nostalgiaworld

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From James notebook

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Inside James notebook

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Inside James notebook

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"Lunch's Removed Hand"

It just hit me why Teddy did this. Just like Jame's imagination was needed (a part of him) Lunch's "hand" in creating his new world was also needed (figuratively and literally).

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CHAPTER 2 “LUNCH MEAT”

IRIS:

Came from the collection of dolls called “Rose Petal Place”. Iris had brown skin, black curly hair, and brown eyes.  She originally wore a white dress with purple tulle sleeves that looked like an iris flower. She also had a matching iris hate and a purple purse. She also had a green tassel necklace, a purple hair comb, and a doll stand. She wore purple shoes.

Iris was the resident artist and a shy, creative friend. She was always trying to paint a still life of the flowers at Rose Petal Place, but none of the the flower would sit still.

The Rose Petal Place dolls also had separate sold fashions. The one I describe that Iris is wearing is called “Painting Poises”.  Interestingly-and I say that with ALL sarcasm- all the other white dolls had a couple of outfits. This was her only one.

*A cool thing about these dolls and their fashions and accessories were my aunt at the time of their popularity use to work at Toys R Us. Every time a new item would come out, she’d have it put aside so I’d be one of the first to get it.  This is a collection I had in completetion, dolls, fashions, and the car. Interestingly I’m just learning there were dolls in the series tho that were made but never produced for sell.

DRAGON FLAME ELEMENTARY

This was the school my mother taught at “Wenonah Elementary School”.  I named it “Dragon Flame Elementary” because their mascot was a dragon.  Wenonah sticks out in my mind for a couple of reasons.  One thing I remember vividly is part of the classrooms were inside, but there was a black set of stairs outside leading up to a top level and on the top level were classrooms.  Another cool thing about it was the library. There was a ladder that you could go up and up there was “a balcony”. I just remember how peaceful it was to go up there and read in solitude.   The carnival was an activity I also remember that the school would have every year. Outside were the jumping balls. In the cafeteria was the food.

“THE BOY”

While I was writing him, I thought about (ironically) a cousin of mine whose name is James (a lot of James in my family).  When James was smaller, he was very bright, but he also liked to talk a lot and he talked as if he knew everything-much like his father whose name is also (you guessed it). One time we went on a vacation and he talked the *whole* car ride there.  The more I thought about the more I thought that’s what “the boy” is like. “Lunch” wonders why he’s not with the other kids. I can see it being a bit because he’s something of a know it all.

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I created this blog because there are soo many memories and so much of me that went into this story. Everything from the titles of the chapters to the content in the chapters themselves. An author of a popular series that got turned into a movie on Netflix created a blog for his upcoming novel and I thought I can do that. There’s just so much to say. So, lets just jump right in.

Lunch Meat

Chapter 1

*(MEANING BEHIND THE NAME)

When I started off I just gave him the name “Lunch”. In the earliest chapter I wrote I made him look like a “lunchable”. I think I gave him a tan chef’s hat, a pink shirt, yellow pants, and tan shoes (the cracker, the bologna, the cheese, and another cracker).  I decided on  Oscar as in “Oscar Myer” who made Lunchables.  Then I just gave him the last name “Able” Or (ah ball)

*(“LUNCH’”S ILLNESS)

Lunch is so much of me. He has “an illness that doesn’t let him keep food down”. Rather he did when he was younger.  For a long time I had “Gastro Peries”. I don’t remember when this started but I remember a very hard time in my life when I couldn’t eat or drink anything without it coming up. I remember losing so much weight that there was a doctor that wondered if I was anorexic. That time in my life I didn’t have the energy to do *anything*. I spent a lot of time laying on the floor or laying over a hard chair.  Sometimes I just couldn’t get comfortable so I’d have to “sleep” on my knees bend over.  I would also have spasms and a dull ache in my chest.  It got to be so bad I remember they were talking about giving me a feeding tube. I was practically living on Ensure. I was going in and out of the hospital for dehydration. I remember getting so confused one time, I called my aunt and told her I was locked in my mother’s room and couldn’t find the door. I was SO weak! Thanfully there was a doctor that knew of a pill that the compound shop made that was rare, but it worked for me. I haven’t had an episode since but sometimes off and on over the years I have had to deal with throwing up. I’m not sure if it’s been from my stomach getting too full due to that or something else.

