I loved Problem Child as a kid, and watched it last year with my 7 year old daughter. Sorry I did - I thought it was one of the most horrible movies I've seen - mean spirited as F, annoying ugly kid, bad jokes. Rotten tomatoes has it at 0% https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/problem_child
And not in a "it was fine back then but society's moved somewhere else and it's not fine now" way. Just bad bad (IMO).
That John Ritter always looked like a nice guy to me though.

I once took a BB gun that looked something like this on a plane. My parents lived in different cities and my aunt was a stewardess so we'd get cheap tickets and I'd do a 1h flight instead of a 5h drive. It was a local airport with some old geezer doing all security, from general airport security to screening. I was used to the place and I knew he'd seen me before and would just look through my backpack real quick. I packed it so full it would barely zip, and just as expected he didn't go through the trouble and just had a quick look, so there I was, a 15 or 16 year old kid with an air BB gun in his carry on on an airplane

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(BTW I didn't have nefarious plans, just wanted to take it from point A to point B...)

Nobody from today would last 5 minutes in those times. Read about the Klondike gold rush and what people went through to get up and over. Or, what people went through in the dust bowl and migration west. Or a million other examples. They had it tough.

It was crazy. Amazing to me how even a lower income family today in many many ways lives a better life than the wealthiest people did 100 years ago.

Two words: flushing toilet.

Electricity

You can have 2 of the following 4 items for your house.

1) Indoor plumbing

2) Flushing toilet

3) electricity

4) air conditioning

You get to choose 2.

I would pass on every single zero rotten tomato for the rest of my life. Myself.

It was bad back when it came out IMHO.

For sure - you really can't trust a 10 year old's taste. Which is why I loved this too:

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Did anyone have an unusual pet when you were a kid? I only had goldfish and hamsters. But a few of my friends had some interesting creatures.
My friend Jim had a pet tarantula that crawled around on our arms and hands. He fed it raw ground beef.
Then there was Jerry who had an iguana. It was usually motionless until he put a meal of chopped cucumber in its cage.
My buddy Mark had a pet piranha that ate goldfish. A bunch of us kids would gather around the tank to watch it stalk and devour its prey.
My friend Dave had a pet scorpion that escaped into the house freaking out his family for several days. It was eventually found dead in his basement near the furnace.

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I currently have a Sphinx cat. There is no comparison to any pet I have ever had.

It is Absolutely fascinating. It jumps on me when I am in true pain and begins to pur.

I survived a stroke and three brain surgeries six years ago so that pain thing happens at least weekly.

I had thought about a nice big tank at some point.

But this cat. The breed is like no other cat breed.

We caught some tadpoles out of the lake and put them in an aquarium. It was so cool watching them turn into frogs.

One year we had two ducks from a farmer's market. Henny and Penny. My dad must have kept their flight feathers trimmed, since they had an outdoor pen and a chicken wire fenced swimming area in the lake. My sister and I were still pretty little/clueless, and it's not like you could play with them, so I don't remember any trauma from the fact they wound up on the table that Thanksgiving. We were probably told they flew south for the winter.

Well just learned this….
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Had no idea.
I now feel as stupid as I did when I first saw the fedex arrow : )

Learned what?

Share the secret.

No secret just never noticed the suits on the playing card are aligned to form a negative space depicting the number 8.

May be easier to see without the grey overlap

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Similar to the logo for FedEx use of negative space to form a arrow.

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Once you see it you never unsee it….

It would make more sense like this:
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You are looking at the building where Mentholatum ointment was produced. The company founder had four daughters. The streets Ida, Lulu, Laura and Pattie are named for those four daughters. I have been driving by this building for 55 years. It is historical and a book has been written about it but everybody just drives by while doing their errands.

The building was built built in 1909 is Art Deco all the way. It is a beautiful building. Check out the roofline.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentholatum

" In 1909 a new factory was built in Wichita, Kansas, and in 1919 a second factory was built in Buffalo. The Wichita factory was closed after Hyde's death in 1935 and the corporate offices were moved to Wilmington, Delaware, in 1937 and later to Buffalo in 1945."
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Today, it is a spice selling shop with all kinds of spices, an entire wall of different blends of teas and coffees. And all of the products you could want to use to make your place in the world of tea connoisseurs. If you think you are a tea snob on par with the wine snobs this is your go-to store.

