It was the first week of school in my sophomore year, which was my first year in the High School at Shen. The Shen High School was a large two story building and I was nervous about finding my classes in the confusing two story building. The first few days were stressful for me and I was very glad when the first Friday of the school year rolled around. An entire weekend of freedom stretched before me and it started off that afternoon with the annual “country fair” at the Shen Methodist Church, which was right behind my house. The fair was nothing special, but it was something that we got excited to go to as kids because it was so close by and there were games (every year one of us won a goldfish) and you could buy fudge and baked goods and candy.
Beck walked home with me that day after school so that we could go to the fair together. As we walked by the football field we started to hear music – the opening chords of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles. There were two guys walking up ahead of us carrying a boom box (is that really what they were called?!) and blasting Beatles music. Since they couldn’t us, Beck and I started to dance to the music as we walked along. I remember I didn’t even know that it was The Beatles that were playing at that time – Beck had to tell me what we were listening to. We laughed to ourselves as we walked and danced along, and then we heard one of the guys say to the other something like, “… I think I left the batteries in my locker…” and when they turned around to head back towards the high school we immediately composed ourselves and walked normally, completely ignoring them as they walked past us.
The second they passed us and could no longer see us, we started dancing again. We were having so much fun grooving to the music as we walked along that we didn’t even realize that the music wasn’t fading away. Suddenly the two guys were walking with their arms over our shoulders introducing themselves as Doug and Doug. We were appropriately mortified. They were also heading to the country fair at the church and were apparently Beatles fans. They were listening to “the blue album” – 1967-70 (disc 2). I loved every song that I heard as we continued to walk towards the fair and my obsession with The Beatles had begun.
I bought my first Beatles recording that night in the basement tag sale at the fair at the church. Rummaging through the piles of tapes for sale for $.25, I found an extended play cassette tape of the blue album. It didn’t have a case, but the song titles were printed on the outside of the cassette. I gladly paid my quarter for it and it became my sole source of entertainment for the next few weeks. I began to notice The Beatles everywhere – songs in commercials, new albums being released, “Beatles Sundays” on the Oldies Station on the radio. I taped the songs as they came on the radio station and my collection grew. I went to the library and borrowed books on The Beatles to feed my obsession. I bought “Live at the BBC” when it was released (I vividly remember reading the booklet that came with that CD during Biology instead of paying attention to class). I wrote lyrics to Beatles songs all over my brown grocery bag textbook covers. I convinced Mr Golden one of my World Cult/World Lit teachers to let me do my term paper on The Beatles. I bought enough Beatles t-shirts for every day of the week… and pretty much wore them every day of the week. I had coffee mugs, posters, puzzles, blankets, every album on CD, a few actual vinyl albums… I was a girl obsessed.
My obsession didn’t survive much into the college years. I, of course, was always a huge fan of The Beatles, but I started to listen to other music (gasp!) and focused my obsessions elsewhere. But lately, with all of the Beatles press – the new Rock Band game, the release of the remastered albums – I can feel the tug of the obsession. They’ve become the only thing playing on my iPhone and even though I’ve never played any version of Rock Band, I want the new game. I know that I won’t become obsessed again in the way that I was in High School (there’s been something else occupying the number one obsession slot in my mind for the last year and a half or so), but I’m having fun rediscovering a band that consumed me for almost four years half a lifetime ago.
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Filed under nostalgia | Comment (1)queue the BNL song… Yet again, I find myself unable to sleep because Alex isn’t here. He is out on a case again (which means that he is hating life right now). Hopefully he’s trying to focus on the bright side: since he’s still out on a case, he doesn’t have to work tomorrow, and we are both taking Friday off just to hang out with each other and he’s not on call this weekend, so that means he’s having a four day weekend – and the weather is supposed to be perfect. 
I’ll get to sleep eventually tonight. I’m all wound up right now because I just finished watching “Across the Universe” and I really enjoyed it and I’m all on a Beatles high. I’m so sad, though, that I lost most of my Beatles collection of music in the fire. I have just a few albums now, where before I had pretty much all of them. Sigh. I remember excitingly purchasing the anthologies in high school with my Price Chopper money… Wish I at least had those back again. But buying physical CDs is such a pain in the toe and they’re not on iTunes so buying them again seems terribly inconvenient. Wow. I’m lazy.
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