June 15 - Happy days
My note-a-day project is almost halfway done. I notice that an
extraordinary number of these notes deal with my teenaged years. I guess
that means that's the time when I was happiest or it's when I underwent
the most psychological trauma. Maybe both.
I read somewhere that life peaks at about age 25, then it goes downhill and then we're suddenly happy again when we turn 70. I am not 70. Won't get there for another 30 years. So now I guess I'll just mull over my adolescence some more.
-
My friend, Jeff Belcher, gave me Happy days as a title. I'm not sure if he wants me to write about my personal happy days or if he wants me to write about Happy Days, the 1970s sit-com about life in the 1950s. I always thought that, in the 90s, it would be fun to make a sit-com about a TV crew in the 1970s trying to make a sit-com about life in the 50s.
That's right. I'm nostalgic for nostalgia.
-
Happy Days was supposed to revolve around Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard, but viewers started to favour the Fonz, played by Henry Winkler, who was in his late 20s when Happy Days was made.
This was nothing new. Back then, Hollywood still insisted on casting twenty-somethings to play high school students.
They still do.
Sorry... but, as a rule, high school kids just aren't this attractive.
-
Aside: This is why Degrassi Junior High (the original) was so great. The producers were more interested in creating an accurate portrayal of junior high, not ensuring that their actors could crack the cover of Tiger Beat.
-
But back to the Fonz, who was cool. I sure thought he was cool. Bridgette, this girl in my Grade 1 class, assured me that she was going to marry him when she grew up.
Ayy, Bridget. You're too young for the Fonz.
Years later, I saw Henry Winkler in a TV movie called An American Christmas Carol, where he played the role of Benedict Slade, the Scrooge-like anti-hero of this particular piece.
I was devastated that the Fonz was being someone else besides the Fonz.
It's all good though. Charles Dickens probably wasn't too upset that someone had adapted his Christmas Carol. After all, his own novella pretty much rejuvenated the celebration of Christmas in 19th Century England. The Puritans had squelched it, claiming it was nothing more than idolatrous pageantry. Of course, Dickens suffered from OCD and loved hanging out at the morgue, so maybe he wasn't necessarily trying to write a book that would resurrect yuletide festivity. He was probably only interested in making a buck.
-
In high school, I knew a guy named Joe. He was more of an acquaintance than a friend. I actually didn't like him. He viewed women as nothing more than sex objects. Whenever he saw an attractive woman on the street, he would ask me how I'd like to <insert disgusting X-rated remark here.> If it was an unattractive woman, or an old woman, he'd ask how much money he'd have to pay me before I consented to <insert disgusting X-rated remark here> with her.
I'd been to Joe's place a few times, where he lived with his largely absent parents. His bedroom was wallpapered with pornography and he had a stack of X-rated magazines beside his bed. He had a brother, about six years younger, who appeared to be following in big brother's footsteps - but with one important difference.
Joe couldn't get a date if he tried. He was so transparent that every woman he approached - and he approached plenty - rejected him. His brother, who was about 12, had a virtual harem in his room. I took a look in there once and he had black sheets and a strobe light and candles and a ghetto plaster pumping out Motley Crue. Once he gave me a knowing wink as he ushered two of his fellow Grade 7 students, both girls, into his bedroom and closed the door.
I ran into that kid about 20 years later when I was in Calgary on vacation. I mentioned how I knew him and he shook his head sadly.
"I'm not at all happy about that time of my life," he said. "I was too young to be doing that shit."
"Really?"
"Yeah," he said. "Even now, when I look at 12-year-olds, I can't look at them as kids anymore. I look at them like girls I wanted to get with when I was a tyke."
Poor kid. His happy days were actually sad days.
-
In his novel IT, Stephen King writes about a 10-year-old boy named Mike Hanlon, who helps his father work his farm.
Everyday when he comes home from school, Mike finds a note containing the chores he's expected to finish. Clean the chicken coops. Gather the eggs. Things like that.
But sometimes he'll come home and there will be a note of a completely different kind.
"No chores today," his father will have written. "Go on down to the creek, maybe, and go fishing for crawdaddies."
I always liked that. It's my favourite part of that massive over-written novel.
Mike Hanlon had happy days.
-
My magician friend, Eric Mead, says that his favourite sounds used to be the sincere and sustained applause he got after doing a show. Now that he's a father, the laughter of his child has demoted applause to second place.
I am happy when I do a magic show, when I write something really good, and when my one-year-old son looks at me and says "dada."
