Flashback Friday: Joe Montana and Jerry Rice

With this being the first week of the college football season, and the NFL regular season starting next week, I feel it appropriate to do a Friday Flashback dealing with football.

Football was a pretty big part of my childhood.

No, I didn't play organized leagues (my mom said I was too little, and she didn't want me to get broken; looking at my kiddo pictures, I think she was right), but my dad taught us the rules, took us to BYU and UofU games, and many Sundays were spent watching football after church.

My childhood front yard, aka my first football field

We played family football games in the front yard, where the walkway to the front door was a perfect 50-yard line and the distance felt like 100 yards on our stubby, little kid legs.

My dad was a San Francisco 49ers fan, so my brothers and I were 49ers fans.
And the stars of that time were none other than Joe Montana and Jerry Rice.

Ready to get down to the business of winning Super Bowls

When we played in the yard, it was always Joe Montana at quarterback and Jerry Rice at wide receiver.

I remember being so sad when Joe left for Kansas City (why, Joe? why?!) and later when Jerry headed across the SF Bay to the evil Raiders. Grr.

But at least between those two betrayals there was a period of Steve Young and Jerry Rice.

Just look how happy they are together!

Most football fans have a 'golden age' in their fandom, right? These years were definitely mine.

Thanks for the memories, Joe, Jerry, and Steve!

Flashback Friday: Happy 80th Birthday, LEGO!

This was a big one in my childhood.

My family played with LEGOs a lot.
We built the sets, and often we'd just let our imaginations run wild and make our own structures, vehicles, and random shapes.

And then they made Star Wars LEGO sets. So of course we had to get those.

Have you ever wondered about the backstory for LEGO?
I hadn't.

But here it is in case you're curious.

The LEGO story


Happy 80th birthday, LEGO!

Now who feels like making a LEGO Empire State Building with me?

Flashback Friday: Early Childhood Bedtime Books

My siblings and I loved having our mom (and sometimes dad) read to us at bedtime.

Here are a few that still stand out in my mind as the very best reads from my youth.

Shel Silverstein
He wrote some fantastic poems for his A Light in the Attic book, including the 'Quick-Digesting Gink' which I recited for several poem-sharing assignments. The Giving Tree is also one of his most famous works, and its film is embedded herein.

Dr Seuss
There are so many great Dr Seuss books, but I believe the Smyth favorite was The Sneetches and Other Stories, which included 'Too Many Daves', 'What Was I Scared Of?' (a.k.a. the pale-green pants story), and, of course, 'The Sneetches'.

Strega Nona by Tomie de Paola
I know I mentioned this one in my birthday post to my mom last year, but it deserves repeating, because it's a family favorite.

Calvin and Hobbes
Yes, this came a little later on, but few comic strips or books of comic strips can rival the genius and hilarity of Calvin and Hobbes. I've included a couple, but you can see plenty more [here].

Taught me to 'fake it til I make it'.

Taught me proper TV-watching form.

Those were simpler nights and I miss that simplicity.

What books/series did your mom or dad read to you as a child?

Flashback Friday: Marin, Aaron, and Caryn

Just a quick flashback today.

I don't remember what grade of elementary it was, but I was put in a class with two girls named Caryn and Marin, and I thought it was so cool that our names rhymed but all had vastly different spellings.

While we didn't hang out all the time, we stayed friends all through school.

Seminary graduation, 1999

Next time we see each other, we'll have to get a picture so we can compare with the one above.

Did any of you readers have rhyming-name friends back in the school days?

Flashback Friday: Hatchet and Island of the Blue Dolphins

My mom always read to us before bedtime, so I have fond memories of the books from my childhood.
Furthermore, she and my dad encouraged us to read on our own as well.

My school teachers and Pizza Hut* also gave us incentives to read Newbery Medal-winning books, which were/are vastly more intellectually-stimulating than the Twilight and Harry Potter books of today.

Here are a couple of my favorite books from elementary school.

Hatchet
As a Boy Scout, I loved reading about a boy being stranded in the wilderness and having to survive on his own. I could just imagine myself in his shoes, and the excitement and fear of such a situation.

For a little reminder, here is the first 15 minutes of the audiobook:

Island of the Blue Dolphins
This book captivated me, and I'm pretty sure I used it for book reports in grades 4-6 (recycling is good, right?). Another tale of survival, this one includes facing the elements and nature, as well as invading foreign forces. Learning about and relating to a culture very different from my own also intrigued me.

Again, in case you've forgotten the writing style, here's the first 15 minutes of the audiobook:

Now that I've gotten a taste, I think I might have to re-read these again soon.

