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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.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

For Year 9...A Story About Mom...

Before I get things started with today's story from long ago, I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish every single mother out there in the world a HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Whatever you do today, I hope you all have a great day filled with lots of love, joy, happiness - and hopefully sunshine!  I know here where I am, the sun is shining so brightly that I swear we skipped spring and have moved right into summer!

Anyway, we've come to a point in the retrospective where we have reached a bit of a milestone.

The end of the single digit years.



Yes, the single digit years were quite nice, but we have to end them eventually.  Year Nine begins now.

And, what a year nine was!  The nineties had just begun, and I remember so many details about my ninth year on this earth.  I had my birthday party at the movie theatre where we watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - which I have to admit that at the age of nearly 34 is STILL a guilty pleasure of mine.  I went into the fourth grade with eagerness, and ended up having a great year in school. 

For some reason, I also remember every girl in school having either a Beverly Hills 90210 or New Kids on the Block pencil case...but that was cool.  I would wear Simpsons T-shirts to school - even though my school was considering banning them because they saw The Simpsons as being a bad influence.

(And keep in mind we were still six years away from South Park!)

So, let's have a look at what was going on in the first year of the 1990s - as well as my last year of being a single digit kid.  First, the snapshot.



For some reason, I thought I wore a bright neon yellow sweatshirt for my class picture.  Apparently, it was green.  It was still bright enough to blind the camera man though.  As for my bedhead look?  Sigh...this was the year in which I was experimenting different looks.  Needless to say, this one did NOT make the cut. 

Now for the pop culture junk.



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1990
"Vogue" - MADONNA

Okay, so technically this song hit #1 the day after.  But six of the seven days of that week had this at the top of the charts, so I'm going with it.  It certainly puts you in a better mood to party than Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U"!



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1990
"Pretty Woman"

Now this is a movie that I did not see for several years after it came out - and on top of that, I was forced to see it.  Though, I'm not sorry that I did see it.  It was a great film, and the soundtrack to the film is probably one of the better ones available.



#1 TELEVISION SHOW FOR THE 1990/1991 SEASON
"Cheers"

Now, this is a show that took a long time to make it to the top of the Nielsen ratings (the 1990/91 season was the show's eighth).  Ultimately though, it was worth the wait.  In my opinion, Cheers actually got better as the show progressed.

So, now we get to the main subject of this blog post.  And, well...it's based on a memory that I have of my mother growing up.  And how 1990 marked the year that a very significant change took place in her life.

I should set up the story. 

As much as she's probably going to kill me for revealing this information, my mother turned 45 years old in 1990.  And, up until this point, my mom and dad somehow ended up following the one child per decade law.  They had a child in the 1960s, a child in the 1970s, and a child in the 1980s.  By the time 1990 rolled around, I think my mom was exhausted!

Way too exhausted to give me a little brother or a sister, even though I pointed out that it was the 1990s now and that it was technically time for her and dad to have another kid. 

Needless to say, I remained the baby of the family.  Much to my chagrin.

But anyway, my then 45-year-old mother was re-evaluating her looks and she decided that she wanted to make a drastic change.

She wanted to cut her hair short.



Looking back on it, I can see why she wanted to make that decision.  For the first 45 years of her life, my mother always had long hair.  In her childhood photos, her wedding photo, and any snapshots that were taken between her wedding day and 1990 had her hair styled in a variety of different ways from shoulder length to chin length to Marge Simpson bouffant.



(Ah...you thought I was kidding about the Marge Simpson hair, didn't you?  Only difference was that it was never dyed royal blue.  Dark brown, yes.  Royal blue, no.  And right now, I'm thinking that my family is rethinking their hiding spot for the family album!)

But I think somewhere along the way, my mother decided that long hair was too hard to keep maintained, so when 1990 arrived, she made the decision to cut her hair short.

Now, she didn't completely shave off the whole thing.  She left a little bit of length up on top so that she could take a curling iron to it if she so desired to.  But I have to say, it was quite a change for her, and quite a change for the rest of us in the family.



But, I think as you can see...it turned out beautifully.

But then, my mother is a very beautiful person.  Inside and out.

And, well...she's had quite a life.



As a young woman.



As a daughter.



As a mother.



As a grandmother.

She truly is one of the best.  Love you, Mom!  No matter how short your hair gets!



Which, in this recent picture, you have to admit...it's pretty short!  But hey.  She still looks fabulous no matter what!

