Crying fits

You want to see how easy it is to get me into tears these days?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUU2ljnS3wY

I found myself watching it over and over this morning, and by the time I was taking our dogs for their morning walk up Hawthorne Street, tears were dribbling down my face. I must have looked crazy or hilarious, depending on the viewer's disposition.

And you know, the thing is, 1981 wasn't even a great time to be me; I was starting third grade at Medary Elementary (RIP) under a mean old hag of a teacher and a bunch of mean kids. But nostalgia has a funny way of working, and one of the pleasanter aspects of life as a 7 year old in the early '80s was that I was an incessant TV watcher. This stupid little 5 second network ID with its splendiferous musical cue evokes a lot of probably irrational memories and emotions in this stressed out, perpetually depressed mind. And tears. At least it seemed like simpler, happier times.

There were other details too. My first Rubik's cube. My original Simon game which, amazingly, I think I still have somewhere in my parents' house. My beloved bottle of blue Magic Sand. My first cassette recorder, an Audition portable from the long-deceased Woolco store at Graceland Shopping Center. Trips downtown with my mom, on the old orange COTA GMC New Look bus, to see the magical Christmas displays at Lazarus (our equivalent of Macy's, also gone).

And to think that I used be contemptuous of nostalgic thirtysomethings for going all gooey for THEIR generation's formative years. A belated apology to all those Boomers I berated.

PS--Come to think of it, at around the time this NBC id aired, the country was in the midst of what was then the worst recession since the Depression, with unemployment near 11% according to this story on The Huffington Post. The fact that I was totally unaware of that is what people mean by the innocence of childhood. Innocence definitely lost in my case.