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Friday, May 15, 2015

Spiking The Hell Out Of Thirteen

Here's some advance warning for all of you who have been keeping up with the anniversary celebrations that are happening all month long.  We're about to enter the teen years of my life, and let's just say that they had the same trajectory as a boomerang.  They started off wonderfully, sort of hit rock bottom at the middle, and ended off on a fantastic note.  So, as we inch closer to the Victoria Day weekend here in Canada, it's going to be a rough ride.

You have been warned.



Anyway, here we are at the beginning of this really confusing time in my life.  The teen years.  Year Number Thirteen.  And, I have to say, thirteen was a definite godsend after the very awkward twelve.  My voice had finally started to change for the better, and I was beginning to improve my fashion sense - or so I thought I was.  It was 1994, after all, when everybody was dressed in their finest grunge.

I still had the face full of zits though.  Those wouldn't go away until my twenties.  Clearasil, you lie.  You lie like a rug!

So, unlike last year, I actually do have a photograph of me taken when I was thirteen...



...and, yeah, this grad photo did not turn out well at ALL!  This is probably one of the reasons why very few photos exist of me in my early teenage years.  So awkward.  And, yeah, just to clarify, our grad photos were taken in April, so I was still technically thirteen when this was shot.

What else was going on in pop culture that week?  Let's go back to May 1994 to find out.



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1994
"The Sign" - ACE OF BASE

Oh, yes, this is what ABBA might have looked like had they started their career in the 1990s.  But yet, 1994 seemed to be the year where Swedish dance groups took over the airwaves in a big way.  Well, at least in North America, they did for about five years before disappearing into the Stockholm night.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1994
"The Crow"

Two things I am reminded of when I see this film.  First, it was the final film of actor Brandon Lee, who died in a freak accident in 1993 while on the set.  Second, one of my sister's friends made me a T-shirt with the image of the main character on the front of it...and it ended up becoming one of my favourite T-shirts - I wore that thing until it fell apart.  Oh, I wish I had a picture to show you because it turned out beautifully!



#1 TELEVISION SHOW OF THE 1994/1995 SEASON
"Seinfeld"

The show about nothing was the #1 show of the year...and, while everyone at school seemed to watch it, it was one show that I could never get into.  I preferred to watch "The Simpsons" instead.

(SIDE NOTE:  Can you believe that Harry Shearer has decided to quit the show after 26 seasons?  What will the show be like without Flanders, Burns, and Skinner?  Oh, I don't want to even think about that!)

Okay, so now we get to the feature presentation of the blog, and it has to do with my athletic ability.  Or, rather, my lack of athletic ability.

Let me explain something to you.  When it came down to the eighth grade, it was without a doubt my best year by academic standards.  I had tried really hard in class, I had all my assignments done on time, and I earned the faculty award for English - which I suppose makes sense, given that I had aced every single spelling test that I was ever given except for one.  Even to this day, the word convenience trips me up if I'm not thinking about it.

How inconvenient.

And certainly my report card at the end of the year seemed to show this as I had gotten either an A or an A+ in every subject.

Every subject except one, that is.



Physical education.  C-.

Now, admittedly, I was absolutely annoyed at this because I had always wanted to get a perfect report card, and my lone C- completely kept that dream from ever taking place.

Oh, it's not like I didn't try to improve my grade in gym.  Heck, my teacher even suggested that I should try joining a couple of sports teams that played games during our lunch hour, and that if I did that, it would improve my gym mark significantly.

Yeah, gym teacher lied.  He lied like a rug.  Unless, of course, my original gym grade was actually an F.  In that case, good job, teach!

So, ultimately, the challenge then became...what sport would I sign up for?  I was not very good at any of them.  I signed up for basketball, and spent most of the time on the bench.  I signed up for floor hockey, and spent most of the time at the goalie net.  I signed up for three-pitch, and I kept striking out. 

I was beginning to think that I wasn't good at anything sports related, and I was just going to give up completely.

That is until I saw that the school was offering a brand new sport that I had never played before.



Volleyball.

Now, of course, I knew what volleyball was.  I saw them playing the sport in the Summer Olympics of 1992, and I do remember watching an episode of "Saved By The Bell" years ago that seemed to have volleyball as the main plot.

But, to be honest, I didn't really know how to play volleyball.  All I know is that you take a ball, and you hit it across a net, and try to keep it from hitting the ground.  But as I quickly learned, it was a lot more complicated than that.

Fortunately, I will say this about my volleyball team that I was on.  I loved every single one of those guys and gals.  You see, everyone who signed up was divided up into teams of nine (six on the floor, and three rotating alternates), and these teams were made up of the kids between grades five to eight.  So, the teams were made up of kids between the ages of ten and fourteen.

