Many Worlds From Many Minds

You want Retro, huh?

04 Apr 2012 9 Comments

by Eden in accomplishments, creative process, goals, Introductions, Photos, ROW80, stories Tags: #Row80, André the Giant, Hardy Boys, mother, retro, Scooby Doo, sharing stories, Teddy Bears

Very first picture of me I have

The theme is retro?  How far back do we dare go?

Before I get too far, a huge “thank you!” to those people in my high school who actually went through the trouble of scanning some of these photos from family prints or the senior year book.

What happened then?  Well, I didn’t get to spend much time with the Sleestaks then or any of the Kroft world.  I do remember watching Shawn Cassidy in the Hardy Boys and dreaming of becoming a detective (to this day, I still have a huge collection of those series books, and as I can, I still buy them, the older the better).  Scooby Doo (first two seasons!  They were the best, especially with the music during the chase scenes) was the forbidden fruit, and I would sneak downstairs to watch it on Saturday mornings.  I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be Velma or the scary witch lady who ended being saved by the kids.  Daphne always annoyed me with her obliviousness to the world.  For perhaps half an episode, I was able to enjoy, before my father stomped downstairs to change the channel to something he found more educationally valid.

Credit Wikipedia

It’s amazing I didn’t hate Bugs Bunny by the time I was ten years old.  Well, now that I think of it, I did for quite a while.

And don’t get me started on WWF wrestling or stock car races.  =(  Even if I didn’t have doubts about their educational quality (my father would constantly try to get me involved in discussions about the choreography of the actors doing the wrestling, about the skill they had to have to execute the moves they did without actually hurting each other, how men like George the Animal Steel and André the Giant were actually quite intelligent, but that their careers as actors gave them more satisfaction and money.  I think I already considered that a sad statement of affairs that showmanship was valued so much more than the intelligence they had to share.

credit Ambientblog

I had my generational favorites.  My music tastes didn’t catch up with my age for a long time due to Dad’s power over the stereo.  I had my 33 1/3 LPs that I duly wore smooth on my record player (none of these are quite close enough, but they get the point across): mostly Disney songs, but I did have an amazing version of the Teddy Bears’ Picnic as well.  And more Christmas records than I needed.  I loved that player, but OH how I coveted that stereo downstairs…   Even if almost all I ever heard from it consisted of Peter Paul and Mary; Simon and Garfunkel; Mamas and Papas (my father had this horrid habit of singing Dream a Little Dream of Me in a Tiny Tim falsetto and getting upset at me if I covered my ears); or some electronic variation on impressionistic Classical music…usually Tomita, but he was extremely fussy about which albums

That's me on the right (credit Lisa Everts)

he would play…  Holst, Debussy, Mussorgsky…they were fine, but the Bermuda Triangle sat on the shelf to only be played once even though I’d gotten it for him for a present.

From rides in the car with Mom, I gathered there were more things to listen to.  When I met Youtube and the joys of listening to music without having to spend all my money before I knew what I was getting, I spent hours checking through songs, trying to recapture a sense of “that year” or that moment…  a lot of “reliving”.  I ended up with a CD collection that was filled with Best of Year XX and in debt to the local “Play it before you buy it” used record store.

Captain Kangaroo 1961 postcard

I used to have my own set of Green Jeans.  Captain Kangaroo, Benny Hill, and Leonard Nimoy (on In Search Of ,not so much Star Trek, where my early crush was George Takei) were three of my heroes,  Though I confess I also had a little kid’s crush on Walter Cronkite and Jack Klugman (Quincy M.E.).  Oh, yes, and RANDOLPH!!!!  Who could not love Randolph Mantooth from Emergency!

I cried when my Inch Worm “died”.  And when Fisher Price changed the Little People from the nearly featureless wooden blocks to their newest incarnation with individual toys and hairdos, I felt as if a piece of my child hood had been stolen away.

From Shan Jeniah's yearbook

I remember the 80′s of course too.  Sticker mania, fancy shoe laces in my hair,  multi-colored nail polish…

I don’t know much about “retro”, but I do know that the only time I’ve started feeling like I fit in is when I stopped trying to be part of where I was and just allowed my own “freak-flag” to fly so to speak.  And that means, I will happily say I’m as “retro” now as I ever was.  Perhaps more.

Oh, and I finally have that stereo, btw.   I spent all day Monday listening to music from a-ha, to Electric Light Orchestra to Hall & Oates and Blue Öyster Cult on it for my “computer free day”.

Oh, and how did that day (and yesterday) go?  Well, Monday was amazing!  The Mythical Day of Cleaning actually almost happened.  And there were words…  LOTS of words.  Six full pages of story written, YAY!  But as part of the reassessment…  I think that I’ll be moving that day of no computer to Thursday or Friday, so it won’t interfere so much with ROW80 check-ins.

90's hair almost as big as my cat's

My mom LOVED short hair

Yesterday was almost a complete bust.  I am a Tuesday Snippet post behind schedule, and I barely managed to get my 750 words in before crashing.  Oh, and I managed my sponsor visits.  It’s more than I thought I’d manage when I woke up.  And I still sound like a Sleestak.

I did get two chapters read of my most recent book pile grab: One Hundred Names For Love by Diane Ackerman.  Almost done there….  One more book off the Bookmark Break Challenge list.