Days 5 & 6
We'll be skipping Day 5.
*skip*
On to day 6: In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
To understand this, first you must understand that I grew up very isolated from other people my age. We lived in a pretty rural area, so no neighbors. I saw other kids my age only at school and church, and never spent any time with them outside that. I have a huge family, but I fell in an age-gap between cousins on the side we saw most--the next one after me was two years younger, the last one before me was nearly ten years older. My brother is four years younger.
I started reading before I was two. I learned to read on old textbooks and kiddie encyclopedias because there was nothing else in the house.
We were too far out for cable--we had 2-1/2 stations, the NBC affiliate very seldom being received. I remember going to movies maybe four or five times before my teens--one of which was a Peter Pan re-release and once was being forced to go see ET (which I still detest). I read the kiddie novelization of Return of the Jedi long before I ever saw any of the Star Wars movies. My parents watched primarily westerns, war stuff, and soap operas. Friday nights at my grandparents I spent watching Dallas and Falcon Crest while they snoozed on the couch, and when they woke up to go to bed, I'd give them the rundown. My parents had intermittent bouts of religion that meant we did not listen to rock.
Yeah, pretty sure I learned to read out of boredom.
So, the point of all this is: I'm a child of the 80s who never heard any of the "classic" 80s-type stuff, saw any of the classic movies, or watched many of the classic shows. I went to school and had no idea what these people in my classes were talking about. Every 80s song I've heard in my life, I heard after 1993, when I went to college. I went to Governor's School in 1991, and in African-American lit, had no idea who the Huxtables were, since that was an NBC show. In seventh grade, which would have been 1987ish, I was asked my opinion of Janet Jackson. Had no idea who she was. However, I could identify pretty much any song on country radio in less than 5 seconds. (As Barbara Mandrell once said, I was country when country wasn't cool.) I didn't realize that liquor stores were real things and not Hollywood inventions until I went to college.
You name it--if it was popular, I had no idea what it was. Fads didn't pass me by; they ran screaming away.
Skip to sophomore year of high school. A friend of mine had been trying to get me to listen to rock for awhile. It wasn't working, mainly because she underestimated my love of the electric guitar solo and kept trying to feed me the unplugged stuff that was getting popular at the time. I listened to country, so that was what I liked, right?
Anyhow. That all changed on New Year's Eve right before I turned 16. It took precisely one song. Next thing you know, I'm trying to hide a serious hair metal habit from my father, who had gone off the fundamentalist rails a few years before. This song, and others I found, are the only reason I'm still here to type this. (Some bipolars use drugs, some use alcohol--my self-medication of choice was, I kid you not, music.) Don't get me wrong, I still loved my country--do not get between me and 'Bama--but this was at the time that country was increasingly going back to the "new traditionalist" stuff, which I didn't like so much, and which did not have a lot of the elements that I loved about the 80s country.
I still try to play this near year's turning, just because.
Yes, yes, the line to make fun of me starts over there.
Okay. That took three days to write. And I'm pretty sure it still makes no sense.
*skip*
On to day 6: In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
To understand this, first you must understand that I grew up very isolated from other people my age. We lived in a pretty rural area, so no neighbors. I saw other kids my age only at school and church, and never spent any time with them outside that. I have a huge family, but I fell in an age-gap between cousins on the side we saw most--the next one after me was two years younger, the last one before me was nearly ten years older. My brother is four years younger.
I started reading before I was two. I learned to read on old textbooks and kiddie encyclopedias because there was nothing else in the house.
We were too far out for cable--we had 2-1/2 stations, the NBC affiliate very seldom being received. I remember going to movies maybe four or five times before my teens--one of which was a Peter Pan re-release and once was being forced to go see ET (which I still detest). I read the kiddie novelization of Return of the Jedi long before I ever saw any of the Star Wars movies. My parents watched primarily westerns, war stuff, and soap operas. Friday nights at my grandparents I spent watching Dallas and Falcon Crest while they snoozed on the couch, and when they woke up to go to bed, I'd give them the rundown. My parents had intermittent bouts of religion that meant we did not listen to rock.
Yeah, pretty sure I learned to read out of boredom.
So, the point of all this is: I'm a child of the 80s who never heard any of the "classic" 80s-type stuff, saw any of the classic movies, or watched many of the classic shows. I went to school and had no idea what these people in my classes were talking about. Every 80s song I've heard in my life, I heard after 1993, when I went to college. I went to Governor's School in 1991, and in African-American lit, had no idea who the Huxtables were, since that was an NBC show. In seventh grade, which would have been 1987ish, I was asked my opinion of Janet Jackson. Had no idea who she was. However, I could identify pretty much any song on country radio in less than 5 seconds. (As Barbara Mandrell once said, I was country when country wasn't cool.) I didn't realize that liquor stores were real things and not Hollywood inventions until I went to college.
You name it--if it was popular, I had no idea what it was. Fads didn't pass me by; they ran screaming away.
Skip to sophomore year of high school. A friend of mine had been trying to get me to listen to rock for awhile. It wasn't working, mainly because she underestimated my love of the electric guitar solo and kept trying to feed me the unplugged stuff that was getting popular at the time. I listened to country, so that was what I liked, right?
Anyhow. That all changed on New Year's Eve right before I turned 16. It took precisely one song. Next thing you know, I'm trying to hide a serious hair metal habit from my father, who had gone off the fundamentalist rails a few years before. This song, and others I found, are the only reason I'm still here to type this. (Some bipolars use drugs, some use alcohol--my self-medication of choice was, I kid you not, music.) Don't get me wrong, I still loved my country--do not get between me and 'Bama--but this was at the time that country was increasingly going back to the "new traditionalist" stuff, which I didn't like so much, and which did not have a lot of the elements that I loved about the 80s country.
Click to viewI still try to play this near year's turning, just because.
Yes, yes, the line to make fun of me starts over there.
Okay. That took three days to write. And I'm pretty sure it still makes no sense.