It Says So in the Childcraft!

Another post in a series on Famous Family Sayings

In my family, when you made a definitive statement about something you had to be able to prove it. Mom and Dad taught us to question things, so if I said something like “The moon is made out of cheese” someone would ask where I had heard that and then tell me to prove it. Most families had some version of encyclopedias back then, including mine, even if they were a little out of date by the time I started using them. So I’d break out the encyclopedia that included an entry about the moon and then… realize my older brothers had just made a fool of me.

We also had another option that had entries on a whole bunch of topics, a book called Childcraft. It was basically an encyclopedia for kids, with simple language, pictures and illustrations. There were multiple books, but I think we only had one – How Things Work. I used to look up things in there all the time (OK, so I was a little nerdy as a kid), as did other members of my family. That book contained a lot of good information and I found it quite interesting.

One time, my sister had one of those definitive statement moments and when asked how she knew, her simple response was, “It says so in the Childcraft!” While what she said may have been true, my older brothers pounced all over that statement and made a joke out of it. In fact, they thought it was so funny, they started using that line all the time (which us younger ones picked up on and copied so we could be cool like them). That line got used so much it became a Famous Family Saying.

Here are some fictional examples of how this line may have been used:

One of us younger ones: “It’s getting cloudy outside, I think it’s going to rain.”

One of the older ones: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

Me: “Anyone know what’s for dinner?”

Older brother: “Roast beef.”

Me: “Again? Are you sure?”

Older brother: “Yup. It says so in the Childcraft!”

Older brother: “Joey has a new girlfriend.”

Me: “I DO NOT! Who told you that?”

Older brother: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

Older brothers: “Don’t tell Mom what we’re doing. You wanna know why?”

One of us younger ones: “Why?”

Older brothers: “Because if you do…” (fist punching other hand) “You wanna know why?”

One of us younger ones: “Why?”

Older brothers: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

One of us younger ones: “You’re in TROUBLE!”

One of the older ones: “What?!?! I didn’t do anything. How do you know?”

One of us younger ones: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

This last example would have been followed by a mad dash to get away before we got a noogie…or worse.

If you made any kind of statement that sounded smart, there was a good chance it would be followed by “It says so in the Childcraft!” It was funny at times, not so funny at other times. When you were just being a know-it-all, it was funny for everyone. When you were trying to be serious about something and got mocked with that line, it could be very frustrating. Now that I think about it, it was always funny for everyone except the person at whom “It says so in the Childcraft!” was aimed.

We used that phrase so often that the publishers should have been paying us royalties. For years, there wasn’t a week that went by that “It says so in the Childcraft!” didn’t get uttered by at least one of us. The strange thing is, I don’t remember Mom or Dad ever getting involved with this and having to stop it like they did with so many other things. I can’t say no one ever got hurt (at least emotionally), but I guess it never got out of hand. Eventually, as we got older, it died out.

Kids today wouldn’t know an encyclopedia from a cyclorama. Instead of researching something using an encyclopedia, they do their research using the internet. You could make a strong case that their “It says so on the internet” is our “It says so in the Childcraft!” With one exception that is; everything in Childcraft was true. I don’t know if the Childcraft books are still published, but if they were, you could probably look up “internet” and it would say that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. That would be awesome, because when someone asked me how I knew, I could say “It says so in the Childcraft!”

False Phrases

Recently I was thinking about things my parents used to say when I was a kid to make me feel better, or get me to do something, or pump me up to attempt something. There were a lot of things that turned out to be true, but there were a lot of things that turned out to be inaccurate or flat out wrong. Every family had their own sayings, but I’m guessing that many of us heard the same ones.

Here are a few sayings that were supposed to teach us life lessons:

• Good things come to those who wait. Mom told us this to cheer us up when we didn’t get something we wanted. We heard this one a lot in my house. Somehow this was supposed to make me feel better about not getting something, when in reality I would have felt much better getting what I wanted right then. Now that I think about it, nothing comes to those who wait.
• Work hard and you’ll get ahead. Mom and Dad told us this so we’d do our homework and do well in school so we could go on to college. I think it was supposed to motivate us to give our all to tasks and persevere. Sadly, in today’s world you work hard and you get a pat on the back. That is, if your company is being downsized, in which case you get shown the door.
• The cream always rises to the top. This goes along with the previous phrase. It was supposed to teach us that if you do your very best, you’ll magically rise to the top. I’ll tell you what rises to the top – dead bodies…unless they have a pair of cement shoes.
• Cheaters never prosper. Ha! Professional athletes and politicians have turned this one on its head. We heard this one a lot, too, because Mom and Dad wanted us to always play fair and follow the rules. As with most kids, we didn’t always live by this rule.