In my case, I was one of two eighth graders to be on my team.  The rest were fifth and sixth graders.  You might consider that to be a disadvantage, but it worked out great.  See, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, I admit that I preferred the company of fifth and sixth graders rather than the company of my own classmates.  Part of the reason could have been because by the end of elementary school, I was ready to distance myself from the lot of them, but another part was that the younger kids didn't seem as judgmental or cruel as the ones that were my age.

That's always been my style.  I get along with people at least 10 years older than I am, or 10 years younger than I am...but people my exact age, I cannot relate to at all.  Have always been that way, for whatever reason.  Maybe that's why I'm still single.

Anyway, I'm rambling.  Back to volleyball.

It took me a while to feel things out.  I learned what a bump, a set, a spike, and a volley was, and admittedly I didn't do too badly with any of those in practice sessions. 

But serving the ball over the net?  That took time.  Each time it was my turn to serve the ball, I never quite gave it enough power and I kept hitting it below the net (which of course, you can't do).  But you know, my team was surprisingly understanding about it, and we certainly had plenty of players who could serve with the greatest of ease.

Of course, it certainly didn't really help my self-esteem out any when it came time for me to serve, and the opposing teams were purposely moving towards the net, anticipating that my serve would completely suck.  In fact, I seem to remember one nasty little brat purposely sitting down on the floor while I was preparing to serve, and making all sorts of nasty comments - you know, the kind of comments made by incredibly egotistical and cocky people?

Well, after having to face him for a couple of games, and him not relenting, I decided that I had enough.  I decided that I would shut him up permanently and hit that volleyball with so much force, I didn't know where it would end up.

It not only cleared the net easily, but it was aimed directly at the cocky young man who was completely unprepared for the fact that yes, the fat kid could serve and serve quite well!  I scored the point, and everyone on my team just stared at me in complete shock.

Mind you, that point wasn't enough to win the game that day, but it made me feel proud.  You see, even though I had a hard time nailing the serve in volleyball, each time I tried it, I got better at it.  And while the comments of Kid Cocky probably drove me over the edge that day, in subsequent games, I never did one miss a volleyball serve.  In fact, I got quite good at the game.  To this day, I consider volleyball as the one and only sport that I consider myself an athlete in.

It's a wonder I didn't try out for the high school volleyball team.  I probably could have done quite well.  But as this retrospective continues, you will see that it wasn't in the cards.

But we still have time before that day.  Tomorrow, I talk about my fourteenth birthday, and why it was one birthday I won't ever forget...for both good and bad reasons.                          

Thursday, May 14, 2015

The 12-Year-Old, The Bully, & The Baritone Solo



Cuz I feel like I'm 12 years old
And I feel like I'm in the cold
And I feel like I don't know where I am
And I feel like I'm left behind
And I feel like I'm last in line
And I feel like I'm 12 years old
And my dog just died and my bike's been stolen again
                          -Kim Stockwood

The above lyrics were written by Canadian pop star Kim Stockwood, and it was released a few years after I actually turned twelve (I was actually closer to eighteen).  But the lyrics are actually true to form over how I really felt about being twelve.

Well, minus the dog dying part.  I never had a dog as a pet.



But to say that being twelve years old was hard would be an understatement.  You see, twelve was the age that I entered that difficult period known as puberty.  At twelve, it was like everything that I had known about life had been completely blown up.  My face was covered with zits, my voice was kind of a cross between Ralph Wiggum and Michael Jackson, and I was getting hair in places that well...yeah, we're not going to go there.

As if the changes in my physical appearance weren't enough to deal with, I also had to deal with some really big challenges in school.  It was hard adjusting to seventh grade.  We had no recess, more homework, mathematics with numbers, and science projects to put together for the school science fair.  And, as you'll read about in this space, I had a lot of trouble with handling classroom stress...especially when you consider who was causing me the stress to begin with.

But before we get there, let's see what was happening in pop culture.



Now, remember when I said that not every year would be represented with a snapshot?  Apparently 1993 was one of those years.  I couldn't find a single picture that was taken when I was twelve years old - though given that I was smack dab into puberty at that age, it's possible that I destroyed every single photo from 1993 ever taken.  Don't worry, you missed nothing.



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1993
"That's The Way Love Goes" - JANET JACKSON

Believe it or not, this is the first of TWO Janet Jackson songs that hit the top of the charts during one of my birthday weeks.  But this one is definitely the better of the two.  I seem to remember listening to this one a lot.  It was very different from her "Rhythm Nation 1814" years, but in a very good way.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1993
"Dave"

Does it make me a bad person if I admit that I've never even heard of this movie, let alone seen it?  Though, it does have a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  I may give it a whirl.



