It's Trippy (Memory Lane)

Oh. Muh. Gaaah.
I can't describe how amazing I feel when I look at this picture.
It's like...sparkle meth.

This sensation isn't just visual. I take just one cuh-suh-ree glance and my mouth fills with the hint of a cherry-flavored plastic, like I'm trying once again to eat Caroline's Cherry Merry Muffin doll, or sucking on a "Nurse Barbie" prop lozenge. My olfactory memory whiffs back to birthday celebrations of yore, to those party supply stores and goody bags that smelled like smarties candy and conical cardboard hats.

WIZARD.

When I was a wee lass of four years, my two best friends (Mariah and Elizabeth) and I were obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. It was cooler than milk-water. We each had our own pair(s) of Ruby Red Slippers,* and discussed at length--well, as lengthily as our cavemannish vocabularies would allow--the perfect way to coiffe Dorothy pigtails. The verdict? Begin two side french braid pigtails, ending each right as you tuck under the ear lobe, then curl the free flowing 'tails into spirals. (You're welcome, lazy 'trix or tease'ers. Oh, and respect Dot, won't you please? Put a shirt underneath that gingham apron-dress-hybrid.)

*I know the original shoes were silver, but I think your average four-year-old girl would take Judy Garland's fashion advice over Frank Baum's. Ignore the fact that they're both dead, please.

During my very first sleepover, held chez Elizabeth, she and I decided to watch the Wizard of Oz. Well, I don't know if "decided" is the right word. It was more of a ritualistic act, a shared practice of a beloved and never-questioned Saturday night custom.

"Blessed be thou, O Wizard of Oz,

who gives us the yellow brick road."

...you know, that sort of thing.

As the movie started, we began to bicker about who got to wear her Dorthy shoes. Hellooo, I was the guest. (And, yeah, I had left mine at home--I know: iiiiiiiiidiot.) When our fighting took a turn for the nasty Elizabeth's mother had to intervene, and eventually we came to the agreement that we two gollum-itas would take turns wearing the preciouses.

Me or Elizabeth. (Okay, probably just me.)

So throughout the screening Elizabeth's mother would set the kitchen timer for 15 minute increments and we'd watch the movie, pausing every so often to pass the sweaty little slippers off to the other person. The arrangement seemed perfectly level-headed to me at the time, but I understand now why Elizabeth's mother looked like she was hiding a smirk.

  LET ME TAKE YOU 
DOWN

I think that part of the reason people enjoy drugs (specifically everyone's favorite leafy gateway) is because drugs make you stupider--stupider, like when you were young. When I was little and my brain was still developing, I would get lost in anything that sparkled or contained a wide array of colors. (Hence my smeaghoulish lust for ruby slippers.)

For example: I hated going to the dentist (I was such a unique little girl) but every year the dentist's office would send us this reminder postcard that had seven toothbrushes fanned out against a black background. Each toothbrush was a different color of the rainbow, and each toothbrush head had a perfect 'S' of toothpaste squirted on it whose shade matched the color of the given toothbrush exactly.
You follow? I'll try to illustrate.

+
SSSSSSS 
Bah. This hardly compares to the original.

Oh my heavens, it was amazing. My parents would see me studying the postcard and say something to the extent of,

"Aha, Marg. Hyuk hyuk, You know what this means..."

Then they'd look down at me and promptly try to shake me out of my trance. Heck, they probably could have spanked my bare baby bottom and I wouldn't have noticed, provided they didn't break my gaze in the process.

When I finally did connect the dots between 'pretty postcard' and 'drill-in-mouth-is-gagging-me time,'  I'd whimper and steep in my self-pity until the hypnotic missive worked its magic once more and soothed me back into a pseudo-psychedelic stupor.

...aand that's how kids got high off household objects
when I was growing up.