Robert Forto

NaBloPoMo

NaBloPoMo: Talk about a toy you broke as a child

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I am particpating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is: Talk about a toy you broke as a child.

When I was a kid I rarely broke my toys. I don’t know if I was a bit OCD or maybe a little bit anal but I treasured my toys.

But my goldfish Marvin is a different story. 

I was in about sixth grade and we were getting ready to move from Jacksonville, North Carolina to the suburbs of the nations capital. We were a military family so we moved a lot.

In my bedroom I had a 10-gallon tank with just one goldfish in it. It was one of those big white and orange one’s with the fan tail and big eyes.

As the move got closer I knew I couldn’t take Marvin with me and my only choice was to flush him down the toilet. What’s wrong with that? He will be fine. He will go down the pipe and end up in the ocean and get to hang out with all the other flushies.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was Saturday morning and I had just finished watching the requisite 5-hours of Saturday Morning cartoons. I loved the Looney Tunes and singing dorky songs at full volume about congressional bills and the food pyramid.

I headed to my room, put TAPS on my boom box and scooped up Marvin in one of those little green nets.

He flopped around a bit as we headed to the bathroom down the hall.

That 20 foot hallway seemed like a mile. In fact, my brother Ryan even had time to stick his head out his bedroom door to say,

“Dead fish walking!” at full shout.

I entered the bathroom with the paisley wallpaper and towels that we weren’t allowed to use and lifted the lid on the throne.

I read Marvin his last rites and dropped him in the tank.

With a flush and a swirl Marvin was gone.

At least until later in the day when I came back to the bathroom to do “my business”.

Lo and behold there was Marvin! 

He was swimming in the tank. He didn’t want to go join the flushies. He wanted to stay with me.

How could this be? He didn’t get a reprevie from the Supreme Court. We didn’t get a call from the governor. He was still alive.

I yelled down the hall: “Mom, Marvin is still here! He didn’t get flushed!”

Within seconds my brother entered the room and unceremoniously flicked the handle on the commode. The water swirled around like a whirlpool within an instant Marvin was gone.

That was it. He was gone. No more Marvin.

I would like to think that all these years later Marvin is still alive and well. He has to be. I just saw a show with Larry the Cable Guy where he was catching carp with his bare hands in a lake in Iowa, I believe. Those fish were as big as my leg and must have weighed 25 pounds!

I just wonder how many Marvin’s and Abraham’s were in that lake with Larry? My bet is a lot!

______________________

Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

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NaBloPoMo: Who did you play with as a child?

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I am particpating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is who did you play with as a child?

I grew up, well at least until the second grade, in Huntington, West Virginia. My mom was a college student at Marshall University and my dad was in the “sales” business.

Back in the 1970s we did things a bit different than today. I guess it was a different time back then. Now some of the innocence is lost from childhood. That is sad.

My two best friends were Roy who lived across the alley and Micthy who lived down the street.

Our curfew was the street lights and my mom didn’t call my cell phone. She just yelled down the street, “time to come in!”

Micthy, Roy, and I played outside making forts and playing football. Not sitting in our rooms online with one ear-bud in our ear.

We got dirty and we had no idea what hand sanitizer was. Even though we were REQUIRED to bring two boxes of Kleenex to school at the start of the year, I never used them. Not once.

I rode my Big Wheel around all around town chasing my two friends down the block. Eventually I even rode my bike WITHOUT a helmet.

Micthy, Roy, and I would drink out of the hose and we even walked to school in Kindergarten. We didn’t worry about the boogyman and we weren’t afraid of the dark.

None of us were diagnosed as being hyper-active and we all ate too much sugar. In fact I was allowed to ride my Big Wheel to the Stop n’ Go and buy my own candy. I used to take in a dime and buy 10 pieces on the rack closest to the floor.

Now here it is 35 years later and I sometimes wonder what ever happened to Roy and Mitchy. I haven’t seen them since I left all those years ago but I am betting they turned out alright. Just like me.

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

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NaBloPoMo: Earliest Memory

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I am participating in NaBloPoMo this month sponsored by the site, BlogHer.com. Today’s prompt is what is your earliest memory?

I have two of them actually and they both are about my dad.

It was 1977 or so and we were living in Huntington, West Virginia. I was about to enter school and my mom and dad were arguing all the time. Not something that a six year old little boy should be going through but I was a tough little guy and even then I thought I could take over the world when I was wearing my Aqua-man underoos.

My dad wasn’t home much anymore as he had taken a job in Logan as an insulation installer and there was talk of a word called divorce in the Forto house on Collis Avenue.