We'll continue on with the 1990s with the tenth year of life...and I'll have to get back to you on what I'll be talking about during that time period, because honestly I haven't decided what to talk about yet.

Once again...Happy Mother's Day everybody!

Saturday, May 09, 2015

Year Eight - One Wedding and a Funeral

Well, here we are.  We're at the tail end of the 1980s in this month long retrospective of personal stories from the brain and memory of Matthew. 

It's funny how time works.  When I was actually growing up in the 1980s, they seemed like the decade that would never end.  I remember it being a big deal when the calendar changed over from 1989 to 1990 because as an eight year old child, it seemed as though 1989 lasted FOREVER!  To go from the eighties to the nineties seemed like a milestone to me!  And we weren't even close to 2000 yet!

Sigh.  Then again, at the age of eight, I thought everything was exciting.



Anyway, welcome to the eighth edition of A POP CULTURE ADDICT RETROSPECTIVE, which means that I'll be telling a story or two from the year that I was eight years old.  And, to be honest with you, if seven was a not so lucky year, eight ended up being much better.  I was in the third grade with a teacher I enjoyed, I started to hit one growth spurt after another, and I totally slaughtered a group of high school students at the local corner store...



...in Bubble Bobble.  What, you thought I'd actually go after teenagers with violence in mind?  Please.  Not my style.  That, plus they would have kicked my butt.  At least Bubble Bobble was a safer challenge option.

Confession:  I STILL love Bubble Bobble some 26 years later!

Okay, so let's see what was happening in the world of pop culture around the time that I turned eight years old.



Well, apparently my Ninja Turtle obsession was in full swing.  Funny thing is, you could probably buy that same exact shirt that I am wearing in 2015, with the way they've come back in style!  I still don't know how to explain the loud shorts and velcro shoes though.  Oh, and you probably noticed that I didn't really smile that much in this photo.  Let's just say that there was a reason why my nickname in '89 was "Gummy".  Losing nine baby teeth that year probably did it.

Okay, so what else was big in '89 besides the Ninja Turtles?



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1989
"I'll Be There For You" - BON JOVI

Bon Jovi was one of those artists that I could take or leave.  In the case of my sister though, she has seen him in concert some six times.  Or was it seven?  Whatever the case, I like this one.  For some reason though, I always thought that Paula Abdul had the #1 song this week 26 years ago.  Maybe some site was reporting false information.  Wouldn't be the first time.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1989
"See No Evil, Hear No Evil"

I saw not this film, nor have I even heard of this film.  But given that Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder starred in it, I guess it can't be that bad.  Well, barring the poor reviews, that is.



#1 TELEVISION SHOW FOR THE 1989/1990 SEASON
"Roseanne"

Okay, technically this show tied for first place with "The Cosby Show".  But I've put down the Cosby Show in this spot for the last four entries!  It's time for a change!  And, well...Roseanne was probably considered the "anti-Cosby Show"!

So, 1989 was one of those years in which I saw two different extremes.  I went to both my first wedding, as well as my first funeral.  If I remember correctly, both events took place only months apart.

Now, I'll just briefly talk about the funeral, just because I don't want to make this entry too depressing.  But the first funeral I went to was my Uncle Roy's funeral.  Well, okay, I suppose you could technically call him my great-uncle.  But we just called him Uncle Roy.  I don't really remember interacting with him a whole lot, but from what I have heard, we got along fine.

The funeral itself was a small gathering.  I remember that my parents sort of debated whether I should go or not, because at that time I was still sort of questioning what it meant to die.  I knew what death was at eight years old, but it never really hit me just how final it really was.  The funeral was one that was open casket before the service began, and to an eight year old kid, you think that the person in the coffin is just having a nap.  The only difference is that the person in the coffin won't wake up ever again.  And once you really process that, it's quite sobering.  When my grandmother passed away two years later, I completely understood.

The funeral itself was nice though...well, as nice as a funeral could be, I suppose.  I do remember one really random part of it though.  It was at the burial site, and we all gathered around to watch the coffin get placed into the ground.  One thing I remember is hearing my grandmother screeching, and when we turned around, we saw a little snake slithering around one of the tombstones. 

Does anyone know if that is symbolic in any way?  Please let me know!