*(LUNCHS LOVE OF COOKING)

I didn’t know this at the time (or maybe I did) but “Lunch” reminds me a lot of my uncle Thomas “Johnny” Edwards (my mother’s brother) who passed last year.  My uncle had a reddish-brown skin tone. He was of medium height.  He wore his hair cut low.  Amost none. So much so that my cousin (his son) use to vent about why he needed to have this guy come and cut it (because he didn’t have any and he thought it was a waste of money).  After a while he stopped cooking but there was a time when he really seemed to enjoy it. At the funeral, the pastor praised him for his lemon pies.  I remember he would make really good banana pudding and Italian sausage. He would also make *the* most tender bbq! Lunch is a little more timid than my uncle. He always seemed to be cheerful and laughing.

*(JOBS)

TOYS R US

All of these jobs were onces I held. My first job was working at Toys R Us.  What I remember was working the floor. There would be baskets of toys and it was my job to put them back where they belonged.  From what I remember about it it was a never ending thing because it seemed like the baskets never STAYED empty. Soon as you cleared one there for four or five or ten other baskets full of toys to put back up.

RICHES AND MACYS

I worked sales. I worked at the Galleria at Macy’s and Brookwood (I think) Rich’s. Like “Lunch” I had a knack for helping people pick good choices in clothes and jewely. Surpringly because I’m not a big clothes and jewelry person. I probably would be tho if I had the money!  And like  “Lunch” my least favorite past of it was constnaly having to go in the dressing rooms and put things back (much like with the baskets of toys). Cleaning up after people just wasn’t it for me!  Like “Lunch” I also didn’t feel like one of the people life favored. I didn’t have a car so I had to stay after work and wait for someone to pick me up. Sometimes after everyone had left I’d be the only one left in the parking lot! And that was *NOT* fun! I also didn’t like when we had to do early days when we’d have to come to the store and do inventory.  I remember what I wanted to do back then which was either being a buyer or one of the people that did the store window displays. I worked in quite a few sections including lingerie, womens, juniors, and the jewelry counter.

ADVANCE PCS

I worked in a Data Entry center called Advanced Pharmacy.  Data Entry was a challenge for me. You had to have a certain amount of orders processed every day. Like with “Lunch” it was hard to keep up with even when I wasn’t sick. But I soon started to have the episodes again.  Some days I remember just having to go into a room and lie there a minute.  I also remember during this time having to wear a heart monitor. Alhtough nothing was ever found.  Which to me is even odd to this day.  It was during this time I have a vivid memory.  There was a girl there that worse a blue and yellow “Michigan” jacket. I causally commented to her how much I liked the jacket and she said “Do you want it?” Just like that she took the jacket off and gave it to me.  Some months into the job I was fired.  The lady that hired me (who was black) wasn’t there and told my mother had she been there she definitely wouldn’t have let them fire me, but by then it was too late!

THE MCWAYNE CENTER

I worked here it seemed just for a few months. The exhibit was working in the gift store for the Titanic. It would have been temporary anyway but unfortunately I goto sick again and wound right back up in the hospital.  Do you know what was crazy to me tho? When I think about it I’d be ok until I started to work again and then BAM the gastro would hit me again. My body just DID NOT want to work. This is something I kinda wish that my half sister would have seen with her own eyes the struggle I had to go through when I was working jobs

*(LUNCH’S DEPRESSION)

This comes from a very real place. Lunch wants to create something to end his misery. There have been times I’ve suffured from depression.  I remember a time when everyone else seemed to have found love and married, and all the relationships I had would fail on me. I wanted love so badly then. I’d pray to God and it would fall on deaf ears. Instead I got bad health, failed job attempts , and dead end relationships so I would pray that he would just take my life in my sleep, That didn’t happen either. It felt like God wanted me to just suffer through all the hardships and they never seemed to end for me. I wish I could say that it got better.  Depression is still something I struggle with.  There are days when there will be too much pressure on me from family or too much noise or thoughts that why couldn’t I just have been born “normal” I will say “Must” you can take me now. He hasn’t so I guess I have a bigger purpose here first tho at times that’s so hard for me to even concieve but I still keep going ..  slowly. Even when all the appointments, and procedures and everything else start to make me tired.

