As the piece says, sometimes you find yourself living through a string of days, where it seems that all you can do is dwell on the past—especially if you can’t really see a future, and your present simply sucks.

Of course, pop psychologists go on and on ad nauseum about how dwelling on the past is a terrible and unhealthy thing to be doing, especially if we’re wandering through all the places that hold our regrets, self-doubts, and lamentations over past mistakes, and various should’ves, would’ves and could’ves.

Occasionally, I’m reminded of old and seedy roadside tourist attractions that are bizarre mixtures of creepy, perhaps a little scary, and sometimes a bit amusing. A place that immediately comes to mind is the infamous I-95 tourist trap ‘South of the Border’, which is right on the state line between North and South Carolina. Those of you, who are familiar with it will know exactly what I’m talking about.

As I already said, some of these weird memories are also somewhat amusing, such as one particular day, when I found myself thinking about a teenage babysitter that my brother and I had in the Late Seventies/Early Eighties. For starters, she liked to wear ‘amusing’ t-shirts, such as one, which showed a radio, with the dials right where her nipples would be, with the caption: ‘Don’t touch the knobs, I’m perfectly adjusted!’ Another of her favourites showed a cartoon picture of an unhappy-looking frog seated on a lily pad, with the caption: ‘I’m so happy here, I could just shit!’ (recently, I found a company online, who specialises in vintage Seventies t-shirts, and they actually have this particular one available).

She also liked to do and say some amusing things, such as turning up Rod Stewart’s song ‘Hot Legs’, and doing a bizarre kick-dance around our living room; and there was one other early evening, where we were seated on the porch, and a car with one broken headlight came down our street. She made the off-handed comment that a one-headlight car reminded her of something she called a ‘padiddle’. To this day, I have NO IDEA just what a padiddle might be, nor does it sound any less silly now than it did then.

Another amusing memory that bubbled up came from when I was in first grade, and we were given a ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ logic/comprehension exercise, where we had to choose the appropriate word to finish a sentence. Most of them were easy and obvious, but then I came across: ‘At ___ I ran as fast as Mack.’

From the list of words given, I think I knew even then that the proper answer was ‘At LAST, I ran as fast as Mack’, but for some reason, I railed against that, thinking it sounded stupid and clumsy. The answer I chose was: ‘At BACK, I ran as fast as Mack’. The teacher rolled her eyes at me when I told her: ‘But you don't understand: 'At last' doesn’t rhyme’!

And one final note: The urban legend about the 'secret' of Bubble-Yum being so soft and chewy was because it supposedly contained spider eggs, did indeed circulate. Indeed, there is an entry about it on Snopes.com