#1 TELEVISION SHOW OF THE 1993/1994 SEASON
"60 Minutes"

Oh, sheesh...not again!  For the record, #2 was "Home Improvement" and #3 was "Seinfeld".

So, 1993 was the year I entered seventh grade, and already I was at a disadvantage.  It all began when I was in grade six, and I was having a lot of problems with some of the kids I went to school with.

In particular, four boys who were in the same grade I was.

Because I don't believe in slandering people online, I will not reveal the names of these four boys in this blog, but I will say that these four boys were a pain in my backside for several years.  What made it really uncomfortable was the fact that two of these four boys were once friends of mine, and I had invited them to birthday parties, and other fun things.  I don't know what it was that made them turn on me, but whatever the case, it doesn't really matter.

These boys used to do everything from making fun of how I looked, to calling me all sorts of nasty names, to spreading half-truths about me to other kids, to chasing me around the playground with balloons threatening to pop them in my face knowing full well that it was a sound that I did not like.

Basically, they were bullies who thrived on getting attention, even if that attention was negative.  And unfortunately for me, they were a lot more popular in school than I was - at least that's how it seemed to be anyway.

So, when I discovered that all four boys just happened to be in my class for seventh grade, I was bracing myself for the absolute nightmare that followed.  And yes, next to first grade, seventh grade was a year in which I would have loved a do-over.  I would have transferred classes, and I would have done everything possible to get away from those four boys, and yet nothing happened.  They spent the whole year making my life hell, and I really had no choice but to take it. 

That's not to say that I just sat back and let them bully me the entire year.  I stood up for myself, and I stood up for myself often.  I even shoved one of them in the coat closet one day when I got tired of all four of them ganging up on me when I was trying to hang my coat up, and got an indoor suspension for my troubles.  Sad thing is, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  But, it also went to show me just how stupid our school's rules really were.

I mean, giving X's to people who misbehave so they could have a public display of who the angels and devils of the school were?  Did they really think that was a good idea?  Come on!

But, of the four boys, there was one who was a really nasty piece of work.  He was definitely the ringmaster of the psycho circus that these four boys represented, and he was definitely mean.  If I didn't know any better, I would say that he orchestrated the entire display of bullying towards me just for his own amusement, and I honestly believe that there was something completely wrong with him in that he took pleasure in other people's pain.  He was the one who blew up the balloons to chase me with in hopes of getting a reaction.  He was the first one to laugh at my misfortunes whenever there were any.  And he was definitely the one who caused me the most stress during my seventh grade year.



I think what really caused our rivalry to come to a head was the time that we were doing a spring concert, and the seventh and eighth graders were set to play at this concert.  Our finale involved playing the song "Ash Lawn Echoes", an instrumental piece that had a brief solo involving two instruments - a baritone, and a flute.  And as part of my seventh grade music class, we had to practice this song over and over again.  After all, there were two concerts planned that day.  One in the afternoon for the rest of the student body, and the evening show, for the parents of the students.

Here's the kicker.  I played the baritone.  I was the only seventh grader to play the baritone.  And guess who happened to play flute in our concert band.

You see where this is going right?

I honestly don't know if this was planned or not - it wouldn't surprise me if it was, but the day before the concert (when we were to put on the show), he and I got into a really big argument in the music room as we were preparing to perform at the show, and he said some really incredibly hurtful things that shook me to the core.  Mind you, looking back on them now, I think it was absolutely ridiculous.  But as a 12-year-old who was still trying to get used to puberty, everything was completely out of whack, and I was left so upset by his words that I refused to play at the afternoon concert.  I stayed behind in the music room, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me.  And you know, with the way that I had been hurt, I almost skipped the evening concert too - you know, the one that all the parents attended? 

But you know, something inside of me told me that I should go to the concert anyway.  In fact, I think I had a talk with the music teacher, who by then had known that something was up when I just didn't show up at the afternoon concert, and he gave me some words of encouragement.  I wish I could remember what they were, but I knew that the bottom line was that I should just forget about what this boy was saying and doing, and that I should just get out there and show my stuff.

I suppose if you look at it, it was a good thing that I did show up to the evening concert.  You see, eighth grade baritone player completely blew the concert off, leaving me as the only baritone player in the whole concert band - meaning that I was the only one who could play the baritone solo.  Talk about PRESSURE!

To make matters even more stressful, the ringleader of the bully group was there - and he kind of issued a half-hearted apology where it started off with "I guess I should apologize to you..."

