I'm Gonna Have It Someday.

Everyone I know has some thing that they were denied as kids that they savour as adults. It's not usually something terribly exotic or expensive, just usually something that they, at some point in their childhood, vowed that they would never be without when they had the choice.

My parents didn't grow up in Canada, so there were lots of things that us kids lusted after that they couldn't care less about. Pop, chips, ketchup, television, to name a few.

We always had plenty of treats and such around, but for some reason, Coca-Cola and other sodas were strictly controlled substances which were doled out only on holidays under the strictest supervision imaginable. Plutonium would be easier to get. As a result, I tend to keep pop around all the time, even though I've cut my consumption drastically. I don't drink it much any more, but I like having it around.
The Mister wasn't allowed pop or chips in the house, either. Lots of popcorn, but no chips. He still drinks copious amounts of pop, just because he can.

For my parents, it's fresh fruit. When they were growing up in Ireland during the War, fruit other than what was grown locally, was simply not available. (And the reason you've never heard about the roaring Irish pineapple crop is that there isn't one.) The first Christmas after the war, when they were about 10, my mother got an orange, and my dad got some seedless green grapes, and neither of them has ever gotten tired of the idea that they can just go out and get fresh fruit whenever they want, even 60 years later. They still eat their weight in fresh fruit every week.

For my friend Kelly, it's Cap'n Crunch cereal. Her mother would never buy it, saying it was horrible stuff, but her grandmother would obtain the forbidden stuff, and Kelly and her cousin would consume the whole box before anyone in authority found out about it. I don't know if she buys Cap'n Crunch now, but I'll bet she has.

I know another woman for whom bacon and orange juice were considered hideously expensive when she was a kid, and so was saved for Christmas and birthdays. It's not like she grew up in Ireland during the war, she grew up here in Ontario in the 70's, in a perfectly ordinary middle-class house. I don't recall either bacon or orange juice ever being in short supply, (was there a bacon imbargo that I wasn't aware of?) but maybe her mother knew something I didn't. Anyway, she splurges on bacon and orange juice on a regular basis.

My husband's aunt thinks that the telephone is terribly expensive, and even though she has a phone, (several, in fact,) she still would never make a long-distance phone call if her life depended on it. She's a child of the Depression, and telephones were expensive then, and she delights in having about 6 phones all over her fridge-sized apartment. (Seriously, you can sit anywhere in the place and be able to reach at least two phones without getting up.) But, long-distance phone calls, which I think are ridiculously cheap, is still something she can't get her head around. I'll have to ask her son if he makes long-distance calls with a thrill of satisfaction or not.

I asked the kids what they are denied now, that they will have when they grow up. Thing 2 says she plans on filling her house with nothing but Dunkaroos. (Dunkaroos are these little snack thingys where you dip styrofoam-like, little cookies into a tiny tub of the most horrible, nasty fake-tasting frosting. Thing 2 loves them, but I won't buy them. They're "Grandma Food".) Thing 1 says she will have a hot-tub, and also, that she will turn up the radio as loud as she likes. (Which, I had no idea was a big deal at all, just to tell you.)

I also delight in having more than one pair of scissors in the house, two pillows on my bed, and vanilla extract. Just because I can.