Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Eighth Grade Hilton Hay Days (or When Our Village Made It On the Map)

Tip of the Day: If when you hit puberty your hair starts to turn from straight to curly, do NOT randomly hack off layers of the intermitant frizz.

Thank you for joining us for another post on A2A: The Teen Years! Let me share with you the map that my hometown of Hilton, NY made it on when I was 13.


http://www.fastfoodmaps.com/static.html

Yes folks, these are all the McDonald's across the great US of A! GO AMERICA! (Yes, I'm feeling very Stephen Colbert right now (and yes, I swear he's the funniest man alive).)

If you squint real hard at the Western NY part of the map, directly south of Lake Ontario where it looks like north of the thruway had an itchy breakout of hives, there's a Micky D's dot for Hilton, NY! WOO HOO!

When I was in eighth grade and this "restaurant" was brand spanking new, it was THE hangout for after school. Where else could you go for cheap fries, free sugar packets, and bi-annual chances to win $1,000,000 with the Monopoly promo game on the super sized sodas? We slurped our drinks with visions of Hawaiian vacations and dropping out of school to become beach bums with our McD's winnings. Yes, those were the days.

Marching Band practice was in the Hilton High School, which was even CLOSER to McDonald's, so it was also the place to be before and after those practices, not to mention lunch breaks during all day marching sessions. All the teen girls who were cool and cute would get a Happy Meal, then carry the empty, semi-greasy box around with her as a purse, and show off her toy prize inside.

As a bonus, McDonald's borderd the parking lot to the bowling alley, Pleasure Lanes, which was the perfect place for skateboarding, too! So many activities in one geographic location. What the heck did us Hiltonian teens DO before 1992?

The teens in my novel that's being shopped hang out at the soda shop in the insane asylum community. They can't really go anywhere outside the walls of the community, so it's the best they can do. Yet I find it ironic that in both my real life and my characters' lives, the hang out involves a location that serves food. Hmmmm....what does this say about me?

Where do your teen characters hang out?

Deena, Miss Recently Repped

3 comments:

Kate Fall said...

I think most teen hangouts revolve around food. Caffeine and sugar are the socially acceptable teen vices. Coldstone seems to be a hot spot in the town I live in now. My daughter and I call the largest sized ice cream there the "teen boy size."

No offense, but I'm kind of squikked out by the image of girls carrying those greasy burger boxes around. Blech!

Kristina Springer said...

OMG-- the carrying the happy meal boxes around is hysterical! I can totally see girls doing this and thinking they were the coolest. It reminds me of the time when all the cool kids were walking around with baby pacifiers in their mouths. I was horrified to see the trend may have reappeared when I saw an approx. 13-year old sucking on one in the library the other day. Yuck.

As for where my characters hang out-- they seem to like coffee shops, parties, and malls. Hey-- just like me. :-)

Emily said...

Oh my goodness, this just made my day! I grew up in Brockport, NY and hearing you talk about Hilton just cracked me up. A couple of years back my sister and I took my two kids to the Hilton Carnival on a Friday night-- we were in complete hysterics while we were there just thinking about growing up in Western NY-- good times for sure =) One of my favorite places was Kelly's Apple Farm in Hilton-- went there every fall to get apples, pumpkins and DONUTS!!!! Yum! I played soccer and we always had great competition with Hilton's girls teams. Thanks for bringing me a touch of home!
~Em