Now, as for the wedding, that was definitely a much happier occasion.  Now, I should tell you that the wedding that I attended was my eldest sister's.  And I should also tell you that my sister happens to be fifteen years older than I am.  So, that explains that.  It's not like my sister was in one of those arranged marriages where she was betrothed at thirteen.

So, this occasion meant that we all had to dress up.  Including me, the person who believed that the only person who should wear a tuxedo is James Bond. 

Have a look at our family photo taken on September 23, 1989.



Okay, so that would be my parents, my sisters, and the short kid at the end in the tuxedo and cheeky grin would be yours truly.  It's so funny, in 1989, I was the shortest one of the family.  Who knew that I would inevitably end up being the only one in my family to surpass six feet in height?  Just goes to show you how time flowing can make the impossible happen.

So, there were really no major things that I had to do for the wedding.  I didn't have to read any passages, I didn't have to carry the rings on a little pillow.  All I had to do was show up and throw confetti at the end of the ceremony.  That was all.  Though, I imagine that during the whole ceremony I was fidgeting with my bowtie.  I absolutely hate bowties and if I ever get married, I'm getting one of those ties you can buy at Walmart that all you have to do is pull the tie and it goes tighter.

(I'm really lazy when it comes to formal wear.  Can't you tell?)

The wedding ceremony went well, and the reception was also quite successful, even though there were a couple of parts that I would like to forget.

For one, the reception was held at our town country club.  It was a good location and had a lot of room, but I've never really felt comfortable at places in which only rich people really hang around at.  Of course, that could be because I've never...well...been rich.  At least not monetarily anyway.

Second, I remember having sore feet at the reception, not because of the fact that I was wearing ill-fitting shoes, but because the whole family had to stand around and greet every single guest that showed up at the wedding before we could even sit down and enjoy the reception.  And to an eight-year-old, it seemed like our entire city was invited to the reception, even though it was only a couple hundred.

Thirdly, I thought that my parents were going to absolutely kill me when it came time to serve desserts at the reception.  I had grabbed some of the chocolate mousse, because it looked like the only dessert that I would actually like.  Did I mention that I was wearing a RENTED tuxedo?

Chocolate mousse + rented tuxedo = NEAR DISASTER!

Yep, somehow I spilled chocolate mousse all over my tuxedo jacket, and my parents had a major bird about it.  It wasn't until I discovered how much the tuxedo cost that I realized why that was the case!  Fortunately, the chocolate mousse did not leave behind a permanent stain on the jacket, and it was returned the next day with every single member of my family not even letting on that anything had happened that would cause them to get suspicious.

Not that it really matters much now anyway if they did find out.  The tuxedo shop went out of business in the 1990s anyway.

But, yeah, that's what I remember most about being eight.  Going to a wedding and a funeral.

Tomorrow, we're smack dab in the middle of 1990...and because it's Mother's Day, I thought I would tell a Mom related story.

Friday, May 08, 2015

The Unluckiest Part Of Year Seven

Come.  Walk with me.  We're about to take a trip back through time to another memorable year.

Yes, we're now entering the year of the great '88.  And, I have to say that for the most part, 1988 was a great year.

Well, with one notable exception.



Anyway, we'll get to that in a bit.  This is the story of my seventh year, which spanned from 1988 to 1989.  The eighties were in their final stages, pastel coloured clothing was in, and heavy metal was getting competition from electronic pop music.  It wasn't often you saw Belinda Carlisle and Stacey Q releasing new music alongside Poison and Guns 'N Roses, I'll tell you that much!

So, 1988 was the year I turned seven.  Let's take a look as see what was happening during the lucky seven year. 




Apparently I was really happy to get "Toss Across".  The life size tic-tac-toe game was always fun for a laugh!

And, now let's take a look at what the top pop culture moments were around this time.



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1988
"Anything For You" - GLORIA ESTEFAN & THE MIAMI SOUND MACHINE

Aww...what a nice song this is.  For some reason, I seem to remember ballads being really big on the charts during 1988.  Well, ballads, "Kokomo", and Kylie Minogue's "Loco-Motion".  Still, this hit by Gloria and the Miami Sound Machine is really good.  I'm liking it! 



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1988
"Friday the 13th: Part VII:  The New Blood"

Obviously I did NOT see this movie when it first came out.  Truth be told, I still haven't seen this one.  After the second movie came out, the entire series got real stupid, real fast.



