Assorted small flannel shirts and other button-down shirts...

...a small jewelry box shaped like a piano, various jewels (earrings, beads, bits of necklace chains), a polka dot umbrella, four hand-knitted scarves, all in shades of pink, a Christmas tree stand, five pair of women's shoes, all in that style of pumps that look like ballet slippers, assorted pens in a box made to go over kleenex, a cup shaped like a cowboy boot that says Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede on it, an oil painting in green tones of swirly circles.  The bench has been very active today.  These items remain at this writing, but there have been at least three separate drops to the bench today.

I keep coming back to that word: polka dot.  What makes these dots polka dots?  I once knew a guy who felt there wasn't a woman alive who wouldn't look good in polka dots.

Polka dots make me think of an early album my brother owned.  It may have been his first record (or perhaps his first was Marty Robbins Sings Davy Crockett and Other Cowboy Songs).  It was made of a thicker vinyl than my dad's albums and wasn't black, but was brightly-colored, maybe yellow or fuschia.  Anyway, it had the song Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini on it, which cracked us up.  It also played The One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater.  Like the Marty Robbins album, it had a theme - the theme was something like "wacky songs with many words in the title."  My brother's record player was the kind that looked like a suitcase, complete with a handle for carrying it, except when you sprung the catch, the lid came up to reveal the turntable.  His record player case was red and white. 

Record players and stereos were somewhat sacred in our house - especially my dad's.  I use the word sacred somewhat intentionally here because frequently his stereo only came on on Sunday's.  In the Boston area of my early years, Sunday on the classical music station meant opera.  Which - and I feel I can speak for all my siblings here - we hated.  The stereo lived in the living room, and for some reason these living rooms felt off-limits to me.  Partly because the stereo was definitely off-limits.  We were not explicitly told that this was an adult room, we just knew it.  Some of my other friends' houses had these types of living rooms.  I could tell when it was that sort of living room immediately. 

I wasn't bothered by this aspect of my childhood homes, but I certainly haven't managed to recreate it in my home.  People invariably come into my home for the first time and say about it something like, "Why, it's so-" big pause here "-so kid-friendly."  It is not always meant as a compliment.  I do wish sometimes that my home was more pristine, more picked up.  But I am rarely willing to do the things it would take to make it so.  And there are way worse things than being kid-friendly.