That is a happy day.
He won't always say it.
But I hope when that day arrives, there will be other things to be happy about.
I read somewhere that life peaks at about age 25, then it goes downhill and then we're suddenly happy again when we turn 70. I am not 70. Won't get there for another 30 years. So now I guess I'll just mull over my adolescence some more.
-
My friend, Jeff Belcher, gave me Happy days as a title. I'm not sure if he wants me to write about my personal happy days or if he wants me to write about Happy Days, the 1970s sit-com about life in the 1950s. I always thought that, in the 90s, it would be fun to make a sit-com about a TV crew in the 1970s trying to make a sit-com about life in the 50s.
That's right. I'm nostalgic for nostalgia.
-
Happy Days was supposed to revolve around Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard, but viewers started to favour the Fonz, played by Henry Winkler, who was in his late 20s when Happy Days was made.
This was nothing new. Back then, Hollywood still insisted on casting twenty-somethings to play high school students.
They still do.
Sorry... but, as a rule, high school kids just aren't this attractive.
-
Aside: This is why Degrassi Junior High (the original) was so great. The producers were more interested in creating an accurate portrayal of junior high, not ensuring that their actors could crack the cover of Tiger Beat.
-
But back to the Fonz, who was cool. I sure thought he was cool. Bridgette, this girl in my Grade 1 class, assured me that she was going to marry him when she grew up.
Ayy, Bridget. You're too young for the Fonz.Years later, I saw Henry Winkler in a TV movie called An American Christmas Carol, where he played the role of Benedict Slade, the Scrooge-like anti-hero of this particular piece.
I was devastated that the Fonz was being someone else besides the Fonz.
It's all good though. Charles Dickens probably wasn't too upset that someone had adapted his Christmas Carol. After all, his own novella pretty much rejuvenated the celebration of Christmas in 19th Century England. The Puritans had squelched it, claiming it was nothing more than idolatrous pageantry. Of course, Dickens suffered from OCD and loved hanging out at the morgue, so maybe he wasn't necessarily trying to write a book that would resurrect yuletide festivity. He was probably only interested in making a buck.
-
In high school, I knew a guy named Joe. He was more of an acquaintance than a friend. I actually didn't like him. He viewed women as nothing more than sex objects. Whenever he saw an attractive woman on the street, he would ask me how I'd like to <insert disgusting X-rated remark here.> If it was an unattractive woman, or an old woman, he'd ask how much money he'd have to pay me before I consented to <insert disgusting X-rated remark here> with her.
I'd been to Joe's place a few times, where he lived with his largely absent parents. His bedroom was wallpapered with pornography and he had a stack of X-rated magazines beside his bed. He had a brother, about six years younger, who appeared to be following in big brother's footsteps - but with one important difference.
Joe couldn't get a date if he tried. He was so transparent that every woman he approached - and he approached plenty - rejected him. His brother, who was about 12, had a virtual harem in his room. I took a look in there once and he had black sheets and a strobe light and candles and a ghetto plaster pumping out Motley Crue. Once he gave me a knowing wink as he ushered two of his fellow Grade 7 students, both girls, into his bedroom and closed the door.
I ran into that kid about 20 years later when I was in Calgary on vacation. I mentioned how I knew him and he shook his head sadly.
"I'm not at all happy about that time of my life," he said. "I was too young to be doing that shit."
"Really?"
"Yeah," he said. "Even now, when I look at 12-year-olds, I can't look at them as kids anymore. I look at them like girls I wanted to get with when I was a tyke."
Poor kid. His happy days were actually sad days.
-
In his novel IT, Stephen King writes about a 10-year-old boy named Mike Hanlon, who helps his father work his farm.
Everyday when he comes home from school, Mike finds a note containing the chores he's expected to finish. Clean the chicken coops. Gather the eggs. Things like that.
But sometimes he'll come home and there will be a note of a completely different kind.
"No chores today," his father will have written. "Go on down to the creek, maybe, and go fishing for crawdaddies."
I always liked that. It's my favourite part of that massive over-written novel.
Mike Hanlon had happy days.
-
My magician friend, Eric Mead, says that his favourite sounds used to be the sincere and sustained applause he got after doing a show. Now that he's a father, the laughter of his child has demoted applause to second place.
I am happy when I do a magic show, when I write something really good, and when my one-year-old son looks at me and says "dada."
That is a happy day.
He won't always say it.
But I hope when that day arrives, there will be other things to be happy about.
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