why are sneakers exciting?

I bought new sneakers yesterday, which is always exciting. No, not because I'm a girl and all girls intrinsically love adding new footwear to their collection... ahem, Elaine.

These babies are my first pair of Nikes since I was like 12, when I boycotted them. 'Why?' you may ask? Some would respond that it's because of the exploitation of young'ns in the Chinese work force. Nope, not my reason... though I certainly commend those folks for their noble nature.

It all goes back to when my brother went through his infamous head-to-toe Nike phase, when a typical outfit would feature Nike basketball sneakers, black Nike socks, Nike mesh shorts, a Nike t-shirt, a Nike sweatshirt and of course - the cherry on top of his bowl haircut - a Nike hat. This "phase" lasted for several years, and the over saturation of Nike apparel floating around the house made me shudder at all things swoosh-related. Only yesterday, 13 years later, did I finally break down and invest in a pair of Nike kicks that caught my eye and hugged my feet like little clouds of heaven. And, I must admit, they're pretty rad.

Why is it that buying sneakers excites me so? Well, to begin, anything new is exciting and there's definitely something to be said for the beneficial powers of retail therapy. But secondly, there was always something thrilling about buying new sneakers as kids, when the parentals loaded us up in the family station wagon (hell yeah wood-grain panels!), shuffled us into the local Stride Rite store and deposited us at the feet of some archetypal frumpy store clerk, who then embarked on the tedious process of getting us to stop squirming, measuring our feet, and then testing how much room we had in the various footwear candidates that came through the swinging door.

Eventually we'd narrow down the options, whining our way out of the personal favorites of our parents, and finally select the winning pair of gleaming white sneakers that would make us the masters of all outdoor pursuits. We'd proudly and squeakily wear them out of the store, our dingy and probably ill-fitting ones hidden away like illegitimate children.

We'd get home, anxious to show off our fabulous new high-tops in a game of neighborhood 4-square or tackle football, fully-convinced that with our brand new footwear we could run faster, jump higher, throw stronger and certainly look all sorts of good. We'd open the front door and wave regally to our friends like pint-sized popes greeting the hoards in Saint Peter's Square (otherwise known as our front yard). Just as we'd open our mouths to brag "Hey look at my new..", our mother always appeared out of thin air.

"No, no... those are your 'good' sneakers. Go put your old ones back on to play outside." And in that moment, all the fun was squeezed right out of the situation and our athletic prowess was placed back into the box... to be saved for more appropriate childhood activities that did not entail anything that sneakers are technically designed for.

So to answer the question, I just get excited that I don't have to "save" my new sneakers.

Christmas

Despite how obscenely commercial Christmas is, I love every bit of it: the bright colors, the flamboyant lights, the music, the constant eating and drinking. It’s like Las Vegas goes on tour once a year and hits small-town America. Thank jeebus it leaves la Celine in all of her Canadian glory behind. Gag. Aside from a Celine Dion holiday album, nothing can chip away at my holiday glee. Not even the annual crew of over-zealous Jesus fanatics, who along with the Nazi priest who actually forbade us from saying "Happy Holidays" (incidentally the same priest who actually yelled at me with his fist in the air for wondering aloud about reincarnation in my CCD class) come out of the woodwork to drone on about Christmas losing its original meaning.

Christmas has yet to lose its special feel, even though we’re quite obviously no longer a pack of rugrats. Newer traditions (drinking, Mrs. Guarraia’s cheesecakes, Cortylandia) intertwine with the oldest ones, but the basics are still in place. It’s about being with your family. Rousing up a good fire in the fireplace. The Boston Pops and waging battles with wadded-up balls of wrapping paper. Flannel pajamas, giggles and surprises. Hopes for snow on Christmas morning. Pancakes and scavenging for batteries. That unexpected something in the very toe of your stocking that you didn’t come across before. The nostalgia for the days when Santa Claus still weighed out the year’s deeds and (hopefully) determined that you had indeed been more nice than naughty.

My cumulative vision of Christmas when we were children looks like something plucked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The Christmas tree stood in the corner, its strands of tiny bulbs blinking red, orange, green and blue weaving festively through the ornaments. We made sure to set out cookies and a tall glass of milk for Santa, along with enough carrots to fuel the whole gang of reindeer through the rest of their round-the-globe night.

Night would fall on Christmas Eve, and our parents would try to hustle us to bed with the classic “Santa won’t come if you’re not asleep” threat; this is not helpful, however, when you’re a seven-year old insomniac. Instead of struggling to stay awake to see what happened, I remember actually throwing myself into a sheer panic fearing that Santa Claus would know I was awake and skip on to the next house.

