31 Days, 31 Memories - Day 1
Happy New Year!
Thus commences our month-long creative writing project of sorts -- a memory per day for all of January. Please, feel free to contribute as often as you like.
1. Elementary School
When my sister and I were pre-school-aged, our parents taped the Care Bears Movie II for us off Pay Per View. We watched it at least a dozen times; to this day we can sing and recite lines from it with the right inflection. The trouble with the tape was that someone had changed the channel for two or three seconds while it was recording, so after the heart-shaped Caring Meter drooped and sounded its haunting chime that meant a child down on Earth was sad, the picture cut to Pay Per View's menu with a Muzak beat. Then it went back to the bears as they put on their parachutes.
One day I was sitting in our neighbors' stale-smoky 1970s living room watching TV-I must have stayed home sick from school-and the movie came on. Everything was normal through the Caring Meter alarm, and then-the picture didn't switch. Of course I was old enough to know that the same bit of cartoon wouldn't be missing on broadcast just because it was missing from our videotape, but I hadn't thought about it, and felt a jolt when the pink screen and electronic drums we knew so well failed to appear. And then came the wonder as I experienced, for the first and only time, the few seconds of action and dialogue that meant little to the story but a lot to me.
Thus commences our month-long creative writing project of sorts -- a memory per day for all of January. Please, feel free to contribute as often as you like.
1. Elementary School
When my sister and I were pre-school-aged, our parents taped the Care Bears Movie II for us off Pay Per View. We watched it at least a dozen times; to this day we can sing and recite lines from it with the right inflection. The trouble with the tape was that someone had changed the channel for two or three seconds while it was recording, so after the heart-shaped Caring Meter drooped and sounded its haunting chime that meant a child down on Earth was sad, the picture cut to Pay Per View's menu with a Muzak beat. Then it went back to the bears as they put on their parachutes.
One day I was sitting in our neighbors' stale-smoky 1970s living room watching TV-I must have stayed home sick from school-and the movie came on. Everything was normal through the Caring Meter alarm, and then-the picture didn't switch. Of course I was old enough to know that the same bit of cartoon wouldn't be missing on broadcast just because it was missing from our videotape, but I hadn't thought about it, and felt a jolt when the pink screen and electronic drums we knew so well failed to appear. And then came the wonder as I experienced, for the first and only time, the few seconds of action and dialogue that meant little to the story but a lot to me.