March 4: 1987
Lots of stuff happened to me in 1987 but there are three events that I
remember as milestones. I kissed a girl, I became a cinephile, and I did
my first ever paying magic show.
I shall start with the first.
My first kiss was in the schoolyard of Father Welihan elementary and junior high school somewhere in southwest Calgary. The date was Friday, Feb. 13. I was 14. The girl was either 13 or 12. Probably 13 because her birthday was Remembrance Day. I imagine that her birthday still is Remembrance Day. I remember her name but I will refer to her as JM because I don't want her to google herself one day, find this blog, and get mad at me.
Umm... I guess I don't have a whole lot more to say about JM except that she was a perfectly good first kiss. We enjoyed a brief and typical teenaged romance that involved hours of talking on the phone. We both loved horror movies and, by an odd coincidence, they were showing Friday the 13th part 2 on the late show following the Valentine's Dance at Father Welihan. I remember lying on the couch that night as Feb. 13 slowly morphed into Valentine's Day, watching Jason Voorhees slaughter stupid teenagers and thinking "I have kissed a girl. Life will never be the same again."
I talked to JM a lot over the next week and we made plans to go roller skating at Lloyd's Rollercade the following Saturday. And somehow I did something that offended JM and she broke up with me on the spot, only I didn't learn about it until Sunday evening when I called her to say hi and she told me she hated me and that I was stupid.
That summer, I met another girl with the same first name as JM. I will call her JD. I also got to kiss her but that one happened by my parents' garage in southwest Calgary, not in the schoolyard of Father Welihan.
JM had brown hair and she told me that everything in her room was pink and, during our phone conversations, she also told me a story about some kid in Grade 3 who'd stolen her skipping rope. I think JM is married now and this would be a good thing.
JD is the niece of an older magician who mentored me and she was 12 when I met her and I was 14 and she told me that her favourite TV show was Golden Girls and she also told me that her favourite song was George Michael's I WANT YOUR SEX and she seemed very sexually aware for a 12-year-old and I thought that I should be excited about this but, in truth, it scared the living daylights out of me.
-
1987 was also the year I became a cinephile. I saw lots of movies that year but two of them stand out in my mind. One is THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. The other is REVENGE OF THE NERDS, PART 2.
See, my dad had got me into James Bond two years ago when Roger Moore's 1982 offering, Octopussy, was making its television debut. I thought Bond was the coolest cat ever. Over the next couple months, I'd rent a different Bond film everytime we visited Video Show Place, which was a video store in southwest Calgary. I quickly exhausted all of them, and was excited when, in 1987, I would finally be able to see a Bond film in theatres.
I went alone because no one wanted to go with me. Most teenagers in the late 80s didn't care for James Bond. I think they were more into Family Ties, crimping their hair, and the World Wrestling Federation.
But I was happy to go to THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS by myself and now, more than two decades later, I still enjoy seeing movies by myself. When you see a movie by yourself, you don't have to worry if the other person likes it or that they'll ask you to pass the popcorn when there's an important plot element happening onscreen.
Later that summer, I went downtown by myself to watch REVENGE OF THE NERDS, PART 2.
I had seen the original REVENGE OF THE NERDS at Jason's 13th birthday party and I loved it, just like everyone else did. REVENGE OF THE NERDS has earned something of a cult status even though the heroes (the nerds) do something really creepy in the film's penultimate scene - they break into the girls' dorm and plant hidden video cameras. We found it funny as kids. In the real world, the nerds would have been expelled, blacklisted, and would have faced possible jail time.
There was no such scene in the sequel. Part 2 featured the nerds at a sorority retreat in Florida, where they were bullied by another sorority just because they were nerds. Toward the end of the film, the popular hunk is berating Lewis, the nerd, telling him that he will always be ugly and nerdy and that he, the hunk, will always be cool and rich and handsome. And then Lewis punches him in the head and the crowd cheers and Lewis kisses the girl. The message of REVENGE OF THE NERDS PART 2 is that violence solves everything.
(Fun fact: the actor that played the villain in Revenge of the Nerds Part 2 had his windpipe squeezed by Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.)