In the end, it'd all go off without a hitch, and come Christmas morning we’d be up before the sun was. Partly because we were early risers in our youth, but mostly because I’d feel a presence, open my eyes, and see my sister’s eyeballs no more than one inch from my face. She’s now 21 and has yet to relinquish her role as the Christmas Day family alarm clock. Once she managed to successfully awaken her first victim (me, since my room was the closest), she then sprang into full-speed action, bouncing up and down and off the walls like a super ball. My sister is also the one person who shot into super ball mode not only opening her own presents, but when everyone else was opening theirs.

Once we recruited my brother, we’d take on the task of getting our parents up. After spending long and torturous minutes poking and prodding our parents as if they were lethargic cattle, they'd finally groan awake and we'd give our first cheer of victory. We’d race to the top of the stairs, wriggling around in gut-wrenching agony which was only compounded when we realized our dad had full intentions of taking a shower (and his sweet time).

So we'd listen to the shower run, the three of us sitting side-by-side on the very top step. We weren't allowed to go downstairs, of course, until our parents gave us the green light... at which point we'd take off at speeds rivaling the Indy 500. The one time my brother crept silently down the stairs to take a peek around the corner before my parents came out of their room, my sister and I sat in breathless fear until he safely returned and whispered, his blue eyes huge in awe, "he came!"

Finally, the parents, freshly showered and yet back in their pajamas for the sake of the pictures (when every opened present was followed by "ok, now hold it up" and a flash), would slowly emerge from their bedroom as if they were ethereal beings gracing us with their presence. My sister, still bouncing, would squeal “Can we go down yet?” and before we even heard an answer we would be scrambling down the stairs and sliding across tile floors until we reached the family room.

To our delight, the carrots had always been nibbled, the milk was always gone but for a few drops, and just a few crumbs were sprinkled on the plate where the cookies had once sat. Some years, Santa would leave behind one half-bitten Oreo, and we’d marvel at it as if it were the freakin’ holy grail.

So while we're no longer kids and we now know that our parents - and now we, as well - suffer through daunting credit card bills, Christmas is still Christmas. Plus, our presents are still signed "from Santa".

halloweenies

With newspaper spread over the entire floor, the coffee table pushed to the side, three different knives and spoons of various sizes... we carved the best jack-o-lantern EVER. For the record, Alfonso was an excellent first-time scooper.











Despite the sad and inevitable day each year when the local Dairy Queen would close for winter, I have always loved fall and everything that it entailed. Picking out pumpkins. Leaves in deep shades of red and orange. Apple-picking and haunted hay rides at the town's orchards. Chilly walks and running from the frigid waves at the beach. Cider. Brand-new fleece jackets. Lighting the fire in the fireplace for the first time of the season. Launching ourselves, kamikaze-style and giggling, into giant piles of fallen leaves... much to the dismay of a certain dad who may or may not have just spent hours raking all the leaves in the yard into orderly piles to be bagged up and discarded.

Fall, of course, culminated in the biggest event of the season: Halloween. When I was growing up it was FANTASTIC. I think it's what led to the chocolate binges that I still succumb to from time to time... well, replace "from time to time" with "on a daily basis." I don't know until what age I trick-or-treated, but it was probably pushing that limit when adults open the door and think to themselves, "hmm, aren't we a little old for this?"

Our little pint-size posse - the Matternlets and the Walkerlets - would always meet up first for pictures at the request/ demand of our camera-toting mothers who would somehow each manage to use up three whole rolls of film on a mere six costume-clad kids. We have envelopes upon envelopes jam-packed with snapshots of smiling superheroes, angels, clowns and cats, all of us armed with our pillow cases and pumpkin buckets and with a clear mission ahead of us: sugar.

The best years were the ones in which, after the picture-taking frenzy finally wrapped up, we managed to coerce one of our dads into pulling us around from house to house, us crammed into a wagon hitched up to the back of a tractor and sticking our tongues out as we passed the neighborhood kids who had to trick-or-treat on foot, while the moms stayed behind to hold down the fort and shower the arriving princesses, monsters and devils with ooh's, ahh's and candy. To this day my mom still lives for Halloween, her jack-o-lantern lit in the front window hours in advance, a big bowl of candy waiting in the foyer and a pen and piece of paper set out to keep a tally of the number of kids who come to the door. I will bet money that she'll give me the official 2007 stats during our next phone call.

Once we made it to the very last house on Village Drive, a route which at the time seemed to last for hours and hours, we piled back into the wagon - our once-empty sacks and buckets now bulging with sweets - for the voyage back to our respective houses. This is when - well, in our house at least - the business part of the evening commenced.