#1 TELEVISION SERIES FOR THE 1988/1989 SEASON
"The Cosby Show"

Surprise, surprise.  At least they finally redid their opening titles to look like something completely different.

And now for my personal stories about my seventh year.  I finally escaped first grade and made it into second, where I ended up having two different teachers!  I recall that I and a couple of other kids in my original grade two classroom were moved to the class next door, as for some reason my class had too many kids.  I really don't remember the reason.  Either way, I liked Miss Johnson, my second grade teacher a lot.  And, I think she liked me too, even though I ended up missing a lot of school that year.

And when I say that I missed a lot of school that year, I mean I missed closed to one-third of the school year!  I think the only reason why I passed into the third grade was because I kept up with my schoolwork during that year.

But why did I miss so much school?

Well, turns out that year seven wasn't quite so lucky for me.  When I turned seven, it was like my whole body decided to fall apart on me.  I ended up with the stomach flu twice that year, I probably missed a couple of days here and there with constant sinus infections, and when you add all those days up, I ended up missing 50 days of school altogether!

Not exactly my most stellar attendance performance, let me tell you.

And it probably didn't make much of a good impression on my teacher when during my first month of grade two I ended up missing a whole week of school because I was in the hospital! 



Not exactly a great memory.

I'll set up the story.  It was September 1988, and I had been in school for a couple of weeks by this point.  I had gotten a cold during that time, but I thought nothing of it, as colds were as common in grade two as head lice - well, okay, head lice wasn't common in your school, but it seemed to be in mine.  We will not discuss further.

The problem was that the cold was not going away.  And my breathing was not good.  And we can forget about being effective in gym class.  I was never a gym rat to begin with, but I was gasping for air whenever I tried to run a lap around the gym.  It was definitely enough of a concern for my mom to bring me to the hospital emergency room to do some tests on me to find out what was going on.

And, let me tell you.  Being a patient in a hospital (especially as a child) is not a fun experience.  Having to lie on a hospital slab, having all of these nurses ask you questions, breathing for them, getting blood work done.  I felt like I was their own personal science experiment.

And lemme just get this out of the way first.  I know it's been 27 years since this happened, but to the nurse who rammed the needle into my arm causing me extreme pain while taking my blood...you are not a vampire, and I wasn't a dartboard!  Be more gentle!!!

Anyway, after the breathing tests were done, the doctor confirmed that I had asthma.  And anyone who has suffered with asthma knows that it is not fun.  You have to stop and catch your breath for doing the slightest moves, and you can't keep up with anyone else. 

And because I had asthma, I also had a bit of an infection deep within my body that regular antibiotics couldn't heal.  There was no banana flavoured penicillin for me that week.  Instead what ended up happening was that I was admitted into the hospital where every two hours I had to have a mask strapped onto my face where I would breathe in antibiotics to heal me. 

That meant that I had to spend a whole week in the hospital, and that completely was not a fun experience.

Then again, does ANYONE have a fun time at the hospital?  With food that may or may not be edible, and spending a lot of time in bed not doing anything, it's not like I was on vacation at Club Med. 

I was really upset the day I was admitted to the hospital because we had planned a movie night where I would watch Dumbo on VHS.  And well, that movie night was cancelled.  Instead, I spent my first night in the hospital watching a television that was no bigger than a smartphone trying to make out the characters on the three channels that I could get.  The only consolation was that one of the channels that I got was PBS, so Sesame Street and other kids shows could entertain me.  And of course, my teacher sent me assignments to work on while I was in the hospital, so I could keep up with the rest of the class.  Truth be told, homework was a nice distraction from the scary masks and people that I didn't know.

Still, that whole experience was a very scary one.  It was the first time that I had to be separated from my family and I didn't really handle it well at all.  Once I was released, I was fine though, and it made me realize that if I could get through that hospital stay, then things would get easier.  Who knew that little hospital stay would be a precursor for a much longer one some twenty-three years later?

Anyway, that's the one thing that I remember about second grade and my seventh year of life.  Being hospitalized. 



To make matters worse, I was hospitalized during class picture day, and second grade was the one year that I never had a class photo taken.  But I guess it was a blessing in disguise.  Because I had to get my photo done on class retake day, I had extra time to prepare.  And as you can see from the image above, it turned out beautifully.

Though, I think my parents were influence by the Cosby Show a little TOO much.


Coming up tomorrow, my eighth year on this world sees my very first wedding...as well as my very first funeral.