Um, no.  You're either sorry or not sorry.  Clearly he was not sorry, and clearly he had probably been spoken to by the music teacher as well in not quite the most pleasant of manner.  Whatever, wasn't buying was he was trying to sell, and I basically nodded and said okay just to get him off of my back.  Besides, I had a solo that I had to play, and I wasn't letting him ruin that.



And when we got down to playing "Ash Lawn Echoes", and I had to play the baritone solo, I played that solo perfectly.  It was me and an eighth grade flute player, and we rocked that solo.  It was beautiful.  And, after I played the solo, I looked at two faces in the concert band.  I saw my music teacher, and his smile just wouldn't go away, he looked so pleased. 

And I saw the face of the boy who tried so desperately to get me to stay home for the concert...but he couldn't see mine.  He was really trying hard not to meet my gaze at all.

I think that said a lot more about his character than anything.

Yeah, twelve years old was a really difficult age to navigate.  However, year thirteen was a little bit better.  I guess you could say that part of the reason for that had to do with discovering a skill that I never really knew that I had - and made me realize that maybe I wasn't such a klutz in sports after all.

You'll read that story tomorrow.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

The Eleven-Year-Old And The Little Green Notebook

You know something?  1992 was such a great year, I decided that I would do a double post about the year.

Well, okay, not really.  That part was posted merely by coincidence. 

Anyway, with the Tuesday Timeline out of the way for another week, we can go back to the original plan, which is for me to post personal stories about memories gone by.



And, well, we're smack dab in the middle of year number eleven.  Look at it this way, there's only another twenty-three to go!

So, year eleven spanned between 1992 and 1993, and I have to admit that I really loved that time period.  Really, the early 1990s were a good time.  I had to adjust a bit to the fact that some of my friends went off to French Immersion at another school, but I held my own.  I left fifth grade and entered sixth grade, and I remember really getting into the R&B, hip-hop, and new jack swing music that was all the rage that year.  I think I drove everyone crazy playing Toni Braxton, SWV, TLC, Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson all the time from my little stereo system!

Apparently, I also still had some fond memories of neon colours as well.  Check out my annual snapshot - 1992 edition.



Yeah, apparently my favourite colour at eleven was neon green.  I wore that shirt a lot when I was that age.  Though, nobody really beat me up for it.  '92 was the year the Blue Jays won the World Series (and 1993, for that matter).  This picture was probably taken during the summer of 1992 when I was in the summer playground program, as I recognize this being taken at the Celebrity Sportsworld bowling alley in Kingston, Ontario - now defunct.

What else was happening around my eleventh birthday?  Well, let's browse through the pop culture files.



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1992
"Jump" - KRIS KROSS

Who knew that a couple of teenagers wearing their clothes backwards would bounce their way onto the top of the charts?  Mind you, this is probably the only song of theirs that I recognize, and sadly, one of the boys ended up passing away some twenty years after this song was released, so no chance of a reunion.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1992
"Lethal Weapon 3"

It wasn't the best movie of the bunch, but entertaining enough to be able to sit through it.  But I still maintain that a fourth film should have never been made.  They were getting way too old for...well, you know.



#1 TELEVISION SHOW FOR THE 1992/1993 SEASON
"60 Minutes"

Again?!?  Wow, people must have really been into news programming back in the early 1990s.  But seriously, I expected "Roseanne", or "The Simpsons", or even "Murphy Brown" to top the list that year!  Anything but 60 Minutes!

Anyway, for today's story, I want to give you a bit of a set-up before we get to the main body of this entry.

Entering sixth grade was a bit of a good thing and a bad thing.  It was a good thing because I really loved my teacher, Mrs. Woodfine.  She was tough, but fair, and she was probably one of the most encouraging teacher that I have ever had.  The bad thing is that we had the same seats the entire year, and I was in the direct center of the room, and it seemed as though I was surrounded by people who...well, for lack of better description, hated my guts.

It was my own fault.  I was one of the last kids to enter the classroom, and most of my friends in the class sat around the perimeter of the room.  I was dead center.  Not exactly a place where I wanted to sit, but again, I had no say in the matter.

Of course, I tried to make the best of a bad situation, and I tried to focus on schoolwork and other things.  But sometimes there were instances in which the kids around me would purposely tease me and try to humiliate me because they counted on getting a reaction out of me.



And, well...I'm a very emotional person.  I consider it to be my Achilles heel of sorts.  Sometimes there are times in which I wish I could feel nothing and times in which I wished I could turn off my emotions the way one would switch off a lamp.  But in the real world, that is not possible, and let's just say that some of the kids succeeded in getting me quite upset in class.  Sometimes I would try to defend myself, but it came out the wrong way and ended up hurting them even though all I wanted them to do was to shut up and leave me alone.