Here are a few sayings that Mom and Dad employed to get us to eat stuff we didn’t like:

• Carrots are good for your eyes. Which was followed by “Have you ever seen a rabbit with glasses?” I have to admit, I never did see a rabbit with glasses. However, I did see a lot of people who ate carrots and still had glasses, Mom and Dad included. I didn’t eat carrots much and I never needed glasses. That is, until I hit my mid-40’s and now I can’t read anything without my goggles.
• Eat all your vegetables and you’ll grow up big and strong. I am Exhibit A that this was false. We had vegetables almost every night with dinner, along with salad, and we had to eat all that we were given (or took) and I never did make it to six feet. I know, I know, some will say I did grow up big and strong – big headed with strong B.O.
• Fish is great brain food. I’ve never been a big fish fan and yet I was still pretty smart growing up. I still remember Moe telling Larry, in response to his declaration that fish was great brain food, that he should fish for a whale! I heard that one from my brothers a few times, too.

Lastly, here are a few sayings that Mom and Dad used to get us to stop doing things they didn’t like:

• Your face will get stuck like that. Mom seemed to always catch us making goofy faces at each other and said this to get us to stop. Guess what? It didn’t work. We still did it and our faces are perfectly normal, some may even say handsome. Though I must admit, in a few moments of insecurity I did check my face in the mirror just to make sure I wasn’t cross-eyed with my tongue hanging out of my mouth.
• If you sit too close to the TV, you’ll ruin your eyes. Since the advent of TV, kids have sat as close to it as they could. In my house, we sat close to the TV so we could hear it because someone was always goofing around and making noise – many times it was me. However, I don’t think there was ever a scientific study that proved that if you sit too close to the TV, your eyes are adversely affected.
• If you listen to music too loud, you’ll go deaf. There was only one reason for this, and it was because our parents, mine included, hated the music we listened to. My brothers and sisters and I listened to rock, from the Beatles to Zeppelin, until a couple of family members lost their minds and went disco on me. There was only one way to play it and that was loud! Meanwhile, Mom was playing her Englebert Humperdinck and Tom Jones albums pretty loud herself.

There you have it, things our parents told us that weren’t true. Maybe in twenty years my kids will have a list of phrases that my wife and I told them that weren’t true. That is, if they can come up with any.

Playing Games, Telling Stories and Singing Songs

My wife and I spent the weekend on Martha’s Vineyard and were on our way back to our car on the shuttle bus when a Dad and his kids caught our attention. This man was great with his kids and was fully engaged with them, something you don’t see enough these days. Pretty much from the time the ride started, he was playing games with the kids, especially a young girl who was probably about five-years old. They played thumb wars, they played I Spy, and they played Simon Says (no small feat in a dark vehicle, I must say). However, what truly impressed me was when the little girl asked to play the Quiet Game.

Listening to them brought back a lot of memories from when my kids were younger and we were on the road. We used to play games, tell stories and sing songs when we drove. Obviously, we didn’t play thumb wars, that would be hard (and dangerous) to play while driving a car around town. We did play a lot of I Spy and finding the alphabet on license plates and signs along the way. However, the Quiet Game was not one we played too much. I think it worked the first few times we played and then they caught on to the real reason my wife and I wanted to play. My kids never asked to play the Quiet Game.

Telling stories was always fun for us and the kids. We did it a couple of different ways. Sometimes we took turns telling a story, each one of us getting our own few minutes to weave a stunning narrative. Sometimes, one person would start a story and go on for a few minutes, say “and then…” and the next person would pick up from there. We usually went around the car once or twice, but there were occasions we went around three times if the story wasn’t fizzling out. On longer trips, after telling stories for a while and saying we needed a break, the kids would ask for one more. I’d say okay and let them know it was going to be a short one and then proceed to tell them this amazing tale, “Once upon a time. The end.” There would be howls of protest that it wasn’t even a story and I’d usually give in and tell them one last good one. 

Singing songs was another great way to pass the time in the car. We’d sing songs from the kids’ classes at church, oldies but goodies that everybody knows (B I N G O and Bingo was his name O!), songs from their CDs (yes, even at five or six, they had their own music), and other songs the kids and my wife and I liked. I preferred them singing Beatles’ songs than most of the stuff that was played on the radio. It also helped that my wife and both the kids are musically gifted. Heck, the kids even made up some songs of their own that were pretty good – and they both still write songs today.