Thursday, May 07, 2015

My Sixth Birthday With Little Archie

Hello, everybody!

The month long feature of personal stories seems to be going quite well, and I hope that you are enjoying each tale that I tell.  Believe me, they're fun to write.



In today's edition, we're going to take a look back at the time period between 1987 and 1988 - otherwise known as Year Six.

And, certainly it was a year that had a lot of ups and downs.  But we'll get to that a little later.

In the meantime, we have some pop culture tidbits to look at first.  I turned six years old on May 18, 1987.  Let's see what was big that week...



...oh yeah.  I nearly forgot the snapshot.  And, well...all I can say is that it was the 1980s.  Everyone wore questionable clothing back in those days.  I also have no idea why this photo turned out so red.  I guess maybe we had the roll of film developed at a substandard darkroom.  Who knows really?



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1987
"With or Without You" - U2

I absolutely loved "The Joshua Tree" album by U2, and every single song on that album is a genuine classic.  Though my favourite song from that album is "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", I admit that this song is a nice runner-up.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE THE WEEK OF 5/18/1987
"Ishtar"

Oh, great.  One of the worst movies ever made during the 1980s.  How the hell did it become the top movie of the week?  I just don't get the movie business.  The sad thing is that the following week, the top movie was "Beverly Hills Cop II" - which stayed on top for three times as long!



#1 TELEVISION SHOW DURING THE 1987/1988 SEASON
"The Cosby Show"

Even Lisa Bonet's departure from the show when she launched "A Different World" didn't keep the show from losing any steam!

Okay, so my sixth year of life also happened to be a year in which I had to undergo a lot of changes.  I talked about how we had to make a huge move to a different house in the previous entry, and by the time 1987 rolled around, I had started to get used to our new home.

I also had to make the move from kindergarten to first grade.  And to say that I absolutely hated first grade would be the understatement of the entire year.  It was mostly because of the teacher, though.

And really, I've talked about her enough here.  I don't want to give that horrible woman any more attention.

Oh, and for some reason, I remember my sixth birthday party extremely well.  It was a surprise party that my family threw for me, and I have to say, I was very surprised!  They really went all out for me that year!  I guess they wanted to make it extra special since it was my first birthday in a new home.  Oh, I wish I had pictures to show you of that birthday party.  Instead, I'll have to show you a picture of Christmas Day 1987 where apparently I didn't look like I was in a good mood even though I was.



Oh, and true story.  See the long johns stocking behind me?  That was my stocking!

But we're not here to talk about stockings.  We're here to talk about the year that a major obsession of mine began. 

It was in 1987 that my mother went grocery shopping, as she did every week back in those days).  By this point in time, my sisters were old enough to babysit me leaving my mom free to do errands (which leads me to believe that maybe my unplanned birth turned out to be an asset after all).  When she came back from the store, she had a surprise in one of the grocery bags for me.  And at the time, I was thinking that it was something food related.  After all, she did come from the grocery store.

I wondered what it was.  Was it my favourite cereal at the time which was "Cocoa Pebbles"?  Was it a case of Cherry 7-Up?  Was it one of those frozen Sara Lee chocolate layer cakes? 

Side note:  Why in the hell did they discontinue Sara Lee chocolate layer cakes?  Those things were so good!

No, it turned out that it wasn't anything that could be eaten.  It was one of these.



It was a Little Archie comic book.  #24 in what would become a series of 48 issues.  And, it was all mine.  128 pages of jokes, riddles, puzzles - and the occasional advertisement for kids to sell things to earn money to buy a Nintendo!

Little did my mother know that one book would begin an obsession that would last 28 years and counting.  How that one book would eventually turn into three thousand and counting.  How much of an impact that this book would have on my life.

I suppose that it was a good thing that my very first comic book was a Little Archie comic book.  Granted, Little Archie was a spinoff title from the original Archie comic title, which featured Archie, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, and Jughead as high school juniors at Riverdale High.  But Little Archie was a great starter title for me because the characters were all elementary school aged.



Consider Little Archie as the stories from Archie and the gang back when they were in second grade.  As someone who was just about to turn six when he got his first comic book, having the main characters of the books as seven year olds was nice.  I felt like I could relate to them more even though Little Archie and his pals and gals were having a lot more adventures than I was. 