My brother, my sister and I would each rip off our costumes and claim a separate parcel of the family room carpet, where we then conducted inventory with a surprising degree of organization and formality. This is also when we'd find out that there were really cool neighbors (the ones who handed out king-size chocolate bars) and very, VERY uncool ones (the neighborhood grinch up the street who insisted on handing out free samples of toothpaste each year).

Candy was sorted into their respective piles and rows. KitKats lined up side-by-side. Packs of Bubbalicious gum. Ring pops and Skittles. Tootsie rolls, M&M's and gummy bears. Then there was of course the designated "junk" pile, where things like Sugar Daddy's, little boxes of raisins and the annual tubes of toothpaste were quickly discarded. This was subsequently also the pile we allowed our parents to choose from.

We'd spend at least a half hour with our stern business faces on, bartering our candy and trading with each other, our energetic negotiations fueled by a steady consumption of one of everything. The family room quickly turned into a microcosm of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. One Snickers bar for 2 tootsie pops. Three bags of Skittles and one of Sour Patch kids for that king size Hershey bar. I imagine it must have been quite the eyebrow-raising spectacle for our parents.

Once the trades were complete and we began to come down from our sugar-induced highs, we'd place the candy back into our buckets, which were then placed on top of the refrigerator. However, I'm relatively certain that once we were all tucked into bed with stomach aches, sticky hands and traces of paint still on our faces, our parents would sneak our pumpkins down from their high perches... and deviate from the junk piles we so graciously gave them.

Childhood "Things"

Now every person has their fair share of childhood peculiarities that they may or may not share with their friends. My dad, for example, used to play a game with his neighborhood chums back in the good ole days in which they competed to see who could hit their head the hardest on a driveway. Due to a stray pebble, he still has a literal dent in his forehead from this wholesome childhood past-time... but gosh darn it did he win.

Mine? Well other than the whole ambiguous gender issue, there was my obsession with sleeping with all my stuffed animals because a) I really did feel bad if I didn't pay equal attention to all of them and actually feared a revolt, and b) I needed to keep them protected from the mask-wearing robber who was surely on his way to climb up a ladder, in through my window and straight after my beloved stuffed critters.

Then there was my massive sticker and keychain collections, both of which I am still incapable of throwing out. Not to mention my unwavering refusals to put jelly on my peanut butter sandwiches, try new things, and eat anything white (milk, coconut, cheese, etc.). My love of turning a bike upside down and pretending it was an ice cream maker. The "Roadrunner" game I used to play with my sibling, which consisted of running around in a circle in the family room saying "meep meep" "meep meep" as we ran. Then there's my steadfast aversion towards change, as demonstrated by the puffalump show-and-tell incidents as described 2 posts ago; dressing up as a cat for 6 straight years for Halloween; requesting that my mom make me the exact same birthday cake - the one with flattened gumdrop balloons and licorice strings - 4 years in a row... trust me, the list is endless.

Anyway, the Matterns are clearly not alone. By far the best part of my week, thus far, has been learning about Joanne's favorite childhood hobby. So, without further ado, enjoy the inner workings of a young Egnatchik, as narrated via gmail chat:

me: im imagining the egnatchik household

Joanne: haha

did i ever tell you about my hobby

me: hmm im not sure?

5:05 PM Joanne: from the time i was born til about 14 i used to buy huge 11 by 17 size sheets of construction paper

and cut it up in to the tiniest pieces ever

5:06 PM me: HHAHAHAHAHAA

Joanne: and store them in the plastic boxes my dad had to hold slides

me: the pieces of paper???

Joanne: yup

me: o my god

amazing

Joanne: i wasnt allowed to throw confetti

but

i was allowed to make it

me: you sure had enough of it

hahahahaha

o my

thats awesome

Joanne: my mom threw it out when i slept i´m sure

me: heeh

5:07 PM Joanne: cuz she always seemed to have a new empty box for me

i also liked to tape things

not grabar

sino scotch

which is fitting, since i have a future in cutting and pasting

me: :)

Joanne: not just things that were ripped

not even taping things together

just cutting a piece and strategically placing in on a piece of paper

5:09 PM me: hahahaahahahaha

this is the best part of my week right here

Joanne: just another reason for you to love me

5:10 PM oh yes,

the confetti boxes needed to be taped

because i didnt want any pieces to fall out

5:11 PM me: naturally

childhood crush

My first favorite television show was David the Gnome, which I watched each day before scrambling off to Mike Walker's driveway in hopes of arriving at his mailbox before him and subsequently ensuring my spot in the front row on the bus (nerd alert) en route to a stimulating afternoon of kindergarten.