As we got close to the parking lot, the little girl yawned and then said to her Dad, “I think I’m going to sleep in the car.” Her brother agreed shortly after and gave a hearty yawn himself. I thought that was a perfect ending to the night. They obviously had had a lot of fun and now they were spent. There were so many times on longer rides that our kids were laughing and singing and suddenly there was silence. One of us would take a peek back and they’d both be out cold, safe and secure, sleeping in a car like only kids can.

I hope that Dad enjoyed his ride home, realizing how special it is that he has a great relationship with his kids and realizing that there will come a day when they won’t think he’s the most awesome Dad in the world, a stage all kids go through. I’m sure he occasionally took a peek back at his sleeping kids just to make sure they were okay, and probably smiled as he thought about when they were babies and how quickly they had grown. I remember those days like it was yesterday, because in some ways it was. It doesn’t take long for them to go from sleeping in the back of the car, to asking if they can use the car to go over a friend’s house. I just hope my now grown kids have as fond memories of their younger years as I do.  

Broken Dreams

I’ve recently been watching the “When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions” TV series that was originally on Discovery Channel. The series goes through NASA’s quest to put a man into space and ultimately to get a man to the moon after President Kennedy’s 1961 speech in which he said that the United States should land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. When I was a mere eight years old, I was allowed to stay up late that July night to watch Neil Armstrong be the first man to walk on the moon. Luckily for all of us, it was summer so Mom let us watch history being made.

Many moments of the different missions stand out to me, but one thing that really touched me was when the Apollo 13 Commander, Jim Lovell, spoke about the moment he realized that his dream of walking on the moon was never going to happen. Even though he had been looking forward to being one of the few men to actually walk on the moon for years, he had to let that dream go. He was disappointed but couldn’t dwell on it because he had to focus on getting back home alive.

I never had to make a decision between living and following a dream in my life, but I have had to let some dreams go over the years. After all the hoopla over the moon landings, there was a time I wanted to be an astronaut. My first watch was even a glow-in-the-dark astronaut watch, where the second hand was an astronaut floating around in space, similar to the one below:

How cool is that? However, I realized I could never be an astronaut because just spinning around in circles in my front yard practically made me sick. I mean, if doing the washing machine spin cycle in the front yard makes me puke, I don’t think I’m going to make it into space.

When I was younger, I thought it would be cool to be an actor. Then in fifth grade I decided to be part of a play and I had two small parts. One was the narrator at the beginning of the first and second scenes, and the other was a small part where I was on stage in a group where I didn’t have any lines. The narration part was easy, I just came out and said the name of the play, who it was written by and set the first scene. We did it in front of the younger grades for practice, so I came out, gave the name of the play and who wrote it and then started setting the scene and…went blank. I stood there, repeating “The setting is…” multiple times, while the little kids started laughing. From off to the side, my teacher gave me my line and I finished with a very red face. I realized then that if I couldn’t recite a few lines in front of a few little kids, I could never get up in front of a large group of people and deliver a bunch of lines.

I used to love to sing, too. I was in the Glee Club (yes, it really was called that) and really liked it. Then my voice started changing and I got really self-conscious about how I sounded and that was the end of my singing career. It was over before it even started. Remember Peter Brady when his voice was changing? I could relate. There was also the whole thing about getting up in front of a group of people and performing…with all of them looking at me.

Being on the small side, I used to dream about being tall when I got older – especially if I ended up being taller than all my brothers. When I was in about 6^th grade and was starting to get better in baseball, I imagined myself being like 6’4”. When I was in 9^th grade and most of my friends were growing way more than I was, I imagined myself being 6 feet tall. By the time I was finishing high school, I would have been happy to be 5’9.  Seeing as both my parents were short, 4’11” and 5’5”, I never really had a chance to make 6 feet tall.

Even though I wasn’t very tall, I dreamed of being a professional baseball player from the time I first put on a baseball glove. Up through 10^th grade, I truly believed I had a chance to make it to the major leagues. Then I started thinking about how I was one kid, in one small town, in one small state, and I realized I was pretty good, but not that good. That was probably the only dream that hurt to let go of. 

Not all my dreams were crushed. I have an incredible wife, two awesome kids, a good job and I live a decent life. Those are all dreams that came true. Oh yeah, I may not be writing books, but I am a writer with this blog! And I didn’t even have to choose between a dream and life.