Now back in the days in which I started reading Little Archie, there were two main artists who drew Little Archie.  For comedic stories that usually had a lot of laughs, Dexter Taylor usually drew those stories.  For stories that were more dramatic in nature, Bob Bolling usually drew those ones.  Either way, I found both artist to have their pros and cons. 



But man, some of the storylines that Little Archie and the gang encountered were quite outrageous.  I seem to remember them finding hidden pirate treasure, rescuing Miss Grundy from her psycho housekeeper, swimming with sharks, and having poor Little Archie discover that hunters shot and nearly killed his dog, Spotty!

I think the worst thing that happened to me at the age of six was accidentally swallowing a baby tooth!  I mean, Little Archie and his friends made Chuck Norris look like a wimp!

But you know, that was a part of the charm that Archie comics had.  These were kids that I wanted to have in my classroom in first grade.  I didn't want the kids who would make fun of me because I walked on my tip toes.  I didn't want the kids who would only play with me at recess to snatch my Oreos and Snoopy fruit punch, only to completely ignore me the rest of the day.  I certainly didn't want kids who only sat beside me to copy off of my schoolwork.  I wanted to be in a class where students and teachers treated me with respect.  Like I actually belonged in the classroom instead of being everybody's migraine headache.



That's what Little Archie did for me.  It was a comic book that allowed me to escape the harsh realities of first grade (and if you've read any of the stories from first grade, you know how harsh it really was) and allowed me to visit the perfectly idyllic fictional community of Riverdale whenever I wanted.  I felt like I was with Little Archie and Jughead trying to catch the Perilous Pike from Carson's Creek.  I felt like I was hanging around with Betty and Veronica at Pop's Chocklit Shop sharing a chocolate malted with them.  Heck, I didn't even mind watching Miss Grundy yell at Reggie and give him detention for one of his nasty schemes because at least Miss Grundy wasn't as mean as the teacher that I had.

So, I think that is why I made Archie comics my obsession.  They were a gateway to a world that I really wanted to be a part of.  And even though it was a fictional community, I still felt like I was a part of it.  It's really what kept me sane during my entire school career.

Of course, the Little Archie title is one that is no longer published.  I think the last regular issue of the title was released in 1998.  However, you can still find an occasional Little Archie story in any random Archie Digest today.  Some people dismiss them as being too juvenile, but considering that Little Archie was my gateway to the wonderful world of Riverdale, I obviously have a really big soft spot for Little Archie stories.



And, to conclude this look back on six years old, I want to pay tribute to the late Dexter Taylor, who passed away earlier this year.  I never met the man, but he was the artist who brought Little Archie to life so many years ago, and honestly, his passion for Little Archie provided Archie fans years of memories.  And I am honoured to count myself as one of his fans.

Thank you Dexter Taylor for the memories.

Tomorrow, we take a look at year seven - which includes one of the scariest moments that my kid self faced.

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Year Five - Goodbye, St. Paul Street

It's Wednesday, May 6, 2015 and the Pop Culture Addict's Anniversary celebration continues on!



Today we are going back in time twenty-nine years to the year 1986.  Right around this time, I turned five years old.  A whole half decade.  And yet, my parents never really got sick of me!

It was a year in which I officially started school (I skipped preschool and junior kindergarten and went right on to kindergarten), and it was a year in which I discovered my love of Muppet Babies and Pee-Wee's Playhouse!

But the year wasn't exactly all fun and games, to be perfectly honest.  It was a bit of a bittersweet kind of year to be truthful.  It was a year in which you could never be too young to learn about disappointment and unfairness, and it was a year in which I learned all about how sometimes you had to adapt to change even if you weren't really ready for it.

But before we get into that story, I want to go into a few highlights from pop culture past.   I wonder what was going on during the week that I turned five?

Well, let's start with a photo.



For some reason, I don't have a whole lot of photos taken from 1986.  The topic of today's blog post might have a little to do with it, as you'll soon see, but I think that the family camera had malfunctioned around 1986.  So, here's a repost of my Easter adventures at the mall with the Easter bunny.  Don't worry.  I have shots for the rest of the decade.



#1 SONG THE WEEK OF 5/18/1986
"Greatest Love of All" - WHITNEY HOUSTON

This was one of Whitney's first #1 singles, and it is about the power of loving yourself because self-esteem is truly the greatest love of all.  A poignant hit that should be my theme song today.



