Cobwebs in My Hair, Not My Brain

Thank you to all of you who sent me Happy Birthday greetings. It is so nice to be remembered by all of you. Of course for the last 10 years, or more, I’ve tried to convince my family and friends to stop remembering I was having another birthday.  Nobody listened. Told Darling Daughter not to put candles on the cake. There would be so many we might catch the house on fire. It’s downright embarrassing to be the center of so much attention. I even talked the waitress at a restaurant where I was being treated for my birthday that I would crawl under the table if all those waiters and waitresses came over to sing Happy Birthday to me. And no. I do not turn birthday meals.

I try not to remember my birthday. And I’ve sort of succeeded. But remembering anything gets a bit harder as we get older. As I sit on the couch, watching TV and writing this, a car commercial comes on. Strange. That commercial took me right back to my teenage years, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy (Oops) state, far, far away. That’s when, as I remember, one of the great and most-anticipated events of the fall was the unveiling of the products of the big three – Chevrolet, Ford, and I forget who else. Those car models, introduced usually in September or October, were the discussion of many, especially we teens, the next day. And shouting matches sometimes broke out between the Chevy lovers versus the Ford lovers. Now there are so many different car companies, I couldn’t tell which car belongs to which company. And the new models aren’t kept under wraps until a much-ballyhooed reveal. New models, now days, seem to be introduced all year long. If I could go back in time, I would snatch up one of those 1950s models, cause they are worth a fortune now.

My generation was obsessed with those cars, our favorite movie stars, and rock and roll, which we invented. Rock and roll always takes me back to Elvis Presley, who is still a much-loved star to many. But I didn’t care for Elvis, strangely. I did own a 45 version of “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog.” For those in the not-know, a 45 is a vinyl record with a big hole in the middle. What was really odd was that my Mom, my gospel-singing and piano-playing Mom, loved Elvis the Pelvis. Now that was embarrassing. My singer of choice was Bobby Darin. At one point in time, I could sing all the lyrics to “Splish Splash,” “Mack the Knife,” “Dream Lover,” and my all-time favorite, “Beyond the Sea.” But Elvis and Bobby both died too soon. Then, The Beatles bandwagon came along, and I hoped right on.

All my teen crushes seemed to have died too soon. My own movie man to swoon over was James Dean, who was from the same state as I – Indiana. His was the only movie star photo ever hung up on my bedroom wall, right next to the mirror. And I would gaze at that photo every morning, totally enamored, as I prepared for school. But we lost Mr. Dean in 1955 in a car crash. I was saddened beyond sad, but stuck with him, as he was my  ”Dream Lover.” To this day, when Oklahoma’s great public television system, OETA, plays one of Dean’s movies such as “Giant” in which he plays a great villain, or “East of Eden,” or “Rebel Without a Cause,” (in which he is described as the icon of teenage disillusionment) I watch every minute.

Those teenage memories are so easy to recall because, perhaps, they were branded into our brains during the too-hot transition from childhood to adulthood, or not. One day this week I reached up to pay my unruly hair back into place. My hand came back sticky. Huh? Sticky? A few more investigative pats revealed I had a glob of cobwebs in my hair. How did I get that in my hair, I wondered. Am I growing so old I now have web-weaving spiders on top? Well, it is fall, when the industrious spiders are weaving webs everywhere. I must have walked through an airborne web I didn’t detect beforehand. But, it makes me feel really old when I literally find cobwebs in my hair. I can only be thankful that those cobwebs are not in my brain.