The memory of enjoying the adventures of David and his pint-size posse goes hand-in-hand with the memory of my childhood babysitter/ honorary grandmother Phoebe, who would lay out a delicious daily spread of chicken nuggets arranged in a circle around a squirt of ketchup, hogdogs finely chopped into quartered slices ALSO symmetrically arranged around a squirt of ketchup, de-crusted peanut butter sandwiches sans jelly, or waffles cut perfectly along the lines. Who knew such an anal 5 year old could blossom into such an indifferent 24 year old whose life motto is "meh, whatever."

Tangent: Another fun kindergarten tidbit is that I would bring the exact same thing in each day for "show-and-tell": my beloved Christmas mouse puffalump (see photo). The game involved a format in which the show-and-teller gave hints to his or her fellow kidlets, who then tried to guess what the mystery object was. My turn usually ended with someone muttering "ughhh the puffalump again?" and yet I - clearly living in a world of one - would get giddy with content over the success of my hints as if it were the first time. Only now do I feel mildly dim-witted for this. Hey, hindsight's 20-20, right?

Punky Brewster is another classic, partly because she was essentially my twin and partly because Brandon was a carbon copy of my golden retriever Winston, aka "Winnie." Plus, the gal's fashion sense was way ahead of her time. Around the same time I was enthralled by Small Wonder, in which it turns out that a cookie-cutter middle class family has a robot daughter who wears the same lacy frock every day. Yes, a frock. While other kids had scraped knees, Vicky experienced the occasional short circuit. I think it was when her parents opened up her back revealing her circuit box that I deemed it a masterpiece.

And then... there was MacGyver: the crush of my childhood. Dreeeeeamboat, toot toot. In my pre-pubescent eyes, he could do no wrong. His voluminous locks styled effortlessly into the most glorious mullet to grace the small screen, his hip acid-wash jeans tapering down just so behind the tongues of his rockin' high-tops, and his discrete way with the ladies had me completely smitten. Plus, his quick wit and resourcefulness in moments of crisis totally blew the shipwrecked professor (also dreamy in his own right) of Gilligan's Island fame and his coconut telephone totally out of the water-- pun 100% intended.

Luckily, they air hours of MacGyver re-runs every morning and afternoon in Spain. Not so luckily, I made the mistake of switching the language into English- now an option with a few of the tv channels. As an enamoured young'n, I never quite came to realize that he was great at action but terrrrrrible at dialogue. In a world of awful dub jobs, you know it's bad when the cheesy Spanish voice they give to American tv show characters is better than the real thing.

50 "who the hell cares!" B.Matt Trivia Tid-Bits

1. In pre-school I ate paste because it smelled minty. I ended up being sent home from school with a sore throat.

2. I am an introvert par excellence.

3. My sister, at the ripe old age of 8, proclaimed me in one of her "angry letters" to be "Miss Sarcastic of the Year." Where's my sash?

4. I spent a year - 8th grade - looking like a lumberjack. A male lumberjack, that is.

5. I went to college as an English major and graduated as a Spanish major.

6. My first boyfriend was Chris Pressler in the third AND fourth grades. It was an elementary school love match like no other. I got him a race car calendar for Christmas. Vroooom.

7. The words panty, wound and fester make me cringe.

8. I was good at sports growing up... except basketball, at which I was quite terrible. There are plenty of basketball anecdotes which I will not go into. We'll leave it at that I got more than a couple of confused looks from referees.

9. I'll never be too old to sip from juiceboxes... even though I have to drink 2 at a time to quench my AM OJ-craving.

10. I think that the French language sounds like spoken vomit... but I am thinking about learning it anyway.

11. My mom is a surprisingly talented beer pong player... even when she insists on playing with flavored wine coolers. Moms are cute like that.

12. Stephanie Casey and I used to have sleepovers to write - and illustrate - marvelous stories together.

13. I have a lot of strange and borderline OCD habits that nobody has known about until riiiiight now. Examples:
A) If I accidentally kick my left ankle with my right foot while walking, I repeat it the other way around to even things out... even though it hurts.
B) When in the car, I lightly squeeze a muscle or tap a toe inside my shoe everytime a light pole is passed. I have done this for as long as I can remember.
C) I constantly imagine ridiculous scenarios... such as if I were threatened with death unless I could remember how to play a certain piano song from memory, would I be able to?

14. I think too much and talk too little.

15. I grew up wanting to be a pilot. I took flying lessons and loved it... yet eventually turned down the acceptance into flight school.