#1 AT THE BOX OFFICE WEEK OF 5/18/1986
"Top Gun"

Ah, now here's a great movie, made before Tom Cruise reportedly lost his mind.  True story.  When my parents got their very first VCR (and yes, I am totally dating myself here), this was the very first movie that they watched on it.  Still holds up nearly thirty years later.



#1 TELEVISION SHOW FOR THE 1986/1987 SEASON
"The Cosby Show"

The second year in a row that "The Cosby Show" was #1.  I wonder if this marks the beginning of a trend?  Oh, well.  I guess it makes sense.  I used to watch this show back then.

And now comes the moment in which I realized that life sometimes wasn't fair.  And it all stems from one fateful day in 1986.

Now, I may have spoken about this before in this blog, but I think it is worth repeating here.  My parents have never been homeowners.  Ever.  They have always been renters.  Oh, sure, they really wanted to be homeowners once upon a time, but nothing ever worked out. 

The biggest obstacle was of course, financial.  With three kids to raise, and only one parent working, it's fair to say that life wasn't always easy.  But I will give my parents a whole lot of credit.  When times were tough, they made sure that we were taken care of.

But it wasn't easy.  Before I was four years old, my family moved in and out of three different homes.  Luckily, I don't remember much of that period, but I imagine the stress of being forced to change addresses was quite high for the rest of the family. 

In fact, the earliest place of residence that I can remember living in was a house in town that was by the river.  It was on a little side street called St. Paul Street, and it was located in a really awesome location.  It was just a few feet away from the St. Lawrence River.  It was just around the corner from the downtown core of the city.  It was right across the street from the local arts centre.  And it was a really big house.

Well, at least, it SEEMED big to me.  Two stories, a gigantic kitchen, lots of room to move around in, and a gigantic staircase that was a lot of fun to hang around.  That's the one place I used to love in that house the most.  The stairs were always the place where I could be found reading a book or sliding down them on my butt.  Mind you, they were also the place where I slid down the banister even though I was told not to, and paid for my misbehaviour with a light spanking.  But, I never did it again after that!

I even remember the actual address of the home we lived in.  35 St. Paul Street.  It was such an awesome house to live in, and despite the fact that the roof needed fixing and that our backyard wasn't exactly all that big, it was home.  And I truly thought that it would remain my home for years to come.

At least, that's what I thought until the summer of '86.

You see, 35 St. Paul Street was a lovely home.  But it technically wasn't OUR home.  It belonged to somebody else.  As did most of the other homes on our side of the street.  Now, I wasn't really privy to all of the political dealings that were going on in our city at that time, as I was only five years old and the only thing that I was concerned about was trying to decide whether to watch "Today's Special" or "Sesame Street" on television.  But what had happened was that my entire neighbourhood had been sold to a real estate developer in the 1980s by the city.  It was a real sweetheart of a deal, I tell you.  Promises were made by both parties, and those promises were supposed to guarantee the economic future of the community.



You see, this developer (who for the sake of me protecting myself and not wanting to get sued for character assassination I will NOT reveal in this post, even though there's a part of me that really, REALLY wants to) had big plans.  Because the neighbourhood of St. Paul Street was so close to the waterfront, he had the idea to develop a shopping complex close to downtown so that it would encourage more people to come downtown to shop.  After all, he had a couple of businesses downtown already established at that time, and I'm sure that with his plan to build the strip mall close to the water and close to downtown, not only would his business benefit, but the rest of the businesses downtown would benefit financially as well.

And you know, I can see the argument.  I really can.  I absolutely encourage supporting the local economy wherever possible, and if he felt that building a strip mall by the river would improve the local economy, I would be all for it.

The problem was that the location that this developer had chosen to put the strip mall was...31 St. Paul Street.

The house two doors down from where my family lived.

And to make sure that the plaza was built to scale, the entire street, aside from two houses that were attached to the typewriter repair shop on the corner of King and St. Paul (it was the 1980s after all) was bulldozed.

Including 35 St. Paul Street.

I tell you, it was a really sad day for us to be forced out of our home.  As far as I could remember, it was the only home that I had ever really known and become familiar with.  I didn't want to leave it, even though we were basically told we had to in the name of "progress".