-
In December of 1987, I did my first paying magic show. It was a Christmas party for a Presbyterian Church on 17th Avenue in Calgary. I used the money to buy Christmas presents.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
I shall start with the first.
My first kiss was in the schoolyard of Father Welihan elementary and junior high school somewhere in southwest Calgary. The date was Friday, Feb. 13. I was 14. The girl was either 13 or 12. Probably 13 because her birthday was Remembrance Day. I imagine that her birthday still is Remembrance Day. I remember her name but I will refer to her as JM because I don't want her to google herself one day, find this blog, and get mad at me.
Umm... I guess I don't have a whole lot more to say about JM except that she was a perfectly good first kiss. We enjoyed a brief and typical teenaged romance that involved hours of talking on the phone. We both loved horror movies and, by an odd coincidence, they were showing Friday the 13th part 2 on the late show following the Valentine's Dance at Father Welihan. I remember lying on the couch that night as Feb. 13 slowly morphed into Valentine's Day, watching Jason Voorhees slaughter stupid teenagers and thinking "I have kissed a girl. Life will never be the same again."
I talked to JM a lot over the next week and we made plans to go roller skating at Lloyd's Rollercade the following Saturday. And somehow I did something that offended JM and she broke up with me on the spot, only I didn't learn about it until Sunday evening when I called her to say hi and she told me she hated me and that I was stupid.
That summer, I met another girl with the same first name as JM. I will call her JD. I also got to kiss her but that one happened by my parents' garage in southwest Calgary, not in the schoolyard of Father Welihan.
JM had brown hair and she told me that everything in her room was pink and, during our phone conversations, she also told me a story about some kid in Grade 3 who'd stolen her skipping rope. I think JM is married now and this would be a good thing.
JD is the niece of an older magician who mentored me and she was 12 when I met her and I was 14 and she told me that her favourite TV show was Golden Girls and she also told me that her favourite song was George Michael's I WANT YOUR SEX and she seemed very sexually aware for a 12-year-old and I thought that I should be excited about this but, in truth, it scared the living daylights out of me.
-
1987 was also the year I became a cinephile. I saw lots of movies that year but two of them stand out in my mind. One is THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. The other is REVENGE OF THE NERDS, PART 2.
See, my dad had got me into James Bond two years ago when Roger Moore's 1982 offering, Octopussy, was making its television debut. I thought Bond was the coolest cat ever. Over the next couple months, I'd rent a different Bond film everytime we visited Video Show Place, which was a video store in southwest Calgary. I quickly exhausted all of them, and was excited when, in 1987, I would finally be able to see a Bond film in theatres.
I went alone because no one wanted to go with me. Most teenagers in the late 80s didn't care for James Bond. I think they were more into Family Ties, crimping their hair, and the World Wrestling Federation.
But I was happy to go to THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS by myself and now, more than two decades later, I still enjoy seeing movies by myself. When you see a movie by yourself, you don't have to worry if the other person likes it or that they'll ask you to pass the popcorn when there's an important plot element happening onscreen.
Later that summer, I went downtown by myself to watch REVENGE OF THE NERDS, PART 2.
I had seen the original REVENGE OF THE NERDS at Jason's 13th birthday party and I loved it, just like everyone else did. REVENGE OF THE NERDS has earned something of a cult status even though the heroes (the nerds) do something really creepy in the film's penultimate scene - they break into the girls' dorm and plant hidden video cameras. We found it funny as kids. In the real world, the nerds would have been expelled, blacklisted, and would have faced possible jail time.
There was no such scene in the sequel. Part 2 featured the nerds at a sorority retreat in Florida, where they were bullied by another sorority just because they were nerds. Toward the end of the film, the popular hunk is berating Lewis, the nerd, telling him that he will always be ugly and nerdy and that he, the hunk, will always be cool and rich and handsome. And then Lewis punches him in the head and the crowd cheers and Lewis kisses the girl. The message of REVENGE OF THE NERDS PART 2 is that violence solves everything.
(Fun fact: the actor that played the villain in Revenge of the Nerds Part 2 had his windpipe squeezed by Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.)
-
In December of 1987, I did my first paying magic show. It was a Christmas party for a Presbyterian Church on 17th Avenue in Calgary. I used the money to buy Christmas presents.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Comments
Post a Comment