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Right inside the front door is an elevated floor that I imagine is where the office jerks and managers located, with the managers being able to look down on the factory floor to see who was goofing off.

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The real question is how does it smell inside?

My sad answer is the sinus surgery I had in 2013 resulted in most of my smell sensors being destroyed. I can smell the bad stuff, like a gas leak, for which I feel very fortunate. Unfortunately, cheap perfume still gags me. Occasionally, I might be able to take in the smell of a rose; It is very pleasant when that happens. Food tastes good to me, however, I may be missing flavors that I don't know I am missing.

I went in yesterday to buy a couple of different tea blends. The tea tastes excellent; I am going British and leaving coffee behind. My cheap Goodwill Mr. Coffee is being replaced with a not so cheap countertop water boiler.

But, to answer your question, I smell nothing when I walk I the store.

I just picked up this book. I don’t like collecting toys but a book on the shelf. That really is the ticket for me.

If you have Amazon prime I think you can read for free.

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My late grandma bodak would let us pick one thing at the store when we went. So it is fun to see all the ones I didn’t pick too.

I also have a friend who can smell very
little. His taste is not affected. Late last year I smelled something and mentioned it to him, he reminded me. No smell.

I had reduced smell due to my stroke and three brain surgeries. Sugar primarily tasted very different. My smell is just much less affective. It has improved over time. Years now.

It stinks when a surgery takes something away permanently.
Because I know. It’s much harder if not impossible to get back.

Best wishes!

I am sorry to hear that - the sense of smell is tied so strongly to memories, it is a shame to lose that.

I was poking fun at whether the place still smelled like Mentholatum ointment - your post reminded me of Vicks Vaporub. My mom would put it on our chest when we were sick to help keep our sinuses open. Every time I smell it, I think of that and her - a great memory.

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I love the smell of Vicks and Mentholatum. I have a jar of Vicks in my medicine cabinet for a chest rub. I have not used for awhile. Maybe it is too old to smell anymore; Anyway I just opened it and smell nothing.

I used to read Reader's Digest 40 years ago. There was this British veterinarian who wrote of his travails of being a country vet working the farm animals as well as the cats and dogs. He wrote a story called "Cedrick, the farting dog." Cedrick was a boxer with an extreme issue of flatulence that produced those juicy, smelly farts. Nobody wanted this dog. Finally, the solution came along when a local farmhand revealed he could not smell anything.

The dog got a home. The farmhand got a companion. And everybody lived happily ever after.

At my grade school in the 60s, each kid had a copy of “The Golden Book of Favorite Songs.” The teacher would choose songs from this book for us to sing in class. It was great fun. We learned and sang the patriotic classics like “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Other songs in the book that were fun to sing were “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Columbia The Gem Of The Ocean” and “Santa Lucia.”
Another favorite of mine was “Reuben and Rachel” which had the girls and boys singing alternate verses.

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I remember a grade school music teacher Mrs. Varns. She went from room to room with a box of rhythm instruments. The kids in class would pass the box around choosing instruments. There were a few cool ones and the rest were long colored sticks. I really wanted the triangle but nearly always ended up with sticks.

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Catchy tune.

1961: My third grade music teacher put on a music show for the parents. She put me on the autoharp while most of the other kids were rocking the bells. I had a good time.

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1965: Jon Sebastian and the Lovin' Spoonful enter the world of pop rock and show up on TV. Jon is playing and autoharp. I was stoked.

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Growing up in Chicago, I always thought that the local Lincoln Carpeting commercial jingle tune ripped off “Reuben and Rachel.”
You be the judge.

The Lovin’ Spoonful were awesome!

Yes they were !

Those were easy times. It was all about the music. 4 kids with their cheap instruments ( I would like to have those Fender Bassman ?? amps, though ) with the drummer on a travlin' drum kit and a good times were being had by all.

My fav LS song.

via you tube magic, Jon S. is still at it.

