Thinking about my answer to this question, I realize I’ve lead a charmed life.
My childhood was innocent and idyllic with two loving and supportive parents.
My adolescence was a little wild, but I always knew right from wrong and when too much was too much.
My married life started at age 20 and continues 40 years later, well loved and well cared for.
I have never been to war, been assaulted or been in a bad car accident. I have never had serious physical health issues and my mental state is stable. (Though some might disagree)
Mortal danger?
The closest I can come is being stuck in river mud up to my chest when I was 10 years old. I crossed what I thought was a dry creek bed when my mother wasn’t looking and got seriously stuck. Every time I tried to move I sunk further down and my mother… ever useless in a crisis… just screamed hysterically from the bank. Thankfully some local college guys came to my rescue with picnic blankets tied together like rope. I remember being freaked out, not to mention filthy… but mortal danger might be stretching it.
Of course my husband drives like a raped ape and some say I take my life in my hands every time I get in his car… so there is that.
We used to have a big, beautiful, fat and fluffy white cat.
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He was a long haired Japanese bob tail Manx that I let the neighborhood children name when we lived in North Carolina.
They were sweet kids, if not terribly original… hence the name Mr. White.
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Mr, White made the move back to Maine with us and lived a very long (24 years!) and happy life. He’s buried under a tree on our property and thanks to my mother…who loved to brush him and keep his coat silky smooth… parts of him are still with us.
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Yes, I know it’s bizarre… but the coffee table drawer in our living room that holds Lord Dudley Mountcatten’s leash and toys also contains balls of Mr White’s fur rolled into balls by my mother.
It was a running joke that he shed so much fur she could make a pillow with it one day. Or a blanket. Or a hat.
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Clearly she was on to something.
I know I should toss those old fur balls. It’s not like I’m going to knit cat hair socks or a scarf, but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to do it. Weird as it is, they make me smile.
How about you…
What weird thing can’t you bring yourself to throw out?
It was a little too Jurassic Park adjacent for me, but the scientific basis for the novel is valid and quite terrifying.
The Colossal Biosciences https://colossal.com/ company really is five years away from de-extincting a wooly mammoth and the ethical can of worms that opens will be epic. When that process is nailed down? It would theoretically be possible to resurrect Neanderthals as well. A race of hominid that was taller and stronger than us, with a larger brain, better hearing, better sight, an inability to feel empathy and a propensity for violence. Forget the AI robots destroying us, the Neanderthals will do it for then.
On that cheerful note, my last Google search was for the Indricotherium.
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A giant hornless rhino that lived in the Eocene Epoch, 56 to 33 million years ago.
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He weighed 15 to 20 tons and stood 24 foot tall.
Yes, once a dinosaur geek, always a dinosaur geek.
If you have webbed toes or extra appendages please keep that information to yourself.
I’ll start –
I can’t blink or close my left eye separately.
I can close both of them together, sleeping would be a challenge otherwise… and Lord knows I can roll them at my husband when he brings home another piece of yard sale crap…. but I can’t independently close my left one. Never have, never will.
I must have been 3 1/2 because I was born in December and started nursery school early.
I remember all the children had to bring in something to sleep on for nap time. And while the other kids were given a pillow or blanket from home…my mother, being the uber mom she was…. went to FAO Schwartz and purchased a fantastically plush Humpty Dumpty egg shaped rug. It was perfect and I loved it.
I have vague memories of the other children being jealous and trying to take it from me on repeated occasions. Being a shy child, they often succeeded which resulted in my tear stained face and the teacher asking my mother to give me something less grand and envy provoking.
Which now that I think about it was a pretty lousy lesson. How about teaching my thieving little classmates to respect other people’s property instead.
The year was 2015 and it was my first Christmas without my mother. I’m an only child, my father died when I was 15. Losing my mother hit me hard and I was feeling unhinged. Alone. And not at all in the holiday spirit. Decorating the house and hosting my husband’s ungrateful family was more than I could bear…. so I went to a travel agency, told them how much I wanted to spend and asked them to find me something interesting within driving distance.
Which is how we ended up spending Christmas week in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania.
We generally like our accommodations out of the way and quiet… and brother, that’s just what we got.
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Welcome to the Pocono Manor Resort. A massive, secluded, surrounded by mountains and rolling hills, giant stone edifice I won’t ever forget.
It was dark and overcast when we arrived. Mountain fog surrounded the grounds and the silence was eerie. No cars in the parking lot, one dim light by the front entrance.
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And while the interior was fully lit and beautifully decorated…
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It was as silent as a tomb.
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A very large tomb.
Built on 3,000 acres in 1902 as a summer vacation residence for wealthy New Yorkers, families lived here for months with no reason to leave. Boasting an 18 hole golf course, tennis courts, a full spa, riding stables, fly fishing pond, indoor and outdoor pools, multiple restaurants, game rooms, library, theater, and it’s very own post office with private zip code… it was a world unto itself.
And when we visited December of 2015?
We literally had the entire building to ourselves.
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No, I’m not kidding. For the first 5 days of our week long stay it was just us … and every time I walked down this hall to our room? I expected to see the twins on tricycles because we were staying at the Poconos version of the Overlook Hotel.
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Yes, there was staff.
Ghostly staff, because you hardly ever saw them.
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We wandered room after room and never encountered a soul.
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Every morning we had breakfast alone, in a room that probably seated 600.
Creepy?
You could say that.
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We sat alone in the theater…
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And watched It’s A Wonderful Life.
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Hoping the lights would come back on when we were through.
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Long, endless, empty hallways with only the sounds of our footsteps for company.
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Ho! Ho! Holy Hell it was bizarre.
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It was a place frozen in time, although it had just undergone a 5 million dollar renovation.
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I never did manage to get a photo of the entire place…
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You couldn’t really, it was too big.
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But it was definitely a magical and quirky way to spend the holiday.
Sadly this amazing place caught fire and sustained substantial damage in 2019.
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(not my pictures)
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It’s been closed since then with various plans to rebuild.
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Horror of all horrors? The latest developer to be interested is the Margaritaville Corporation who want to build a village of tacky housing.
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They say they will “honor the memory” of the Manor but I don’t think plastic palm trees are going to cut it.
😰
Now it’s your turn.
Share a happy, funny or strange Christmas memory with me.
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 