Unriddling Spoolies and Noxema

Liz, blogging from Wales, posits the following: "What are spoolies and Noxema, maryb?" in reference to my little blog-explanation (see left). The short answer, Liz? Spoolies and Noxema are relics from my childhood.

When I started blogging, one of my first posts was about Spoolies. Here's the scoop: Spoolies were little pink (blue, peach), round, rubbery spools that our mothers insisted on using to curl our hair when we were kids. They made your hair really, really curly - in an 80-year-old lady way - and that's the way our mamas liked it in the early 1960s. We looked hideous. Ten years later, though, when springy, curly hair and short-short skirts were the rage, college girls could get the curly-headed model look by using spoolies (we did it better than our mamas and looked more like 5-year-olds instead of old ladies). I notice that now there are electric spoolies - which frightens me in some primal way that I can't quite put my finger on. Electric spoolies - yikes! How curly do you want your hair?

Noxema is a skin cream that we used on our faces, though most of us connect the cream with sunburn. Back in the days when nobody worried much about the sun except "Are we getting enough?" nice red, par-boiled skin was a good thing. Except that it hurt. That's where Noxema came in. Slather the stuff on and it cools your sunburn instantly. The very smell of Noxema - to this day - smells of a summer evening after a day at the swimming pool and red, glowing skin. If we got a good (bad?) sunburn, we'd go around for days with a dab of Noxema on our noses. There a great scene in Ya-Ya Sisterhood where Sandra Bullock goes to the bathroom and finds a blue jar of Noxema. She dabs the cream on her nose and is transported back to a summer night when she was a kid. Exactly. You can also wash your face with Noxema rather than soap. Mmmm. The smell.

You didn't ask about slumber parties, Liz. First, they were all "party" and very little "slumber." And they were where we learned all the enduring lessons of life. I'll have to post on my Slumber Party Life Theory another time. There are no slumber parties anymore - they're called "sleep-overs" now, not nearly as fraught with fun as "slumber party" to my mind. And since kids in this day and age already know everything by the time they're 6, I don't know how many life lessons are learned at a sleep-over.

Anything to add on the Spoolie-Noxema-slumber party-front, my little Fritos?