmel, and he had a segment about the “World’s First Half Donkey/Half Zebra.”  I can remember sitting there getting my panties in a wad that Jimmy was leading the world to think that these people in California had the first Zedonk, when we had been the proud owner of Zed for years.  So, I did what any sane rational person would do–I immediately e-mailed the show and told them all about Zed.

I never heard back.

I’m sure there are plenty of other Zedonks out there, but here’s a picture of me with our Zed (again, old pictures!):

You can also see some of our Jacks and Jills.  Oh, I miss those animals and that land…

When I was looking through old pictures, I also found this random picture of some of the elk that used to wander around on our land–so pretty!

My dryer is beeping, so I suppose it’s time for me to go and finish doing laundry.

Until next time!

And yes, I realize that technically this is a Sunday not a Saturday post.  I’m hoping if I post something short and sweet after I finish this load of laundry, most of you won’t notice that I actually missed a day of posting…

If You Wanna Be Happy For the Rest of Your Life

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Today as I was driving to work, Jimmy Soul’s song “If You Wanna Be Happy” came on the radio.  I immediately had flashbacks to high school when I, along with a few of my friends, went through a phase when we would listen to mostly ”oldies” music.  I, in particular, was a fan of the Jimmy Soul song, and I remember singing it more than once around my group of friends.  I have no idea why I endorsed that song with such enthusiasm, especially since it’s chorus maintains that “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, so from my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you.”  Regardless of the reasons behind it, I enjoyed the song and sang it (along with many other equally awesome golden oldies) quite often.  Which made me wonder….

…how in the world did I have so many friends in high school?

I mean, I was not your ordinary, cool student.  Heck, I wasn’t even your ordinary, uncool student.  I was just uniquely me, and I just did whatever made me happy.  Even if what made me happy was singing to my guy friends about making ugly women their wives (which, by the way, annoyed me even then because I could never figure out if I should imagine myself as the pretty woman who the guy shouldn’t marry or the ugly girl he should chase after.  Thinking about it now, however, I’m going to take the fact that I’m still single as proof that I’ve always been the pretty woman.  Haha.).

Despite my inherent dorkiness, however, I always had lots of friends.  And not just any friends–amazing friends from all walks of life and made up of all different personalities.  Looking back, one of the best things about my friends was not that they put up with my insanity, but that they often times encouraged it or joined in on the crazy.

For example, today’s trip down memory lane reminded me of the many times that my high school best friend and I would cruise around town in my little red car with the windows down and the sunroof open.  “But, Erin,” you might be thinking, “lots of high school students cruised around town with their windows and sunroof open.”  Yes, you are correct.  But did lots of high school students blare “The Hokey Pokey” through the speakers, sticking their right arms out of the sunroof when “you put your right arm out?”  I feel it’s a pretty safe bet to say no, they did not.  But Melissa and I did.  And we would laugh hysterically and have the best time.

Similarly, there was a group of us (guys and girls) who went to lunch together pretty much every day our senior year.  This was around the same time that Jewel’s song “Foolish Games” became popular.  I don’t remember why or how it started, but that song became sort of the theme for our lunch-time adventures.  We’d all jump in the car, pop in Jewel’s cd, and sing “Foolish Games.”  At the top of our lungs.  Every day.  We loved every minute of it.

Again, how was it that we were fairly popular in high school?

The song ended just about the time I was pulling into my work parking lot, and as I parked, I felt a ping of sadness at the thought that my carefree days of spontaneous dancing/singing with friends might be behind me.  Oh to be a kid again, I thought to myself.

And then I had a flashback to this past weekend.

I was in Norman for Calico’s 30th birthday, and on Saturday night, Calico, Diego, and I were all sitting around watching football.  A little bit earlier in the evening, we had muted the TV  and started streaming some Halloween songs on the computer to make gourd-carving a little more festive.  The carving was now well behind us, but the music was still playing.  We each had our respective computers in front of us and were not paying much attention to each other when “The Monster Mash” came on the radio.  Without really needing to take time to discuss the situation with each other, we all stopped what we were doing, stood up, and broke out into the best mini-monster-mash-dance-party you ever did see.  After the song was over, we sat back down and continued our night as usual. It was pretty awesome.

Remembering that, I realized that no matter how old I get, I never have to stop breaking out into spontaneous song or dance. That thought makes me happy.  Perhaps Jimmy Soul was wrong, and it’s not getting an ugly wife that will make you happy for the rest of your life.  Instead, maybe the secret to life-long happiness is letting loose, enjoying those you’re with, and finding the fun in every day situations.

Then again, my ex-boyfriend went and got himself an ugly wife, and I hear he’s pretty happy these days.

Halloween

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Halloween’s this weekend, and my Facebook newsfeed is full of updates about the exciting costumes that everyone’s putting together for Halloween parties and adventures.  Again and again I hear friends make mention of the fact that Halloween is their favorite holiday, and often times their costume-preparation starts weeks in advance.