So, imagine my surprise when one day as we were leaving for home after school, Mrs. Woodfine calls me to see her at her desk, and right off the bat, I figured that I was in deep trouble.  I mean, why else would a teacher keep you after class, right?

Well, apparently my sixth grade teacher was no idiot.  She had a keen eye, and she knew exactly what was going on.  And, honestly when she told me that, I was completely shocked, as none of the other teachers that I had really seemed to notice or did anything about it.  But I suppose I could understand their stance.  None of them were really trained in how to deal with conflicts between students.  They were there to teach English, Science, Mathematics, and History.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Mrs. Woodfine was different though.  I get the feeling that she really cared about her students...and I mean ALL of her students.  So, I told her some of the stuff that was going on and how it made me feel, and she came up with a suggestion that at first I dismissed.

"Why don't you just write everything down?"

Now, granted, I did like writing back then, and did have a run of 27 perfect spelling tests in a row back in the sixth grade.  But I couldn't understand how writing about my feelings would help me feel better.



It was then that Mrs. Woodfine handed me a bright green notebook from out of the supply closet in the classroom, and told me that I could keep this book for my own personal use.  She explained that I was to keep this book in my desk at school, and that if anything happened where I was feeling down, or angry, or downright homicidal towards any of my classmates (okay, I made up the last part), I was to write it down in my own words, and if I felt like it, I could give it to her and she would offer some advice on how to handle the problem better. 

So, the eleven-year-old me was skeptical, but I accepted the book, thinking that I would never use it...

...only to actually use it just two days later when I got into a snit with some snotty girl in class over something that I don't even really remember anymore.  Let's just say that this girl and I had not gotten along since we were in the first grade, and five years had not done anything to thaw the tension between us.

Here's the kicker.  I wrote everything out about how I was feeling, what started the conflict, how much I really couldn't stand the girl, etc, etc, etc.  And once I wrote it out, I immediately felt better getting it out.  It was like the ultimate way to express my anger without anyone else knowing.  It was strangely empowering!

Of course, the first few times, I did let Mrs. Woodfine see what I had wrote, and she commented (giving some great advice in the process).  But over time, I stopped showing her because I didn't really need it.  I found that the more I wrote stuff down, the better I felt.  Sure, there are some days in which I struggled, but they became less and less, and I learned to put the majority of my emotion on the page and less on my face - if that makes any sense.

At any rate, I think it was Mrs. Woodfine that really turned me onto writing in the first place, and I have to say that she is a little bit of the inspiration behind the creation of this blog, as well as my love of writing in general. 

So, if you want to blame someone for the last four years, blame her!

No seriously, don't.  She helped me in more ways than anyone could imagine.  She'll forever be my all-time favourite elementary school teacher.  Nothing will ever change that.

And, well, she gave me the gift of courage...a gift that I really needed when it came down to year twelve.  But that tale will wait until tomorrow.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

May 12, 1992

We're taking a little break from the POP CULTURE ADDICT'S RETROSPECTIVE to bring you the weekly edition of the Tuesday Timeline.  And as mentioned last week, for the duration of the retrospective, I will be choosing dates that fell between 1981 and 2015.

After all, if I'm going to be talking about things that happened to me in my life and times, I should really focus on dates that I was actually around for.

But, there's a lot of stuff that happened on May 12, and before we get to today's featured date that I actually remember, let's talk about all the other things that took place on dates I obviously do not remember.

Got all that?  I hope that made sense.

1780 - Charleston, South Carolina is taken by British forces during the American Revolutionary War

1797 - Napoleon I of France conquers Venice

1870 - The Manitoba Act is given the Royal Assent, which causes Manitoba to join the Canadian Confederation two months later

1885 - The Battle of Batoche comes to an end after four days of fighting between rebel Metis and the Canadian government

1907 - Actress Katharine Hepburn (d. 2003) is born in Hartford, Connecticut

1918 - Cosmetics maven/businesswoman Mary Kay Ash (d. 2001) is born in Hot Wells, Texas

1921 - Author Farley Mowat (d. 2014) is born in Belleville, Ontario, Canada

1932 - After ten weeks of searching, the body of kidnapped infant Charles Lindbergh Jr. is found in the community of Hopewell, New Jersey

1935 - Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith (the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous) have their first meeting together

1937 - The Duke and Duchess of York are crowned as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - on the same day that comedian George Carlin (d. 2008) was born!