*(THE FRANKFOOD CHANNEL)

For the LONGEST time I wanted to watch this show! I use to try to look it up and it only gave me clips.  I didn’t realize until later the show only had a few episodes to it.  The combinations just always looked so interesting. One of the things I use to do was watch videos on You Tube where people would go to all the restaraunts on the Disney property and vlog the foods. This was fascinating to me and something I wished I could do.  I started to look up “Frankenfoods” to see if there were any websites dedicated to combination foods. I wanted there to be something unique about Lunch’s foods.  While looking around on Amazon I found two books called FRANKENFOOD RECIPES. The The descriptiosn of the pizza flavored Mac and Cheese, the breakfast cookie, and the fried chicken coated in chocolate and marshmallow coating came from the book. At the end of the chapter, the maple, bacon, muffins also come from this recipe book..  I thought that it would be fun -later- to give him the gift of creating foods that taste the exact same as when you had it years ago, because today NOTHING taste the same as it did years go!

*(THE TELEVISON)

Here is the first clue that we get that Lunch is a cannibal.  I’m pretty sure I got the imagery of the hand coming out of the tv from one of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies.  The television show was a scene from THE DONNA REED SHOW

*(PIG EAR SLIDERS)

One day my uncle “Johnny” was watching Yo Tube and he saw some people talking about this out of the way place that sold Pig Ear Sliders and they claimed they were so good. So, he got my cousin (Thomas)-his son- to take him to this place. When he got there (as expected) they weren’t good which goes to show you can’t believe everything you hear from other people on You Tube, television, commercial, etc.

*(GATEWAY AND MOONBEAMS)

These refer to a series of text books and practice books I used by Houghton Milton I used when I was in elementary school. Later on we’ll find out “Gateway” is the access point to get to the Nostalgia Theme Park. “Moonbeam” I think I saw in my head as the park’s dark side. I also thought that behind “MoonbeamS” was the dark park of “Lunch” himself. The part that “Teddy” erased early in his childhood.

“TEDDY” (THE BUTCHER MR. GRAM)

I always knew that when  I got to the last chapter (which would be about what went into creating the Nostalgia Theme Park) I would call him “Teddy” so I could make a double play of the word’s “Teddy’s Jam”. “Teddy’s Jam” was a popular song from the group GUY which consisted of Teddy Riley, Aaron and Damion Hall.  “He stood about six or seven feet” is a line from the song “My Mind Is Playing Tricks on Me” by the Ghetto Boys. And a lot of Teddy’s description can be taken from imagery *from* the video. There’s a man in the shadows (that turns out to be a woman-hmmm-) and the figure is wearing a hat with it’s head bowed so you can’t tell it’s sex.

Teddy tells Lunch to  “Look into his eyes and tell him what he sees”. This is a line from the Bone Thugs and Harmoney song “Look Into My Eyes”.

*(THE TOYS)

THE ADMANS FAMILY and SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 3 bring back very special memories! My aunt had a pull out couch bed. This was during the time when my grandparents still stayed in there old house. After my aunt moved out and my grandparents passed it got rented to a man that I heard changed it so much that I wouldn’t recognize it today. But during those good old days, my cousin and I would stay up until we saw the sun come up and then just pass out on the couch bed. We’d also be up watching old Batman reuns.  Just a couple of weeks ago I pulled up the game play of THE ADDAMS FAMILY and all it took was for me to hear the sounds again and it took me right back to those days!

I do remember having CANDY LAND and HI HO CHERRIO.  I didn’t have any of the Playdooh sets but they were so much fun to look up on You Tube.  I thought it was cool to give him another odd food related talent to be a “food sculptor”, I myself never had this skill. I took pottery at an art college and I’m not even sure how I passed that class.  Poettery definitely wasn’t my “gift”.

I did also have the BARBIE KITCHEN, ICE CREAM SHOP, BAKE SHOP,  I also did have all the vintage STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE DOLLS, THE EZ BAKE OVEN, THE COKE MACHINE, and maybe the SNOOPY SNOW MAKER (I think). I wanna say I had a ROSE PETAL lunch box as well as a STRAWBERRY SHORTCKAE one.

*(“LUNCHS” HOUSE)

Lunch’s house’s layout was the house I remember growing up in when I was a child. I haven’t seen it in years but I remember it VERY clearly. The thing I remember the most is that my bed was by a window and I use to fall asleep looking at the sky and the stars!

*(THE FALLING LAMP)

When I was small, I once was running in a pair of footy pajamas and bumped into the floor lamp in our living room. It left a scar below my eyebrow.