That's So Raven Will Haunt Your Soul

Okay, so maybe it won't haunt your soul, but it definitely leaves some sort of impression you didn't even realize was there. It's like the show buries itself in a little cave in your mind, and doesn't re-emerge until your nineteen year old self decides to pull up an episode of your childhood obsession and you're all "omigosh that girl is me."

I mean, obviously I haven't gotten the psychic thing down yet but the fashion, the "oh snap!"s and the tendency to turn a teeny tiny accomplishment into "I'm queen of the world!" are all traits Raven and I have in common. I suppose it made sense in 6th grade, seeing as I basically had a Raven shrine, but it's surprising to see that she has stuck.

So, of course it got me wondering what other parts of my childhood have stuck with me, making it even more impossible to grow up:

1) Every time I see a Hula Hoop, I think about flinging it onto the garage roof.
This one requires a bit of explanation. Somehow my brother, mother and I went from attempting to twist a circular object around our hips (never worked) to trying to fling them over the garage roof. It was more fun to watch them catch speed and return to us like well trained dogs, but there was that rush of adrenaline when it finally got over the roof. I'm not entirely sure how this game got invented, but we'd spend hours of the summer amusing ourselves with the Hula Hoops. When I made some new friends in 6th grade, the first thing I showed them when they came over were the swings in my basement. But the second thing was this game. Why they didn't decide I was too strange to be associated with right then and there is beyond me.

2) I always associate Mulan with jelly beans.
So this is a "younger Kira was kind of a dick" story. In order to celebrate the turn of the millennium, my family decided to watch Mulan. (Let's just note that I was like seven years old here, so it was perfectly acceptable to be terrified of the Huns). My mother told me that during the movie, I was allowed twenty jelly beans, which was kind of a "cue the angelic music here" moment. I should probably learn a thing or two from my younger ego, as twenty jelly beans is now a pre-frantic exam snack. But before we began our festivities, I messed up somehow, and was only allowed ten jelly beans. Oh boy, did I fight that punishment like it was a death sentence. I think I proposed locking myself in my room for a year before I had to give up ten jelly beans.

What can I say, I really liked candy.

3) Whenever someone says "girl power," I automatically think of the Cheetah Girl's song.
I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that since I loved That's So Raven, I was even more obsessed with the Cheetah Girls. In case you're not familiar with the song, voilà:

...A work of musical genius right there. My father, in attempts to embarrass me, would burst out into this song at every opportune moment. Thus, it stuck. It's rather strange to associate feminism with a pre-teen chick flick, but c'est la vie.

4) Play mobile cars are surely not for driving, they're for flinging down staircases.
Every time I see a Play Mobile car, the first thing I think of is a decapitated driver and a bunch of gear smattered around a basement floor. In my youth, every Christmas my brother and I would visit my extended family in New Jersey. And every year, my "crazy cousins" would allow us to stuff the cars with every piece of gear imaginable and fling them down the staircase. The more in disarray the car was, the more accomplished we felt. And then everyone was surprised when I hit a bunch of things in an actual car.

At least there weren't any staircases in sight while I was driving Alphonso, my beloved car. 

Namaste.