I was rather alone. I had just travelled across the country to eastern Idaho to go to college. I had been given a partial track scholarship, so I knew the track coach (sort of), but I knew no one else in the city. My parents had helped me move into an apartment and had left to return to the Oregon Coast. I was alone. But I had my music. My recently acquired Pat Benatar album kept me company. Pat, And Tom Petty, and Pink Floyd, they were all my friends and helped me while away the time and made me forget that I was alone. Soon I would start attending classes, start getting together with my fellow track team members, and start my part-time job in the cafeteria, but until then, the hours were empty. I had scarcely been there a day, my stereo blasting away, when I heard a knock at the door. It was a pretty, dark-haired woman with a kind smile. She explained that she lived directly upstairs and the previous tenants had been known to play their music at all hours of the night, and could
What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school. It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults pay atten