Wonder Years

In my previous journals (i.e., Myspace and Live Journal), you can add your mood to your post. Big girl journals don't have that, I guess. Well, I will add my own anyway: nostalgic.

The moon landing happened in 1969. If you remember the show the Wonder Years, they went back 20 years in time. The show started in 1989, going back 20 years in time to the moon landing of 1969.

Now, in 2009, if we had a Wonder Years going back in time 20 years, we could relive 1989 all over again. It's kind of weird how fast 20 years has gone. In that time, I graduated high school and college, got married, worked, had a kid. 20 years ago:

I was watching the Wonder Years on my 19" Westinghouse TV in our house in Henderson, NV (outskirts of Las Vegas). I was in sixth grade. My teacher was Kari Carlson, a new graduate from UNLV. She got married to the school custodian Mr. Dieke in the spring, and then she became Mrs. Dieke, which is a really unfortunate name when you teach sixth graders. I thought she was really cool because she had been on the Alex Trebek version of Classic Concentration and had won a car, which she drove to school every day.

My mom and I had recently moved into our house in Henderson after living in an apartment for several months. It was a new suburban development. Henderson was growing by leaps and bounds, as it had been for at least 20 years and would continue to do for the next 20 years. Building houses in the desert is relatively easy and quick. The problematic part is RATS! When a house is being built in the desert, let's just say that rats love to run for cover. One burrowed its way under the stairs during construction, and it got trapped when the carpet was laid. So it "unburrowed" itself by gnawing through the carpet. Then there was the rat that climbed through the ductwork and got stuck between the first and second floors. It would run back and forth. For the first few days, my mom thought it was me. Like I'd be up in my room reading, and she thought I was making quite a racket. She'd come up, and I'd be laying on the bed & she'd accuse me of making weird noises. I'd just look at her like she was nuts because the rat noises were harder to hear on the second floor vs. the first floor.

Then I'd start to hear it when I came home from school. The pitter patter of clawed feet up above your head. I was a latch-key 11 year old, and I'd just stare up at the ceiling as these weird noises emanated down. First in curiosity. Then when I figured out that it had to be an animal (since it was way too noisy for a ghost), I'd wait for my mom to show up outside. In 100 degree heat. Or I'd lock myself in the bathroom. I was a weird kid who hated rats.

My mom called up the builder. They had some dude show up, and he thought we were both nutcases claiming there was a rat stuck between the first and second floors. Well, of course, Mr. Rat was completely quiet while he was there. We probably did seem like nutcases. He set a trap above the laundry room through one of those access points in the ceiling. Hmmm.... there was an access point to the ductwork right along the rat route. Yeah, we both mysteriously are conjuring up imaginary rats in the exact route a real rat would take.

It got really quiet in the house all of a sudden. A couple of days later he came back. I was holed up in my room while he extracted the dead rat from the trap. See, I told you I wasn't conjuring up rats. I may be a nutcase, but my rat paranoia is very real.

Why does that stupid rat story stick out in my mind when I think back to 1989? I'm sure there must have been more exciting things that happened back then, but I can't think of them right now.