My mother-in-law was a much beloved music teacher. We still have a box of some of her rhythm band instruments. My granddaughter used to love to make a racket with these when she was younger. Now she would rather play the piano.

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When I was around 3 or 4 years old, I liked to sit on the kitchen floor and bang on pots and pans. I’m surprised that my Mom let me make all that noise for a while. I also liked playing around with the egg beater and the flour sifter. Man, that was a long time ago.

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Same here. The kitchen utensils fascinated me.

It was in 4th grade when the school districts music teacher came into all the classes to sort out kids that had some musical apptitude. To then be offered a chance to take some music instruction or join band class. Boy was i glad i was not deemed worthy, because that meant i would escape the torture of having to practice some instrument hours each and every day for weeks and years. Glad i had a tin ear. My younger brother was not as fortunate, as he tortured us daily for years with his practicing of the saxaphone. He never really got the hang of it.

Did anyone else have the experience in grade school of being forced to learn some dances. For me it was in the 5th grade, at a time when i was stuck between thinking all girls had cooties and some other feelings of being strangely attracted to them. We were taught some basic square dancing or a turkey trot, general old time american folk dancing. I distinctly remember having to hold hands with certain gals, and a strange feeling coming over me, noticing how soft their hands were, having a battle within my self of hating having to learn some stupid dance yet at same time attracted to the idea.

6th grade. I think it was square dancing. The class was held in one of those annex buildings built to handle all the baby boomers.

In 6th grade we also had square dancing in the gym, but we also got to do some freestyle modern dance. Somehow I was singled out, along with one girl, as an example of a "good dancer" and we were ordered to demonstrate as such in the middle of everyone else sitting in a big circle. I remember being horribly mortified, and to this day I believe it gave me an aversion to drawing attention to myself and damn if it didn't negatively affect my subsequent success with the fairer sex. Hell, all I did was actually move to the beat, I dunno what the big deal was. If only it hadn't been before disco and Saturday Night Fever, I might have known to run with it and use it to my advantage.

Thanks for listening, this is cheaper than therapy!

I had a real cool steering wheel knob. It had light blue background and was plastic coffin for a multi-colored beetle. It was in that same building the the music teacher plucked that steering knob from my hand and I never saw it again. Pissed me off. But there was nothing I could do.

Here is a pic of a steering wheel knob for those who might be scratching their head.

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I thought these knobs were made illegal years ago, but Amazon sells them. So what do I know.

https://www.amazon.com/s

You still find them on forklifts, we call them suicide knobs.

5th grade square dancing for me. A pretty good memory all in all.

Parents forced me to take some dancing class in my young teen years. Kind of hated it but not so bad when dancing with cute girl. Wonder if there are still classes like that for kids anymore.

I have known a few people with them installed, since they are pretty cool.
They are, however, very illegal here in Michigan. They are sort of unsafe since it's easy to catch your sleeve or anything else on them.
They are awesome for spinning donuts in the snow though.

Edit: Huh. Apparently I was wrong about legality. Wonder if that changed at some point.
I know that we were always told you really didn't want to get pulled over with one.

https://vehicleanswers.com/are-steering-wheel-knobs-legal/

According to this site they are legal even in Michigan as long asv they are installed properly as to not catch on clothing.

Here in New Jersey I have no idea of legality but one was installed in my wife's car when they were fitting handicapped, left foot and hand brake, controls so I assume there are at least special dispensations. Interestingly the one installed is really well made and the knob easily pops out with the press of a button on the mount.

///Rich

Remember when Bandages came in metal boxes?
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This one even has a price tag from Sav-On drugs on it still.
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Lancelot Link Secret chimp

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I remember using these color Band-Aids with the stars when I was a kid.

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A quick Dancing Story. In Florida, there was a Junior High Square Dance, where the Girls asked the Boys.
It was called "Sadie Hawkins".
A sweet Freckled lass asked me out. I was 14.

I have seen here frequently every year, as she stayed in town and became my Dental Hygenist!

The weird Part in My life along with this, is she married a Guy named, "Art".
3 of My 4 School grade Girlfriends, all Married men named, "Art".

A good Ego boost for sure, maybe.