Sam and I started the day by reading, for the first time together, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I don't know how many times I read it in grade school: it was one of my all-time favourites. My Grade 3 report card says "Angela can write interesting stories independantly. Her pictures include much action and detail." I'm quite certain those are kudos for my innumerous Mike Mulligan prequels. Sam's Scholastic book order included a DVD of four animated shorts, one of which was a dramatic reading of Mike and Mary Anne's story. Watching them, I marvelled at how lucky Sam is to be growing up in this techo-advanced world. He'd laughed at us the other day—thinking we were pulling his leg—when he explained that there were no DVDs, VCRs, TiVo or pausing live TV when we were kids. The tagline of a (really) old Milk-Mate commercial, introducing the revolutionary concept of a liquid additive to make chocolate milk, comes to mind—a 5-year-old boy lets his toddler brother know that "things sure are better than when I was a little kid!"
Then, this afternoon, I peeled four fresh strawberry-flavoured Twizzlers from the sticky bunch as a treat for Sam and Carter. The smell of the candy brought back a strong sensory memory of being on summer road trips through the interior of British Columbia, and mom passing Twizzlers to the sisters in the back seat. I used to nibble away at mine like a hamster, making it last. Funny that Sam does the same thing now. Later, when I spotted the boys engaged in a fast-paced game of Trouble, I realized that some things are exactly the same for Sam as they were for me 35 years ago. Trouble, Perfection, Lite Bright, slinky and Playdo are all among Sam's toys as they were mine. I'd have been perfectly at home with his craft buckets, too, stocked as they are with Crayola crayons and markers, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, Laurentian pencil crayons, and Elmer's glue. I loved all that stuff.
Sam and I have watched many of my favourite Looney Toons, laughing together at the "hello, my baby!" frog who won't perform for anyone but the man who discovers him in the time capsule of an old cornerstone, at the crazy antics of Wile E. Coyote, who just can't outwit the Roadrunner or Sam the sheepdog. And Sam shares our love of The Princess Bride, the early Star Wars movies, Swiss Family Robinson, E.T. and other movies from our youth. There are plenty of everyday things in common, too. He wears Levi's jeans, Converse shirts and Scooby-doo undies (okay, I didn't have the undies, but I loved Scooby-doo). He breakfasts on Quaker oats, lunches on Schneider's deli meats, smiles over a mug of Carnation hot chocolate, and savours the occasional vanilla cream Girl Guide cookie. And I've heard him humming "You can't always get what you want..."
Granted, it's unlikely he'll ever (be allowed to) play in the creek until the streetlights come on, see a drive-in movie, or take disco lessons (a-hem). But I bet I'll continue to be as surprised by the overlaps in our childhood experiences as I am by the ways his world has so widely diverged from mine. Time for bedtime milk (Neilson's), bubble bath (Johnson's), p.j.'s (Superman) and then one more reading of Mike Mulligan and his last adventure with his outmoded steam engine, Mary Anne. Electric- and deisel-powered shovels rendered her sadly obsolete. No mention in that book of solar power, hybrid technology, hydrogen fuel, or ethanol. I wonder if Sam's kids will read it, too.
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