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While driving home from work, a few things popped into my head that I haven't thought much about for at least twenty years. This seems like as good a place as any to share them with the world.

Chocodiles - Chocodiles were a Hostess product much like twinkees - except they were covered in chocolate, much like Ho-Hos. I haven't seen or tasted a chocodile since the 80s, although I hear tell that you can still get them on the west coast.

The Limerick Trick - This was a book I found in the library when I went to Immanuel Lutheran School, probably in 4th or 5th grade. I don't remember much about it, even though I read it two or three times. It was a childrens' book that involved the main character entering some kind of alternate world, and writing a lot of limericks, none of which were dirty. I remember a crazy roller coaster, a life-sized game board, and an "ordeal", but not much else.

The Boxcar Children - This was another book I discovered around the same time. I guess I read a lot in my youth, and many of the books I read weren't choose-your-own-adventure books. (I miss Troll book club and Zork books) The Boxcar Children was a series of books about four orphans, aged 14 to 5, who in the first book set themselves up a home in an old abandoned boxcar out in the forest. At the time I read it, it was incredibly cool to me - they set up a home in the woods and really made it their own. Having a decent patch of woods in my own backyard at the time, I'd have loved to do the same thing. But not really. By the end of the first book, they've discovered that they have a rich grandfather who adopts them, and throughout the rest of the books in the series they solve mysteries. Cliche as all hell, but I loved those books, and read every one I could get my hands on.

Lastly, one particular episode of Our Gang or The Little Rascals or one of those - I always get them mixed up. You can actually see the thing here. And it looks like it may very well have been the last episode of Little Rascals ever made. Funny that it should be the one episode from my childhood that sticks in my head. In this episode, Buckwheat and Spanky try to solve a mystery, but end up in an amusement park haunted house, only they don't know they're in one, so they get the crap scared out of them. Good stuff.