Category: Nostalgia

5 Things I Miss about being Beachy

.Reading time 3 minutes.

About four years ago we left the Beachy church that we attended, and joined the land of shrinking doilies and slit skirts.   My
whole life I was a child of a minister, Calvary Bible Schooled, Youth Fellowship Meeting attending golden Beachy girl.  Here’s what I miss about being Beachy.

1.   I miss the Sword and Trumpet, a publication that we got in our church mail boxes.  I faithfully read every article.  When I confessed to Gene that I miss that little book, he was like, “You mean the magazine with the ugly old men on the cover?” I was all offended and said, THEY CHANGED IT HONEY!! No more old men, just flowers and trees and stuff.  AND when you got the Calvary Messenger on the same Sunday, it was like BONUS POINTS! TWO FOR ONE!!

2.    I miss getting up in the morning and yanking on a dress.  I don’t do well with tons of options, and now its like mm..doesn’t match/too denim/too ugly/too tight/too baggy.  And have you seen the Beachy dresses lately? Cute! 

 

3.     I miss choral singing.  I was at a funeral last week, and a conservative looking family shared in song.  I could hum along every song, several parts.  And I sat there and thought, “We are losing this rich heritage.  My family won’t be able sing like that. They will rely on keyboard accompaniment.  How can I teach them to sing all four parts? Will they even know these songs? Waaait a minute…What am I thinking? How did I turn into a middle-aged visiting minister?

4.       Here’s a sticky one.  I miss the culture.  This is hard to explain, so I won’t even try, because I will make them sound like a cross between Susanna Wesley and Rebecca Black. Let’s just say that Beachys are a bunch of saints but they know how to have fun.

5.     I miss the Beards. Hang on!  How did this one slip in here? Not really. I don’t miss the beards.

PS. For your enjoyment, a picture of Gene and myself while we were still Beachy.
 And that dress? Well it was borrowed from my sister who always had cooler dresses than I did.
I wore it once, and than lost it.  It literally disapeared and I have no idea what
happened to it.  I can only assume someone broke into our vehicle and stole it. I
told you Beachy dresses are cute!

PPS. You call that scruff a beard?
PPPS. Beachy’s can’t wear ties!

Homemade Games

.Reading time 2 minutes.

My sister Sherry and I used to play “Fancy Lady” (such creativity in game naming!) when we were little.  It included opening a jar of spaghetiOs, one of us would eat really prim and proper with our pinky in the air.  The other would snort the spaghetiOs down like a pig, chew loudly, and smear their mouth with the sauce.   The fancy lady would stare with distain at the porky lady. That’s it.  That was the game.  But it was really a lot of fun, and we always fought to be the messy lady.

We also used to play “The Pillow Game” (limitless creativity I tell ya).  It involved throwing a pillow back and forth trying to catch it, points to the one who caught it the most.

Now my kids make up their own games.  They have:  “Can’t touch the floor” “Win” and “blanket-ball”.   My Mullet genes passed along the super-clever game naming skills.  “Win” is when they’re eating lunch, whoever cleans their plate first gets of the chair, runs around cheering and yelling then climbs back on the chair.  It is fun for them.  It is loud for me.

“Can’t touch the floor” is just like it sounds.  They walk around in the living room, but can you guess…? without touching the floor.  It involves lots of pillows and blankets being drug all over, and lots of messes being made.

Once I tried to teach them the pillow game.  They looked at me with big eyes like “What kind of lame-o game is this?”

Seriously though, I love watching kids making up their games.  I love their creativity, or lack of it.  I love to see them poke each other in the eye with a fork. Just kidding, that happened this morning.  I can’t wait to see when they’re older what kind of games they’ll come up with.
What kind of games did your children invent?