1941 - The Z3 - the world's first working, programmable, automatic computer - is presented by Konrad Zuse in Berlin

1965 - Luna 5, a Soviet spacecraft, crashes into the surface of the Moon

1968 - Australian troops are attacked by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces which causes the Battle of Coral-Balmoral during the Vietnam War

1986 - NBC debuts its rainbow peacock logo during its sixtieth anniversary celebration

1989 - The San Bernardino train disaster occurs, killing four people

1995 - Former child actor Sawyer Sweeten (d. 2015) is born in Brownwood, Texas

2000 - NASCAR driver Adam Petty is killed in a car crash at just 19 years of age

2001 - Singer Perry Como passes away just six days before his 89th birthday

2003 - Twenty-six are killed during the Riyadh compound bombings, in an attack linked to Al Qaeda

2008 - Over 69,000 lose their lives in the city of Sichuan, China, following a devastating 8.0 magnitude earthquake

And, here are the celebrities who are turning one year older on this twelfth day of May; Yogi Berra, Burt Bacharach, Miriam Stoppard, Linda Dano, Nicky Henson, Michael Ignatieff, Richard Riehle, Steve Winwood, Bruce Boxleitner, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Squier, Kix Brooks, Ving Rhames, Billy Duffy, Lar Park Lincoln, Bruce McCulloch, Emilio Estevez, April Grace, Deborah Kara Unger, Vanessa A. Williams, Stephen Baldwin, Joe McKinney, Tony Hawk, Scott Schwartz, Catherine Tate, Kim Fields, Samantha Mathis, Mike Weir, Jamie Luner, Robert Tinkler, Kardinal Offishall, Rebecca Herbst, Jason Biggs, Malin Akerman, Emily VanCamp, Kenton Duty, and Sullivan Sweeten.

Okay, so what date are we going to visit this week?



Ah, yes.  May 12, 1992.  I remember that day well.  I was just about to turn eleven, and I was three days away from one of the greatest birthday parties ever with my whole fifth grade class.  You know, fifth grade was actually kind of nice.

But in anticipation of my eleventh year, something was happening in Hollywood.  On May 12, 1992, a television icon to so many people drew his final breath.  And it wasn't really until after he passed that the world knew just how much he suffered while he was alive - not just from what eventually would kill him, but the despair and the stress of trying to separate his personal life from his professional life.  The agony of presenting the image of the perfect father and all around nice guy on television when in reality he hated the very role that made him famous.



This is the story of actor Robert Reed - who anyone who was around in the 1970s may remember most as the patriarch of "The Brady Bunch".



I'll admit, I missed "The Brady Bunch" when it first aired on network television.  The show, after all, did debut twelve years before I was born.  But when I was a teenager, the show used to air every afternoon at 4:35pm on TBS, and I would sit down and watch it.  Sure, looking back on it, the show was cheesier than a box of Kraft Dinner, but I have to admit, I can understand why a lot of people liked it.  Before the Keatons, the Huxtables, the Tanners, and the Drummonds came along, the Brady Bunch was the very definition of the family that every parent wanted their own families to be like, and that every child wanted to be a part of.  I have to admit, it would have been nice to have siblings who were closer to my age, and having an Alice around would have been fantastic.  That said, I am happy with the family that I did have, and while my family is definitely not the Brady Bunch (I would say mine is a cross between the Conners from "Roseanne" and the Bundys from "Married...With Children") - I'll keep them.

Honestly, given what Robert Reed went through during his own career, I imagine that he would have wanted to be anything other than Mike Brady as well.

Born in Highland Park, Illinois on October 19, 1932 as John Robert Rietz, Jr., Robert became interested in acting right around the time he was enrolled in high school.  He performed in several plays and even had a hand in producing radio shows while still a teenager.  After graduating from high school in 1950, he attended Northwestern University to study drama, where he would play the leading role in no less than eight different school productions.  Reed definitely had his heart set on becoming a dramatic actor.

Interestingly enough, one of his first roles was in a comedy series - he played one of the guest actors on the television series "Father Knows Best" in 1959.  But, that lead to a role on the CBS television series, "The Defenders" where Reed enjoyed a four season run playing the role of Kenneth Preston.  And it was because of this role that other opportunities would open up, including a stint on Broadway in Neil Simon's "Barefoot In The Park".  Reed was so successful in the role that there were talks to make the play into a television series, but when the network decided that they wanted to make the show with an African-American cast, Reed was given the chance to star in another show, also produced by Paramount.