What were your favorite books from elementary school?

*Remember the program where as you read books you could earn a personal pan pizza? I loved that!

Flashback Friday: Garbage Pail Kids

Today's Flashback Friday is about trading cards.

But although I had many baseball, basketball, and football trading cards, there was another set that I remember from elementary school.

A set of a less-savory nature.

Garbage Pail Kids

Do you remember these?

Maybe they were only a guy thing, as they're clearly a response to Cabbage Patch Kids for girls.

Pretty gross, and these aren't even the worst of them.

Were you into Garbage Pail Kids? Any other trading cards you collected?

PS: I'll admit I also had a lot of Magic: The Gathering cards, but at least those were for a game, so maybe that makes them slightly better. No? It doesn't? Darn. Was worth a try. #nerdforlife

Flashback Friday: Christina Aguilera vs Britney Spears

Okay, so this week I'm not going back to my childhood, exactly.

But it does go back to my senior year of high school, which was over a decade ago.

Crazy, because it seems like several decades ago.

A few years earlier, all my female friends had the apparently-difficult choice of picking between a trio of boy bands: Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, and 98 Degrees.

My senior year, it was the fellas turn.
Two girls came on the scene for us to decide between: Christina and Britney.

Some guys struggled with the decision.
Though I have learned to appreciate some of Britney's club tunes, I've been a Christina fan from the start.

Christina Aguilera

Come On Over (All I Want is You)

Britney Spears

...Baby One More Time

Both have changed a lot over the years, and they've made some questionable personal decisions.

But let's keep those out of the equation and just focus on the music and performing.

Based on their professional product and ability, which do you prefer?

Flashback Friday: Tysman Rap & Mormon Rap

Since this is the first week of my Flashback Friday series, I figured I'd throw in a bonus post.

I grew up in Utah, and my parents are both BYU alumni.
My dad took us to BYU football games, and we loved seeing the "QBU" passing attack shred opponents.

Though I was pretty young, I still remember watching Ty Detmer pass his way to the Heisman.

My dad followed that year with the same fanaticism that the BYU faithful followed Jimmer Fredette's senior season. All the publicity and staggering statistics made for lots of excitement.

As a natural result, my dad's football-loving sons were all about Ty and how great he was.

Ty Detmer, BYU's Heisman winner

And when it was clear that Ty Detmer was leading the Cougars to a special accomplishment, some guy seized the moment and wrote one of the worst raps in history. Which I loved back then, by the way.

The Tysman Rap.

Yes, it's pretty bad in retrospect. But at the time, I thought it was the bee's knees.

A couple years later, I guess some other guys figured white people (other than the Beastie Boys, of course) deserved another chance at rapping about something totally not-rappable.

The Mormon Rap.

It's so bad that it's good. Also, many of the references are still surprisingly relevant.

That's kinda scary if you think about it.

I hope we (meaning BYU and Mormons) learned our lesson and don't try any more rapping like this.

Or perhaps there actually are some decent raps by/about these topics now.

Nah, I doubt it, and it's not worth the time or effort to research.

Flashback Friday: ColecoVision

The header to my blog used to mention some influences from my youth, like the movies Sandlot and Labyrinth. Now my header is more brief, so people can get right to the meat of posts.

In order to hearken to the olden days, I'd like to start a series that will highlight topics from my childhood.
It will be called Flashback Friday, and will be posted on, you guessed it, Fridays.

To start, I was thinking the other day about my family's first video game console.

ColecoVision.

Did you have a ColecoVision? Or did your friend from Mrs. Jensen's 3rd grade class have one?
Perhaps you're too young to remember anything before Nintendo, or even SuperNintendo?

It looked like this:

Yes, now it looks positively archaic. But it was cutting edge at the time.

It made having an arcade game possible in your very own home. No more dropping quarter after quarter into that slot, wasting all the loot you earned by taking out the trash and drying dishes.

And I think I can speak for the whole Smyth family when I say we loved the Smurf game the most.

Not The Smurfs or even Smurfs, but simply Smurf.

Over the past 20+ years, I'm sure my mind has greatly romanticized the quality of gameplay.

In fact, playing it now would probably frustrate me to no end.
Those stupid fences, stalactites/stalagmites, and bats always got me.
But I'd also love every second of it.

Memories can do that. Even if technology has been innumerable improvements, those memories still make the experience wonderful and exciting.

Anybody got an old ColecoVision laying around that I could borrow?

If you have any suggestions for other Friday Flashback material, I'd love to include them.
And believe me, I've got a bunch already listed out to start with. This will be a fun trip down memory lane.