While I don’t dislike Halloween, I do not share this unbridled enthusiasm for dressing up and for celebrating this holiday.  Don’t get me wrong, as a child I lived for a night of trick-or-treating with friends.  As an adult, I’ve loved living in places where little kids come trick-or-treating at my door, and I get to ooh and aah over the pretty princesses or cower in fear at the sight of the swamp monsters.  I’m also fairly certain that when I one day have kids of my own, I’ll be as passionate about adorable children’s costumes as the next person, and Halloween will once again become an exciting holiday for me.  At this point in my life, however, my excitement for Halloween is limited to the constant availability of bite-size candy and the opportunity to spend an evening with some of my best friends listening to the monster mash while carving gourds.

So why am I somewhat indifferent to this spooky holiday?  Well, I can’t say for sure, but I have a feeling that it may be due to my childhood costume experiences.  You see, while my childhood was pretty dang spectacular and my parents made every effort to give us a great life, they may have been a little lacking in the Halloween costume department.

While other kids were decked out in costumes resembling superheroes, witches, or cartoon characters, I was generally decked out in random clothing items pulled straight from my mother’s dresser drawers and accessorized with random finds from the family linen closet. Case in point: the other day I was looking through old photo albums and came across a picture from Halloween 1986.  All of the kids in my neighborhood were gathered together for a group picture.  There was my friend Nancy who dressed up as Rainbow Brite in a head-to-toe commercially made costume.  Then there were the two little girls from across the street who were dressed up as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. I’m pretty sure their mom made their costumes, and she made sure that not a detail was amiss.  The rest of the neighborhood kids had on various masks and were dressed up as monsters, skeletons, or princesses.  And then there was me.  To this day, I’m not quite sure who I was trying to be, but I’m thinking that my mom and I decided that I would be an angel.  I stood tall among the other kids wearing an old red shirt of my mom’s with a random scarf slung around the waist.  The shirt came down to my knees, so I guess it was a dress of sorts?  The outfit was made complete with some homemade angel wings and a magical wand made out of a hanger and a pipe cleaner.

The next year I wanted to go as a rock star, so my mom gathered my hair into a side ponytail, hairsprayed in some glitter, put me in one of her more colorful sweaters, and sent me on my way.  What a rockstar!  A few years later, I hit the streets wearing a random ugly man mask (which we must have found somewhere, because I’m pretty sure we never bought it) and draped in my dad’s army blanket.  I’m not sure what look I was going for with that outfit, but if it was of an uncreative dorky girl, I’d say I pretty much nailed it.  The year I went as a witch, I think we actually did buy me a real mask, but, again, I dressed in one of my mom’s black shirts.

My mother/linen/paper look didn’t end with trick-or-treating either.  Oh no—it seeped into my school activities as well.  In my Catholic school, we didn’t celebrate Halloween.  Instead, we celebrated All Saints Day (Nov. 1) by dressing up as our favorite saints. I’m pretty sure I went as Mary every year.  My mom wrapped me in a blue sheet and put a blue towel over my head.  I think one year we went a little crazy and switched it up a bit with a white towel instead of a blue one.  I don’t even think we secured it with anything; I’m pretty sure we literally just draped it over my head.  To be fair, dressing up as a saint doesn’t leave much room for super-exciting costumes, but I do remember that many of my classmates went a little further than a sheet/towel combo in their choice of outfits.  For example, there was one classmate that came as St. Joan of Arc wearing full body armor and carrying an awesome shield.  Another classmate came as St. Patrick and wore a green robe and carried a giant staff.  Another was St. Francis of Assisi and wore a friar’s robe and carried around a bunch of stuffed animals.  Me, though, I just showed up year after year in my sheet.

Despite my less-than-stellar costumes, I always ended up having a great time on Halloween, and I never really noticed that my costumes were rather lacking.  I mean, I was the girl who went through a phase in which I repeatedly wore an oversized sweatshirt, tights, and patent leather shoes as an outfit because I thought I looked absolutely adorable in my homemade sweatshirt dress (which, as a family picture will attest, had a huge picture of Garfield covering the front).  And I was also the girl who, despite waking up at times with crazy tangles in my hair, only brushed the front of her hair because “no one could see the back.”  Talk about the inability to see another’s perspective.

Not noticing that my costumes were somewhat lacking, however, did not mean that I spent all of October quaking with anticipation at the thought of dressing up on Halloween night.  No, for me, it was always about a fun night with friends and never about the costumes.  And so, as everyone else gets all dolled up in their creative and crazy costumes this weekend, I plan on having a great costume-free evening with friends.

Although, now that I think about it, my mom did accidentally leave a shirt here the last time she visited, and my linen closet is filled to the brim with towels and sheets, so maybe I’ll dress up after all.