I remember when my dad was home he used to sit with me before I went to sleep and talk with me about little things that little boys find interesting, matchbox cars, Saturday morning cartoons and getting dirty in the backyard.

I was having bad dreams back then (of course I was!) and my dad used to give me his watch to hold on to while I slept. I can remember rubbing that old gold plated watch’s face between my little fingers until I fell asleep. There was an odd comfort in that– I can remember it to this day.

My dad also told me if I had bad dreams; to lay my little head on my pillow and “turn the channels” using an imaginary knob on the pillow and find a channel that had good pictures. Every night before I would fall asleep I would clasp his watch in one hand and find a channel on my pillow TV to take me to dreamland. At least on the nights that dad was home…

Another memory is one day my dad brought me over a pair of blue cowboy boots for my birthday. I think I had just turned seven and I was in Kindergarten. I wore those little cowboy boots EVERY day until the soles literally wore out and full of holes. I wore them to school. I wore them with shorts and white tube socks pulled up to my knees. I wore them to Sunday school and I think I wore them to bed from time to time too.

Here it is over 30 years later and I can not say that my relationship with my dad ever really flourished but I still think about him every day. I make it a point to tell my kids, who are now teens, stories and how important family is no matter what the circumstances. That is one thing that my dad taught me even if he wasn’t around. I wish he could have taught me more.

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NaBloPoMo: Daddy-Daughter Days

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With no prompt in sight for today on our monthly blog challenge at NaBloPoMo I thought I would take the time to introduce the world to my daughter. Her name is Nicole and she is like me in so many ways its not even funny. No, I am not taking away anything from the other two kids, they are boys. I will introduce you to them another day…

Just look at this little girl in this photo. Isn’t she cute? Her rosy cheeks and big smile? Of course she is. But don’t let this cute little girl in the purple parka fool you. She takes after her daddy.

Some of my fondest memories are driving in my truck and looking back and seeing this little three year old rocking out to White Zombie and Metallica in her car seat. Clutching her little sippy cup and occasionally a handful of Cheerios that would go flying across the cab.

Another day I can recall a daddy-daughter day were we drove down the mountain in my little Datsun Z and headed to Taco Bell. That day I gave her a dollar and she gave it right back. I wrote a little secret that only she and I know and I still carry it in my wallet to this day–almost twelve years later.

As she grew up she would sit with me in my in my La-Z-Boy and we would watch horror movies together. In fact, her first movie was Candyman.

So many memories and they sure grow up fast. 

I know what you are thinking. I corrupted my child. Hardly. She is growing up to be a great little student that writes music, enjoys cooking, and becoming fluent in French. She still loves hard rock and I was so thankful to take her first concert; a music festival that hosted one of her favorite bands, TOOL, headlined.

Sure I went against the grain of all those popular parenting books and myriad advice columns that proliferate the web. Who needs that crap?

Not me? Why? Because I know, and Nicole knows, that she is still daddy’s little girl and to me that is something you just can’t learn from Elizabeth Pantley (Perfect Parenting)…

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NaBloPoMo: Last meal. What would it be?

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If you knew that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?

I have said before and I will say again that if I was stranded on a deserted island and all I had with me was a friend named “Wilson”, my thoughts, and one food it would have to be pizza.

Pizza is the world’s most perfect food. It has all food groups on that cool pyramid that we learned about in school. Never-mind what the creepy lunch lady served us it always conformed to that dagnabit pyramid.

With that being said, if I knew what my last meal would be it would have to be a large High Protein Land pizza from Moose’s Tooth pizza in Anchorage, Alaska.  I know, I know, pizza is pizza right? Wrong. I have had a pizza pie in just about every state in the nation and noting compares to the Moose’s Tooth. If you don’t believe me, come on up to the Last Frontier and give it a try.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Moose’s Tooth or any of its affiliates and I am not paid to promote them in any manner. I do not have family or friends working there and try if I might I can not become the mayor of Moose’s Tooth. Believe me I am trying.

I guess if I was on my death bed or god forbid the execution chamber I would request pizza for my last meal. Well, unless I am on death row in Texas. They used to allow the guys heading to meet their maker, whomever that may be, to order whatever they wanted and the guards would make it up all fancy for them.

Just recently, some nutcase ordered up an eight course meal of chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. Prison officials said he didn’t eat any of it.  So what happens? Like always, some politico, probably running for city council or something like that, raised a fuss and lickety-split last meals are history.

Well, that’s that. At least in the Longhorn state. Lucky for most of us we can eat as we please and that equals just one thing–quoting the great Homer Simpson: hmmmmm pizza!

If you knew, what would you want your last meal to be? 

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