That show was "The Brady Bunch".  And Reed won the part after the producer's first choice (Gene Hackman) was turned down.  Reed signed onto the show as the patriarch of the show, an architect who had three boys, Greg, Peter, and Bobby, from his first marriage.  He would marry Carol (played by Florence Henderson), who had three daughters, Marcia, Jan, and Cindy.  The show was designed to be a family comedy that specifically wanted to show people that blended families could get along and work together to bring forth family harmony no matter what the circumstance.  And for five seasons before the show wrapped up production in 1974, I think the show succeeded in that.  The show was never popular in the Nielsen ratings, and I think the show was almost cancelled during the show's first season.  But I guess you could say that like the Brady kids, the show kept on, kept on, kept on, kept on going!

Though, Robert Reed probably wouldn't have shed any tears had the show been pulled from ABC a lot sooner than 1974.  He instantly regretted signing up for the show and often believed that it was beneath him.  After all, he did train to become a dramatic actor, and really the only drama that was shown on the show was when Marcia got whacked in the nose with a football.

And needless to say, Reed's dissatisfaction with the show came from the scripts that he was given, which in turn lead to some blowout fights between Reed, show creator Sherwood Schwartz, and the production crew.  By the end of the show's run, Reed had grown so disenchanted with the show that he actually refused to appear on the show's series finale because he had hated the script so much.  Reed's attitude didn't really sit well with Schwartz, and Schwartz even considered replacing Reed with another actor had the show been renewed for a sixth season.

I should point out though that even though Reed was not a fan of the production staff of the show, he had a really great relationship with Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, and the six children who played the Brady kids.  In fact, Susan Olsen, who played Cindy, became really good friends with Reed's daughter, Karen. 

After "The Brady Bunch" wrapped up, Reed starred in various other projects, guest starring in several television shows such as "Charlie's Angels", "Fantasy Island", and "Murder...She Wrote".  But, he never really could get away from the role that he disliked very much.  He played Mike Brady in every single one of the Brady Bunch spinoffs from "The Brady Bunch Hour" to "A Very Brady Christmas".  I guess once you get typecast, it sticks with you.

Though, Robert Reed hid his disdain for the role that made him famous very well.  In fact, he hid something else about himself for many, many years.

Robert Reed was gay.  And until his death in 1992, only a select few knew it.

It actually makes me angry to hear this.  By Reed's own admission, he stayed in the closet for almost his entire life as a professional actor because he knew that had word gotten out that he was homosexual, it would brand him for life and he would never get work again.  And you know, it saddens me to know that Reed had to do that.  I hate the fact that anyone would have to hide who they are in order to be accepted in this world, whether it be for a job, a place to live, or even to be a part of a group of friends.  It wasn't right, and I feel as though part of Reed's frustration with his acting career was because he was frustrated with not being able to be himself.  He almost even seemed as though he was afraid to talk about it, as he never really discussed his sexual orientation with anybody, even though most of the people who worked with him on "The Brady Bunch" had known.

But then I think about it some more...and I understand why Reed kept quiet, even though I don't agree with it.  Imagine the scandal that would have erupted if word got out that America's best sitcom father was a homosexual during the 1970s.  Sure, the 1970s was a decade of great change and equality, but for homosexuals, they were still targets of hate and ignorance.  I hate that Reed had to deal with not being who he was due to fear of being shunned, but given the time period, what other choice did he have?  He just happened to have been born at the wrong time.



In fact, with Reed's death in May 1992 at the age of 59, many news outlets initially reported that he died of cancer.  But in fact, Reed had been diagnosed as being HIV positive just months before he died.  And while his HIV positive status had not developed into AIDS at the time of his death, it is believed that it played a factor in his early death.

It's been twenty-three years since that day, and Robert Reed will ultimately be remembered as being the dad on "The Brady Bunch".  But after reading this Tuesday Timeline, I hope that you remember him for being more than that.

Monday, May 11, 2015

A Diagnosis Of Nintendo Neck At Age 10

Hello, everybody!  I know what you're saying.  It's Monday.  Nothing good ever happens on a Monday.  Just ask Garfield, right?

Well, I can give you one good thing that will happen on this Monday...the continuation of the retrospective that I have happening all month long!

And today, we're going double digits!



The year was 1991, and I had just turned ten years old.  And let me tell you, Bart Simpson may have been onto something.  I remember on one episode, he told Lisa that everything goes downhill once you turn ten.  I don't quite agree with that sentiment, but I admit that there are some days in which I could go back to being ten years old.  An age where your only responsibility was to make sure that you went to school, did your homework, and respected your elders.

Even if the elders acted like children. 

1991 was certainly a year that I remember quite well.  But the one thing that I will say about 1991 was that it was mostly defined by one major event - the passing of my grandmother.  And if you want, you can read a story about the very last Thanksgiving that I spent with my grandmother by clicking HERE.  It was one of the first blog entries that I did, originally written on October 11, 2011.  Please take the time to read it.  It was written from the heart, and consider it a bonus story for you to read.

