A few months back, I was rooting around the Mega Mall, an antique/junk/whatever store with many booths that's up the street from me here. I found some really cute little postcards with these cute little asian characters in them. They were $2 for a little book for 24 of them so of course, I signed up for 3. I kept one and gave the other ones to my daughters, MY DAUGHTER'S!!!, for Christmas a stocking stuffer. (stocking stuffers get harder now that the girls are grown!) So, the other day I needed a little note for someone so I pulled out said little book of cards. Evidently I need to look at each & every post card before I make purchases in future. I was surprised, quite unpleasantly to discover that some of them are a bit um, erotic sorts....I GAVE THESE TO MY DAUGHTERS!!!! I'm so mortified. They look so innocent like they could even be sent to a kid type innocent. When I flipped thru them briefly, all I saw was cute little smiling characters with pretty little soft colors around them. I HAVE TO GET A BIT MORE DETAIL ORIENTED!!!! Most of them are not very innocent at all....I mean not that they're pictures that actually jump out at you if you do a quick flip. It's when you actually look at what the hands are doing, etc....I GAVE THESE TO MY DAUGHTERS!!!! Oh I am never going to live this down. I only hope they haven't sent these to people randomly. I can hear it now..."Oh Lexy, oh Mandy....where did you get those soft porn postcards????? MY MOM! MY MOM!!!! I gave my daughters soft porn cartoon "art"!
Such lack of detail took me back in time to when the girls were young....like 8 and 11. We went to Royal Oak, MI where they had some fun little shops, restaurants & such. My husband saw a place called Noire, a leather store. Being an avid leather fan, since he's a motorcycle papa, he wanted to go in. So...we go in, Jeff & Lex head down one aisle, Mandy and I the other. We're sauntering along looking at jewelry in the case....heads down, etc. I looked up and saw a few employees and they were all dressed in black....very goth types. Ok....it's ok...Lexy's first boyfriend had glow in the dark green hair so black....well at least it's a more 'normal color, though multiple piercings thru cheeks, lips, eyebrows & tongues made me cringe. Ok....still, I try not to be judgemental about people who probably spout water like a sprinkler when they have a drink, just a calm shop browser at this moment...then I look at a rack, there's all kinds of what looked to be instruments of bondage & torture. I glance at a picture on a wall and it's a blown up photo of an unfortunate person who took his own life with a caption of "his last drink of the day was a Smith & Wesson". At this point, I grab my daughter & hustle for my husband who by this time had also seen something that made him realize where we were at and we're both like "WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!" And hustle out the door.
Sometimes it knocks me over the head that there's a whole world out there that I'm oblivious to and honestly, I would still like to be oblivious to some of what I learned that day. For one, that they don't tell you in such a place that IT IS such a place when you walk in there like Mary Poppins on a lovely day out to the park with the family unit. Particularly when 2 of that family unit are small children. Two....that it's legal to enlarge such horror photos and sell them in a shop and three, that someone would find such a thing in anyway funny.
I would have gone 50 times thru "It's a Small World After All" to have not exposed my kids to that. I never did ask what it was Jeff and Lexy saw on the other side of the store that made them come hustling to the exit as well. I had enough of an education for the day. I'm not so sure being naive is such a bad thing after all.
Amazing the memories that a postcard will bring.
