Last night I found myself assisting with a seventh grade social studies assignment. Constructing timelines, Warren was to find key events in his life, as well as three other family members. From there, he had to come up with two world events that affected the family - and we were not to use 9/11 if at all possible - as many would use that. (Also, one aside. Warren has been grounded from his phone for the past 3 days and he has really talked and interacted with me more!)
While talking about world events, I brought up the debut of the first video on MTV. (Of course I remembered the year and the video - 1981, Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles!) Warren asked, "what is MTV?"
I almost fell off my chair. People, I consider that a parenting fail. I am exposing my kiddos to all kinds of music (sometimes much to their dismay), but I had neglected the music videos. I know, I know, there are some inappropriate ones. And the newer music videos that are on YouTube? Wow, they are much even for me, and I don't consider myself a prude. And so I began my description of the mind blowing revolution that was MTV.
I found old videos online, and it was around this time that two of Warren's friends came over to hang out. So there we were - gathered around the laptop as I showed them Beat It, Thriller, Video Killed The Radio Star, Kid n' Play, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Def Leppard, MC Hammer and more. The kids laughed at the absurdity of the videos as I explained that this was all so awesome back in the day. As I heard myself saying "awesome" and "back in the day" I realized that 1 - I am old, 2 - I sound like the old man telling stories of walking to school up hill both ways, and 3 - I must show them the a-ha 'Take on Me' video.
Digging myself further into my 'back when I was your age' grave, I then told the boys how we did not have access to the lyrics of our favorite songs. "We had to listen for the radio station to play the song we wanted to hear, then record it on a cassette tape. From there, you replayed and rewound the tape trying to figure out the lyrics, writing them down on looseleaf. I used to do this for hours..."
Yeah, they stared at me blankly.
I shut up.
I hadn't even gotten to tell them about calling the radio station repeatedly to request songs! Ugh, kids these days.
I am so old.
Fun fact: the lyrics for every song were invariably listed on the jacket notes that accompanied every album/cassette/CD. You were most likely the only person in North America not to realize this. Good job, good effort.
Posted by: Theo Epstein | August 28, 2014 at 09:02 PM