Thursday, March 12

Memories of my Childhood

I think I might start a series on this, because why not.

Our mornings usually consisted of my mother singing "its time to get up" over and over until we woke up. (I hated that. A LOT. It was so patronizing, and made me want to not get up to spite it.) I swear its a song she made up, but if its a real song, tell me.

Here is the lyrics for the song, for your torturing pleasure.

Its time to get up,
Its time to get up,
Its time to get up in the morning.

If you don't get up,
and you don't get up,
Then you won't get up in the morning.

Once we got up it was a flurry of putting on clothes that were clean, brushing hair, and eating breakfast. (This was before we started eating school breakfast.) I think we ate toast often. I do know my mother would make cream of wheat cereal sometimes, wheat berry cereal occasionally, but things like scrambled eggs very rarely (they would be breakfast burritos if we had them). That's mostly because between the kids there were some rampaging egg and milk allergies, plus who knows what else.

I do recall plainly having a "Snack Time" in grade school. We would get a little carton of milk and some fruit (or something). I mostly remember the milk because if you were the brownnoser of the day you would get to be one of the people to pass out the snacks. I always liked how the tray of milk cartons looked. If only they made little milk cartons you could buy in the store. You know, ones that weren't insanely priced.

I think I preferred milk in paper cartons to plastic milk jugs for a while. Milk from a jug didn't taste right. I don't know if its the plastic taste, or the lack of a paper taste.

I wonder if they still have snack time in school, and if they do I am sure it costs money. (I have no idea, but I think snacks were free in grade school or maybe 10-20 cents/day?) It was the 80s and I lived in a town with about 1500 people, followed by the big city with 18,000 or so at the time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it might be a botched version of Irving Berlin's famous war song (Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning). I believe your grandma Edna Somerhalder sang it to me when I was young. I am sorry it was so irritating to you. I guess you should have sang it to me sometime, so I would understand. Of course with your beautiful voice, I would probably have liked it.

Me said...

Some schools (mostly in rural areas with really low SES levels, and urban areas with the same) have "milk" breaks like that. Most others (suburban areas--or those without such low SES areas) don't. I had no idea what a "milk break" was until I went on tour with the performing group I was in my senior year of high school. We went to this tiny little town in Southern UT near Beaver, and they had a "milk break"--and explained it to us (I think it's funded through WIC funds or something).

Anywho--sure--let me know when the Relief Society will be doing the freezer thing. I'll see if I can go :) (Although, now I need to empty my freezer some before getting more food!)

rebecca said...

I don't remember a snack time at all in grade school but that was many moons ago and during world war II. I know they have snack time at St. Luke's and they had it in kindergarten and maybe first grade when my kids went to school, but we paid for it. It was a nominal amount. I can't remember milk tasting funny in plastic, but I think it was because we were going from two percent to skim at the time and there was a big difference even in the looks. Only Oberwis skim or any other kind of milk tasted good. Ask anyone who grew up in Aurora, Il.

Gar