Resurrecting The Past...One Piece At A Time

As anyone who might have read Monster Dad over the past year or so probably already knows, I tend to think about the past. ...A lot. We're not talking about the distant past of dinosaurs and The Old West, but rather my own personal past of playing with dinosaur toys and playing Cowboys and Indians. For anyone reading this blog for the first time, trust me--it's true.

I have already written a lot about my past on here, and am currently contemplating a whole bunch of similarly themed entries. While there was some consideration about starting a whole new blog just for these archeological digs into my younger days as a Monster Kid, I've decided to continue posting them right here at Monster Dad. To set these posts off a bit I will call all of them "Resurrecting the Past:" from now on, with the subject of each particular excavation listed after the colon. Hopefully this will make it easy to find such entries without muddling everything else up too much. I always wanted to keep the theme of Monster Dad open so that I could write about all different kinds of random things that might pop into my head (things like Little People, exterminators, the weather, NBA basketball, hot dogs, tofu, MRE's...). This type of stuff will continue to be featured (sorry if it's not your cup of tea), but the probing looks into my past will be easy to categorize from now on.

While I haven't laid down any hard and fast rules, it seems likely that these "Resurrecting the Past" posts will generally tend to be of three types:

1. Rediscovering an old piece of my past that I had thought was long-lost (a toy, piece of forgotten ephemera from my childhood, some random memento from my past). These posts will talk about when I originally had the item in question, how and where it was found, and what The Little Monster thinks of it (if it's something appropriate to share with her).
2. Pondering something from my past that is indeed long-gone, or something I had always wanted as a kid but never had...until now (whether I recently purchased one for myself of for The Little Monster). As you can see the whole parenting aspect of Monster Dad will still be in effect.
3. Using detective work to try to put together random bits of memory from my past into a coherent narrative. Solving mysteries from my past and putting a specific date or place with a formerly vague memory.

There have already been example of these types of stories written about before. I just didn't know that there would be enough of them that it might be a good idea to give them a title they could all fall under. For examples of this kind of post see: Anorexic Toy Soldiers (where I rediscover a set of Army Men purchased through a comic book ad that I thought were thrown out decades ago), Happy New Year 1976 (where a few random memories of a New Year's Party are finally confirmed through research into TV listings from the mid-1970s), Creation Convention--25 Years Later and Creation Convention Part II: Geeks on Parade (where the discovery of an old flyer for a sci-fi/comic book convention kindles fond memories of a geeky past).

I mentioned that I considered starting a whole new blog for "Resurrecting the Past". Part of the reason that I didn't do that was because I ALREADY started another blog recently--and I don't want to spread myself too thin. There haven't been any posts to that other blog yet. Stay tuned for an announcement about it when I finally do get around to writing there (hopefully soon)...

Here's what's been dug up and/or resurrected so far:

• Flying Saucer Candy/Satellite Wafer Candy

• The Whoopee Cushion

• Drive-In Theater Speaker

• Rotary Dial Telephone