When people learn how little pop culture I know,

especially Saturday morning cartoons and videogames and the other acoutrements of growing up in the 80s, I'm often asked something along the lines of "But what did you do as a kid?". I try to evade this question, because there's no good answer—I amused myself, mostly. And while for the most part this meant playing outside or reading or watching public television, I tend to intentionally forget about the games invented when playing with my brother. But an unexpected train of thought during class today has started me thinking about them, so I will, with some qualms, write about it here. I'll note that all of this was pretty well confined to elementary school, and that I know I'm going to catch some flack for living such a sad, sad childhood, but so it goes.

Doodling extra alveoli on my human physiology notes today I caught myself humming a song from the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? soundtrack (from the TV show). I'm not sure why I still remember all the lyrics to the songs off that cassette tape, nor do I have any idea how it got in my head, but it did jog my memory about a dream I had the other night.

In my dream, I was at home looking for something in the hall closet, when I realized that the back of the closet was actually fake, so I tore up the boards to see what was back there. And behind the towels and sheets and stuff, concealled Cask-of-Amontillado-like, was my brother's ragged stuffed animal Trevor the Dog, who said something in his usual squeaky-ironic style. I ran and got my brother, and while we took down more of the wall we tried to figure out how many years it'd been since this worn little dalmatian had disappeared.

Thus endeth the dream, but just now I started thinking about the dozens of stuffed toys who went through some serious character development during our childhood years. Trevor was the only one with his own theme song, which I believe went "He's Trevor the Dog! He sleeps like a log! He eats like a hog! He's Trevor the Doooooog!" (I could check with Daniel, but I'd rather not.) Over the years, this prince of the royal family of dalmatians, aided by his twin sister Tiny, took on the roles of straight man for Rrrowwrr the ever-infantile lion cub, the captain in the ever-popular Paw Trek: The Next Generation, and hit dog pop idol, singing from (have you guessed yet?) the Rockapella soundtrack for Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego?.

Yeesh. I really shouldn't be intending to post this, but sometimes the 'blog has to serve as an "I am a dork" confessional. When Dan was down here this past weekend, I said something about our deprived childhood, and he said "Ah, well. We may not have ever seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but we had Stuffed Animal Olympics!"

And I just kind of looked at him.

And he looked at me.

A moment passed, and then:

"That sounds really pathetic, doesn't it?"

"Yes, Dan."

"Darn."