I have another story to tell you about life at age ten.  But before we get to that, we have to talk about some other things.

Here's how I looked at the age of ten.




Okay, so the sweater that I was wearing was a huge improvement over the previous year.  In fact, it was my favourite sweater from the fifth grade.  Alas, there was still no fixing my hair.  I blame that on the fact that my mother always made me wear hats to school - even on days in which I didn't need one!  It wasn't really until I turned sixteen or seventeen that I finally found a hairstyle I could live with!



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1991
"I Like The Way (The Kissing Game)" - HI-FIVE

I think this is the only song I remember by this group, which disbanded some three years later.  Years later, one member of the band died of inhaling freon from an air conditioning unit, and another member was arrested on charges of murdering his wife.  Time has not been good to these guys at all.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1991
"What About Bob?"

Ah, yes!  Finally a movie that I can honestly say I loved watching!  Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss made a fantastic comedy duo!



#1 TELEVISION SHOW FOR THE 1991/1992 SEASON
"60 Minutes"

Yes, the ticking stopwatch was the most watched program of the year.  Though I probably never watched a single episode.  If it didn't have music, a laugh track, or lots of action, I was very much uninterested.

Though, come to think of it, I don't remember watching a lot of television during my tenth year of life.  At least, not actual television.

Oh, sure, I spent a lot of time in front of a television screen (probably more than I really want to admit to be perfectly honest), but I wasn't watching television.

You see, it was right around the time that I turned ten years old that I had immersed myself into the world of home gaming.  I had a little taste of it when I was eight years old when I received a used Intellivision console for a Christmas present.

(Yes, you read that right.  My first console was older than I was.)



I saved up my birthday money and tooth fairy money over the next year, and put a Nintendo console on layaway at the Woolco store in town, and when I finally had enough money to pay for it, I took that thing home, hooked it up to the living room television, and was fixated on Super Mario Brothers for what seemed like years on end.



Oh, sure, I played Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt - the games that came with the console - but I also played Super Mario 2 and 3, and basically every single video game that was made for the Nintendo console.  It helped that there was a corner store in my old neighbourhood that allowed us kids to rent Nintendo and Super Nintendo games, so I had a huge variety of games to choose - well, provided that I had $2.39 per day.

Yes, I think I played every single Nintendo game from "A Boy and his Blob" to "The Legend of Zelda", and every one in between.  Of course, I made sure that my homework was done before I got in my game time, but most of my free time went towards rescuing princesses from castles, jumping over barrels thrown by gigantic monkeys, and running away from multicoloured ghosts in a maze while searching for fresh fruit.

And I was unapologetic in how I spent my free time.  I was never an athletic kid, and I didn't really have a lot of friends in the fifth grade.  I basically kept to myself anyway.  And there were only so many episodes of "Full House" that one can watch before you want to throw an Olsen twin off the side of a mountain. 

Video games were what got me through year ten in one piece.

Of course, there was one major side effect to being a ten year old gaming genius.  I tell you, Fred Savage and his friends made video gaming look so easy in "The Wizard".  Not once did they show any of the medical side effects that could come from being glued to a video game screen for so long.

Such as loss of vision from sitting too close to a television screen.  I think that my love of video games may have contributed to the fact that I have needed corrective lenses since high school.  Video game playing can also lead to weight gain from a sedentary lifestyle.  I'll admit I was chunky throughout school and am still chunky now.  But at least I own it.

But would you ever consider a stiff neck as an unfortunate side effect of compulsive gaming? 

In my case, yes.  Yes, it was.  And it hurt.

You see, while some gamers develop carpal tunnel syndrome, stiff wrists, and blisters on their thumbs, in my case, my pain was all in my neck.  Every time I made Mario jump, Pac-Man eat a power pellet, or have Mega Man go into battle with one of the bosses of the game, my head would bob and nod and twist and turn.  I guess you could consider me a very animated gamer.

But after doing this for about one year straight and complaining of neck pain, my concerned mother took me to the emergency room of the hospital (yeah, my mom was just a tad bit overprotective), and wanted to see what was wrong.

The doctor's diagnosis?  Nintendo neck.

If anything, I probably had one of the very first cases of Nintendo neck.  Heck, I may have even invented the term!

Of course, there's really no cure for Nintendo neck other than rubbing it with Rub A535 to loosen the muscles and make my neck less stiff.

Oh, and my video game time was cut significantly.  I guess it was just as well.  I ended up reading more books anyway.

So, that was my story from age 10.  We're coming up to year eleven, and how one kind gesture from a teacher helped change my whole perspective on life forever.


That story you will see on Wednesday.