Thursday Thirteen

Yesterday was my birthday. I am one year shy of 60. I never thought I'd live this long, really, but here I am.

Lots of things have changed in this long time. Here are some I remember.

1. When I was about 9 or 10, my brother, my two uncles, and me would walk to the Orange Market about two blocks from my grandma's house. We each had 50 cents, and with that we each purchased a comic book (we bought different comics books and swapped them), a candy bar, and a soda. This was a weekly routine. I strongly suspect my grandparents thought the $2 was well worth the peace they obtained when we all went to the store and then came back home and settled in for an hour or two to read the comic books.

2. Man walking on the moon. I was at my grandmother's when this happened. I remember resting my chin in my hands, my body splayed out long, while I watched the event unfold.

3. Music came over the radio, and every Saturday I listened to the Casey Kasem's American Top 40 countdown. When I was about 13, I taped the shows on a cassette player about once a month, or however frequently the top songs turned over.

4. I once had a little Disney jukebox that played songs. This is where I mis-heard the lyrics to Do Re Me. I always thought it was "Te, a drink with Jane and Fred" instead of "Te, a drink with jam and bread." I used to wonder who Jane and Fred were.

5. Nancy Drew was my favorite read, but I also read The Hardy Boys, the Black Stallion books, the Little House on the Prairie books, the dirty books my parents hid under the bed that I wasn't supposed to touch, Wuthering Heights, and a slew of abridged Reader's Digest books because my parents subscribed to those, and I read them all.

6. Prior to all of that, though, were the Little Golden Books. I had about 100 of them, and I can't think now which might have been a favorite, but I loved them. I don't know if they still have these.

7. The Scholastic Book Fairs at the elementary schools were the next best thing to cake and ice cream ever. One of the books I bought there, Miss Osborne the Mop, was a favorite book for a long time. Filled with magical realism, the book showed me that reality can be varied, and magic can make life fun and interesting.

8. Computers were not a thing in school, not even when I graduated in 1981. I remember my brother received an Atari and we had Pong, and then other video consoles and games. Later my mother bought a Commodore Vic 20 computer. I loved that thing and learned to write BASIC programs on it (does anyone still use BASIC?). She then bought a Commodore 64, complete with a dot matrix printer, and I took it with me when I married, and used it to write articles for the newspaper. I could see by then that the word processing power in computers would make typewriters unnecessary, along with other functions. I never thought they'd make newspapers obsolete, but here we are.

9. I learned to drive on a stick shift, and I had windows that one actually had to roll down, and door locks one had to push to lock the door, no air conditioning, and a key that opened the door and trunk. None of this electric start, automatic, use-the-key-fob stuff. That was old school, baby!

10. I remember gas being 25 cents a gallon, and then it crept up to 35 cents, and by the time I started driving, it was hovering around $1. Now it's $4.69 or higher.

11. The Patty Hearst kidnapping was one of the first national scandals to catch my attention. I was so shocked when she was arrested. I had never heard of Stockholm Syndrome but even I could see that she'd been captured and then indoctrinated. I mean honestly, who couldn't see that?

12. Vietnam ended about the time I hit double digits in age, and after that it seemed that, aside from a kerfuffle in the Falkland's (am I remembering that right?), we didn't have much war again until George H.W. Bush invaded Kuwait. I knew, though, that there were hostages in the Middle East that cost Jimmy Carter the election (I was not old enough to vote in the 1980 election), and that things were not settled, but after seeing the carnage of Vietnam in my tender years (even though I wasn't supposed to watch the news), it was nice to see Walter Cronkite and then Dan Rather talk about something other than a war all the time.

13. I remember when John Lennon was shot, and we're still watching people die of bullets. I guess some things stay the same.

 

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 759th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.