I think we were one of the last families to vacate the street.  We were having trouble finding a new place to live and we had just managed to find a new home at the very last minute.  By the time we were ready to move, the demolition crews had already begun working on tearing down the furthest house on the street, some six or seven doors down.  I'll never get that image out of my head as long as I live.  I knew the people who lived in all of those houses on St. Paul Street.  Most of them were good people who said hello to me when my mom and I walked downtown.  They didn't deserve to have their home being knocked down to the ground.

My family didn't deserve to see our home getting torn down.  Especially in the name of "progress".  We didn't care that this strip mall was going to be built and that it would save the economy of my town.  We still lost our home.

Of course, that was all in the name of "progress".  An entire neighbourhood of people had to be sacrificed because of a real estate development.

By the way, would you like to see what the shopping plaza at 31 St. Paul Street looks like today?  I don't have a picture available, but luckily, Google Maps will allow you to pull up any location you wish!  I took a screenshot of 31-35 St. Paul Street and I'm going to show you exactly what progress looks like.



Wait.  This can't be right.  Let me double check.  Yes, I did type in 35 St. Paul Street in the Google Maps search. 

Yes.  This is the very reason why seven families were evicted from St. Paul Street in the summer of 1986. 

They paved our paradise to put up a parking lot.

There's no shopping carts.  There's no boutiques.  There's no shoe stores.  There's not even a freakin' Dairy Queen.  It's just a great big empty lot.  Kind of symbolic for the great big empty promises that the developer made with no intention of keeping.

The city took a big gamble investing in this project, and that gamble did NOT pay off.  Nothing was ever built, the downtown economy continued to fall, and seven families (including mine) lost their homes.  Nicely done, I say to myself with the bitter taste of sarcasm.

You know, it's been 29 years since my family was forced to evacuate our home in the name of "progress".  Twenty-nine years since we were forced to watch the home we had known get turned to rubble to accommodate the promises made by so many people, only for those promises to crumble as quickly as the drywall that supported the houses that once stood on St. Paul Street.

And what many people don't know is that this incident helps me explain so much about how I turned out the way that I did.

A lot of people who I grew up with wondered why I seemed to shy away from getting involved with my community when I was in my teenage years.  Well, if you knew that the city council was one of the main reasons why your family lost their home, would you not have trust issues with them?  I went through a period where I didn't get too close to anyone or anything because I was worried that someone would come in and take them away.  That image of seeing part of my street being torn down still haunts me.

It's also affected the way that I see living arrangements.  Sure, I've lived in places since St. Paul Street, but none of them have ever really felt like home to me.  Even though the house we would move into after St. Paul Street was one in which I lived for fourteen years, I never really thought of it to be home, because I didn't want to feel the pain of losing it.  So, I never really allowed myself to have any sort of bond with any house or apartment that I lived in.  After all, my family always rented places.  The home was never really ours to begin with.  I just saw it as a place where we were temporarily staying until we were forced to leave again. 

I guess that's why I feel it so important to have a place that I can truly call home.  A place that is truly mine that NOBODY CAN TAKE AWAY FROM ME.  It's been a dream of mine for as long as I have been alive, and I think that I'm really close to making it a reality.  It is just going to take a lot of planning.

I also think that could be one of the main reasons why I've been so resistant to change.  Having moved to four different homes in five years would be rough on anyone, and I guess having to move around so much made me get frustrated and angry.  After we were forced out of St. Paul Street, I guess part of me had enough, and I didn't want to make any more changes.  The problem is, my life became stagnant and depressing. 

Oh, and as for the developer who destroyed an entire neighbourhood to put up his monument of nothingness?  I'll never forgive him for it.  The sad thing is, he probably doesn't even know who I am or who my family is.  We were after all not a part of the town elite.  Honestly, I don't care if he knows me or not.  I know enough about him to never trust anything he says.  After all, his permanent footprint on St. Paul Street serves as a reminder of just exactly how much a promise from him is worth. 

I wrote this piece to serve three purposes.  First, I needed to get it out of my system once and for all, and now that I have vented about it, I feel better.  Second, the loss of my family home was one of the most memorable things that I remember from my fifth year of life, and it should go to show that not all of my memories are positive ones.  And lastly, I wanted to pay tribute to all of the families who lost their homes during the summer of 1986.  None of us deserved it.  Truth is, we all deserved a lot better from the developer who developed nothing, as well as from the city itself. 



NEVER FORGET ST. PAUL STREET

Coming up in tomorrow's blog, we inch our way towards 1987, and it is during that year that an obsession began to develop...a nice distraction to everything else that was happening.