16. I once pulled my brother's arm out of its socket because he wouldn't help clean up the Hungry Hippos game. Poor li'l tyke.

17. My parents named me Elizabeth even though they 100% planned on calling me Betsey. Why not just name me Betsey? Family mystery!

18. Driving a standard car is way more fun than driving an automatic. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back.

19. I sometimes worry about the fact that I don't worry about my lack of professional ambition.

20 I am deathly afraid of knives, paper cuts in the eye, doctors, being judged, driving off a bridge into water while sitting in the back seat of a two-door car, and birds (the ones that walk, not so much the little hopping ones). Luckily I have, since my childhood, overcome my fears of actually looking like a girl.

21. My favorite childhood activity was playing football with the neighborhood boys. I would pounce on Mike Walker's back trying to tackle him.

22. My dad knows me too well. I am essentially the younger, female, and non-Republican version of him :o)

23. As a child, my little sister used to eat dog food. For some reason I think I also recall her munching on newspaper once or twice. Good times at the Mattern household.

24. I am allergic to cats. It took going to Florida and staying with a friend's aunt to figure it out... she had 8 furry felines. I considered going to the hospital to see if I was dying from pneumonia.

25. I worry too much and take things too personally.

26. At Cliff Orvedal's Halloween party, I accidentally swallowed 2 feet of fake hair when a clump of my witch wig stuck to my cupcake frosting in the very last pre-bite moment. Mrs. Orvedal had to yank it out. I have had an aversion towards spaghetti noodles ever since.

27. My favorite movie of all time is and always will be the Little Mermaid. I can't help it... it's beyond my control. We got no troubles, life is the bubbles!

28. I was the ONLY student in my high school Culinary Arts class who did not receive an A+. I attribute this to one or both of the following reasons: A) possibly because I added 3 tablespoons of pepper instead of 3 teaspoons to my final project, resulting in a rather piquant New England clam chowder, or B) possibly because the teacher was my basketball coach. See #8.

29. I now get carsick due to my lack of car travel in Spain. On the way to JFK airport after Christmas my dad had to pull over so I could switch into the front seat.

30. My sister and I hated each other until I was 18 and she was 15, and my brother and I engaged in physical fights until I was in college.

31. I don't particularly like boats. I was on one when it caught fire.

32. I really want to go skydiving.

33. I despise the following instant messenger tendencies

• IM lingo (LOL, LMAO, TTYL, etc., etc.).
• when people put the humping hearts, i.e. <333,>
• when, again in their profiles, people randomly AND OBSESSIVELY change their fonts FOR NO APPARENT r.E.a.S.o.N.
  

34. I have never sucked an entire lollipop. I bite them as soon as my teeth will let me.

35. I am physically incapable of burping. Mark always said that he was going to feed me Alca-Seltzer pills to see if I'd explode. Apparently that's what happens to seagulls.

36. My first memory is going with my dad to buy a swingset. I was two and remember thinking it was the longest ride ever. I later found out it was a whopping 45 minutes, if that.

37. My favorite number to write is 4, and my favorite letter to write is a lowercase cursive z. I do a mental fist pump each time I get to the z while signing my name.

38. I can't watch surfing because those waves scare the begeezus out of me.

39. Scary movies really do give me nightmares.

40. I can entertain myself for a remarkably long time with a wad of bubble-wrap. My mom gets mad at me for popping all the bubble-wrap that protects our Christmas ornaments.

41. I love aquariums and zoos. There's just something about poo-flinging monkeys and dolphins jumping through hula-hoops that I can't get enough of.

42. I believe both in ghosts and in extraterrestrial life. E.T. WHADDUPPP

43. I am cluttered and mildly scatterbrained by nature. When things are organized I can't ever find anything I'm looking for.

44. I like art.

45. I abhor deep political or philosophical discussions, as the people who want to have them are generally pretentious and love to hear themselves talk.

46. My college roommate and I once went on the South Beach Diet. After a week and a half we threw the idea out and celebrated with a Costco-sized bag of Doritos. It was glorious.

47. I love Muppets marathons, especially the Swedish Chef skits. Bork! Bork! Bork!

48. I'm strangely glad my parents got divorced. I can't imagine my life without the additional family members that came out of it. Plus, two Thanksgiving food comas and two Christmases! I kid, I kid..

49. I dislike uncomfortable shoes, popped collars, small talk, bad grammar, decisions, and loud/open-mouthed chewers

50. I like banana bread, dirty jokes, socks, seeing new places, writing, celebrity gossip, going out for breakfast, cheesy pick-up lines, being immature, and opening brand-new tennis ball cannisters.