The More Things Change….

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It’s really weird to me what I didn’t know as a kid. I still don’t know as much as I should know about this incident, but my memory of the Iran Hostage Crisis is this:

I was sitting on the floor, “Indian-style,” listening to the teacher. She sat in one of those black plastic chairs with the triangle-shaped hole in the back. She always wore nude-colored panty hose with a gold bracelet ~very delicate! the bracelet links, links, links, and then twists about…~ around her ankle. Above the panty-hose. With sandals.

She was the prettiest teacher. Mrs. Mize. She taught music. She was so sweet and fun. That made her pretty.

She was our music teacher, but she sang with a lisp. It wasn’t the least bit ironic at the time. She sounded so beautiful.

In this school, there was this annoying white disk in the ceiling that shouted stuff at us sometimes. That day, there was an announcement, but this announcement was different. It was the middle of MUSIC CLASS. This wasn’t, “somebody’s mommy has dropped off something for sweetie-pie.” This was serious.

The white-plastic voice said something like this, “Boys and Girls, we’re very excited. You should be excited too. In this great country of ours, we have finally elected someone we think you should like. A man is finally living in our fair White House that is worthy the name “American.” His name is Ronald Reagan. Be very happy, children. Thanks to President Reagan, the Iranians have admitted their inferiority and released our hostages. They know what a powerful man President Reagan is. As soon as President Reagan was inaugurated, those hateful Iranians knew they couldn’t stand against a man like our new president, President Reagan – so they released our hostages! A new day has dawned in America! Now is the time for being happy!”

The children on the floor under the loudspeaker applauded.

I believed them. We all did. I thought they knew about those things. I mean, I was only 9. I didn’t understand most of what happened on the news. ~vietnam: bad. nixon: bad. nasa: good!~

Besides, I was busy growing up. And I didn’t have the right shoes. And my parents were fighting. And my teachers didn’t like me. ~except for Mrs. Mize~

They told me, during the Reagan years, that America had never been so prosperous. ~girls just wanna have fun… tonight i’m gonna party like it’s 1999… we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl….”

And we bought stupid shit. I mean, there was a store in the mall ~the temple of capitalist devotion~ called “Units” where every article of clothing was made of cotton in kindergarten colors and shaped like a toilet paper roll. Everything was mix-and-matchable. This was a hit.

And Michael J. Fox was a young, strong, corporate hero. He went from “Family Ties” to Wall Street. He wasn’t a “sick guy we heard about on the news.” He was the symbol of all that was good about the Capitalist Way of Life. He was us. He traveled in time. He was fun, and good looking and young in a wholesome “I’m-proud-to-be-an-American” way.

But the news told us there were homeless people. Supposedly, they were everywhere. “It’s actually quite shocking that you haven’t stepped over someone in your driveway today,” they said.

They had already been proven, conclusively – mind you, that America was prospering. So, it must be these bums’ own fault they lived on the street, right?

I mean, after all, we were kicking the Communists’ asses. We’d proven once-and-for-all that having a lot of money is cool. We had the most bitchen bombs. And ~nah, nee, nah, nee, nah, nah~ we had way more bombs than those Pinkos.

Not only were we winning, but we had Tang and cable TV.

Plus, we were right.

My parents were certainly better off in the 1980s. We weren’t “renters” anymore. And Daddy was going to college. We had “moved on up.”

We never ate tuna casserole again.

Life in America was good, so we really didn’t understand why so many people in California ~especially L.A.~ were pissed off or why so many San Franciscans wore spiked pink hair, or what that whole “punk” thing was about. Or that gay thing.