What I Did For Fun

Here's something goofy I did when I was a kid.
 I'd stare at the lamp through red cellophane for a minute.  When I removed the plastic and looked away, the world was greenish!  I could pretend I was visiting a magic green world.  Or that the regular world had a "Green Curse".
It worked with other colors too.  Green plastic caused a red tint.  Blue made orange (and vice versa), and yellow made purple.
I had a lot of fun. 

Paperbacks of Doom!

(Note: Some of this was originally posted as a comment to 10 Great Books for Traumatizing Children)

When I was growing up (late 70s early 80s,) I remember a series of cheap paperbacks, which, in retrospect, must have been created with Let’s get these kids reading with our gritty, tough stories in mind.
These included:

• The "True Ghost Story" featuring a ghost with a bleeding hole in his head (drawing helpfully included). We’re told in life he “sniffed glue”
• The "True Ghost Story" of basement haunted by the decomposing corpse ghost who'd been murdered by her husband, then cut up and buried under the floor bricks. Gruesome illustration included.
  
• The guy on the baseball team who brought cheer and joy, even when the team lost. Surprise! He was secretly sick. Then died.
• Little Jimmy is sick in the hospital. For Christmas he gets a dog and names it "Lucky." He seems to be getting better. Surprise! He dies a few weeks later.
  
• ”Cool Sed,” some pimp-esque lowlife who’s oh-so-cool. Then he gets shot. “Cool Sed is Dead.”

These books also introduced me to Lizzie Bordon, Kitty Genovese, the Hartford Circus Fire, and Hiroshima ("their skin turned black and fell off").

Real or fictional, characters in these books had it rough. Blood pooled, bones broke, diseases struck, animals attacked, ships sank, quicksand awaited...

...it wasn’t until years later that it occurred to me how violent and grim these books were, and how odd it was that they were aimed at kids. What were they thinking?

Little Red Ball

This early 70s era Sesame Street clip aired when I was little.
I thought the ball was very cute, especially when he rode in his little roller coaster car.
Alas, he came to a shocking end!
I remember being very upset about his demise. How could they do that to him?

Riff Raff Halloween Candy.

The day after Halloween was great when I was a kid. My trick or treat bag was loaded with goods. There was always one or two houses that gave full sized candy bars. Those floated like treasures in a pile of Milky Ways, Snickers, Hershey Bars, Reese Peanut Butter cups, Starbursts, Skittles, Butterfingers, and Nestle Crunches and Peppermint Patties.
The chocolates would be gone within a week. The real chocolates, not those quasi-chocolates like Tootsie Rolls or Milk Duds. Next to go was the it's not my favorite but it's still free candy treats. Twizlers, Red Hots, Good 'n' Plentys, Dots, Tootsie Pops and the like.
By mid November, only the Riff Raff candy remained:
Mini TootsieRolls, candy corn, Bottle Caps, SweetTarts, Lemon Heads, Smarties ( it was fun to pretend they were pills), Circus Peanuts, stale hard candy, and the dreaded Neapolitan Coconut Sundae Squares. The latter might last through Easter.

The Scary Puppets

The puppets at my preschool didn't terrifyme, but I didn't trust them. I'd pass their rack the way a kid passes a spooky dilapidated house, nervously, stepping faster.
No teacher or kid played with them. Most were ratty hand me downs that nobody wanted to stick their hand in. They guarded a doorway, hanging inert, like bodies on a gibbet.
The white one freaked me the most. He was a crude home-made thing with a flat, spoon shaped head and a crooked red smile. He'd stare at me with tiny eyes. I could see part of the back of his head- he had blue green fabric for hair. That creeped me too. No one, I thought No puppet or person should have hair like that.
I wonder who made the thing? Who was it supposed to be? Did it have a name? Did any kid ever like it as much as I hated it?

Weird coincidence : decades later I ended up working at the same preschool. The puppet rack (and many of the toys, and one teacher) was still there, but the scary puppets were gone.