31 Days, 31 Memories - Day 1
Jan. 1st, 2006 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicHappy 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.
no subject
Date: Jan. 1st, 2006 04:19 pm (UTC)By the way, I have a draft of Dracula to show you, but it's missing a few verses of some songs, and I don't know how to send you the music, and the music doesn't work if you try to open another window and all the lyrics are the old ones, so you won't be able to follow along ANYWAY, but the show really isn't the same without the music, so I don't know what to do.
Oh, and I was in Poet's Corner yesterday and saw the memorial to Byron, with the "there is that within me" quote on it, and wanted to take a picture of it for you, but I figured that you probably already HAD a picture, and I didn't want to be chased and arrested by Westminster Abbey guards for taking illegal pictures, so I didn't, but I wanted to.
Anyway, happy new year!
no subject
Date: Jan. 2nd, 2006 06:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 13th, 2006 02:27 pm (UTC)I don't think I had the guts to snap a photo of Byron's memorial either, though I did quite enjoy Poet's Corner. Does it have the quote? Lovely.
no subject
Date: Jan. 2nd, 2006 01:13 pm (UTC)When we reached the check-in, my bear had to be sent through the luggage-thingy that checks what's inside. Obviously they had to do this - especially because we were flying to an area that was close to the Iran/Iraq war and had been contended at one point during that war.
I was inconsolable. I was sure my bear would be dissolved or swallowed up whole inside that thing. I'd have gone with him if I could. Fortunately, both he and I survived, but I'll never forget how sad and frightened I was.