Anything Can Happen Wednesday

"Today is a day that is filled with surprises; nobody knows what's gonna happen!" These are the words that opened the Mickey Mouse Club on Wednesdays in the early 1950s. Like all small children then, I loved the show, but Anything Can Happen Day was my favorite. So, when my children were young, I instituted this day to be fun, unpredictable, and interesting. What we actually did was dependent on how much money was available. There was never "extra" money. If we spent money then, it meant something was going unpaid, or we went without later. Still, I felt the need to bring a sense of adventure into the lives of my children.

If my pockets were flush, I could take the kids bowling. No need to keep score, they didn't care. They just wanted to bowl. This was before bumper bowling was invented, and most of the balls went right down the gutter. Jo, my daughter, would keep my son and me in stitches. She would do a whole "Fred Flintstone" presentation, get up to the line, and drop the ball. It would go down the alley so slowly you could see the finger holes as the ball rolled. We would cheer the ball on, as it lumbered along, ever so painstakingly slow. Sometimes, it would gently roll to a dead stop, right in front of the pins. I don't know how many times the attendant had to rescue it each game. Tom fared better, but even if he kept the ball from the gutter, the pins would just sort of lean over till they fell.

Other things took money too. The museum was more like a once a year expedition because we had to take the train. The zoo was free on Wednesdays, but it was in the Bronx and that meant gas for the car. The game farm was closer and it wasn't very expensive. We would go to feed the animals. They had cups of feed for the goats and sheep and bottles of formula for the babies. One day, I got into a conversation with another mother. Suddenly I heard screams from Tom. All of the goats had surrounded him to get his cup of feed. They were in a feeding frenzy! I had to scoop him up and carry him out of the pen.

We were lucky enough to have a planetarium near home, and that was a favorite spot of mine. For however long the program lasted, the kids would be in quiet awe. If I was broke, we often went to my cemetery. I had signed up to be the caretaker of a historical graveyard. My role was to clear out all debris, keep the grass trim, and report any vandalism. Well if the vandals could find this place, more power to them. It was located at the top of a big hill, in dense trees. Tom and Jo would pull weeds around the headstones, and help me gather up branches and twigs. Once we had a picnic there. The other freebie was Belmont Lake State Park. The lake was 26 acres, and we would walk the circumference. During the walk, we would look at all the interesting bugs, check out the ducks and talk. That is when Tom wasn't running around getting into everything including the lake. Afterward, we had to stop at the playground, and I had assured myself they would be in bed before the sun went down. One time, they wanted to know where the roads end. We have many roads here, and I explained that they really just blend from one road to another. I knew where two major parkways ended, so we drove to the end of the road. Then I showed them how the roads blend. Fossil hunting came later. My youngest son was around for that as well. My daughter is 14 years older than Jerry, and Tom is 16 years older. Yes, I was almost to the finish line when I re-enlisted. My favorite place to go was Poricy Brook, in New Jersey. It was great for kids because you'd have to be blind not to find something. Jo, in her usual state of ill humor, used to complain that we were the only people in the whole world fossil hunting, and we would inevitably run into someone else doing the same thing. Such is life on Anything Can Happen Wednesday.