The Hamsters of my Youth

I love a good blog! My friend Ally on her blog
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing told us all about her hamsters the other day. It’s a great little story and worth the read. If you had hamsters when you were a kid, like I did, then you can really relate.

My brother and I got two hamsters when we were growing up. They were a lot of fun and we really enjoyed them. We named them “Fatty” and “Skinny” because one was fat and the other was... uh… skinny - kids can be SO creative when it comes to naming their pets.

We were young, probably 8 and 10 when we got them. Fortunately for my folks, they brought us up well and we were good about caring for them as we were supposed to. Not that we didn’t complain at times, but we did our chores when it came to caring for them.

We used to play with them all the time. We built forts out of paper towel and toilet paper tubes for them to run through, we’d use a bunch of old boxes for them to scurry around, and we’d shred paper for them to play in. We always loved to watch them in their cage as they took turns racing on their exercise wheel. We also used to have one of those yellow plastic hamster tubes that they would scamper through.

I know that they got out of their cage periodically and did some exploring around the house. We also had cats and dogs at the same time, but to the best of my knowledge, there were never any serious confrontations.

We had them for a few years. Fatty – who loved to eat – tended to store food in his cheeks. Well, he stored something there a little too long, it became infected and he passed away. It was a very sad time and we cried our eyes out. I remember that right after he died my brother and I tried to watch TV to take our mind off of it. I still can’t even hear the theme from “Love, American Style” without remembering that sad evening.

Skinny died at a later date – a happy, old, skinny hamster. We buried them out in our yard by our sticker bushes like we did with all our animals back then. Someday someone excavating there will find a graveyard of our animal memories.

Sweep! Don't Wash or Blow!

I spent the weekend doing some cleaning at my dad’s house with my brother. Finishing up a bunch of work, our last task was to clean up our mess in the driveway. As we both systematically used our old push-brooms to sweep up all the garbage and sawdust, I couldn’t help but realize that theses were probably the same brooms that we used as kids to do the very same job. They certainly didn’t look any newer than the ones we would’ve used.

I then made an observation out loud, with which my brother whole-heartedly agreed. These days, you hardly ever see kids – or any homeowners for that matter – sweeping their driveways. They are either washing them down with the hose, or blowing them clean with a blower.

I will agree that a driveway probably needs a good washing off every now and then. Usually the best time to do this is when you’re washing the car, since it will already be done for the most part. But – I think that there are a lot of people who just use the hose to sweep their driveways. Not only is this a waste of water, but it basically eliminates 90% of the physical exercise you might get while actually pushing a broom and working up a sweat.

Blowers are just offensive. Although – as much as I don’t like them – there might be the need every now and then to blow the driveway clear… but again, I think the majority of them are just used instead of a broom.

When I grew up in the ‘70s, we had chores. Sweeping the driveway would’ve been one of those chores. It was part of our routine and it was usually physically demanding and required time and effort. And if we tried to skimp and do it too quickly and did a poor job, we got the opportunity to do it again the very same day. It seems to me that most kids today could do with a reintroduction to chores and the physical labor that accompanies them. It might help educate them in dealing with responsibility, physical health and energy conservation.