January 1st, 2012
I was 13 years old in October 1965. Eighth grade just was not working out. I had been a shy, book-reading child, now hormones were kicking in. I loved rock & roll but I just knew I was NEVER going to know how to talk to girls. (This was years before I got a hold of a guitar.) One really bad Saturday night I decided to kill myself. I had it all worked out. I had seen a movie just that week about a guy getting electrocuted when a radio fell into the bathtub he was in. (I was a very impressionable child.)
After everybody had left for the evening (my mom and dad were working their second jobs; my sister was on a date; my brother was at the bar) I went around the house and found a radio with a power cord long enough to reach the bathtub. I ran the bath, plugged in the radio, settled into the warm water, said a little prayer for forgiveness, and let the radio drop. What I hadn't factored in was that although the cord was long enough to reach the tub, I hadn't filled it full enough. Right when the radio hit the water the plug pulled out. I got a nasty shock, I was seeing big purple and black blobs in my field of vision, but it didn't kill me.
I lifted the radio out and laid there in the water a few minutes to let my head clear. I got out and ran some more water in the tub until I was certain I had the right water level for the job at hand. I plugged the radio back in and what was playing? "Get Off My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones. I stood there naked, dripping and chilly, eighth-grade skinny, and listened to the entire song. Right at that moment I quite literally loved that song more than I loved life itself. And then a thought came very clearly into my head: "What if the next Rolling Stones single is even BETTER than this one, and I never get to hear it?"
I set the radio down on the sink, got back in the tub, took a bath and went to bed. If "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton or "Roses Are Red" by Bobby Vinton had been playing at the moment I plugged that radio back in I'd be dead now. Long live the Rolling Stones. So began a life of rock & roll.
© 2012 Ricki C.
many of you already know this story, but it seems so integral to the theme of
growing old with rock & roll I feel it bears repeating here.......
The Bathtub
I was 13 years old in October 1965. Eighth grade just was not working out. I had been a shy, book-reading child, now hormones were kicking in. I loved rock & roll but I just knew I was NEVER going to know how to talk to girls. (This was years before I got a hold of a guitar.) One really bad Saturday night I decided to kill myself. I had it all worked out. I had seen a movie just that week about a guy getting electrocuted when a radio fell into the bathtub he was in. (I was a very impressionable child.)
After everybody had left for the evening (my mom and dad were working their second jobs; my sister was on a date; my brother was at the bar) I went around the house and found a radio with a power cord long enough to reach the bathtub. I ran the bath, plugged in the radio, settled into the warm water, said a little prayer for forgiveness, and let the radio drop. What I hadn't factored in was that although the cord was long enough to reach the tub, I hadn't filled it full enough. Right when the radio hit the water the plug pulled out. I got a nasty shock, I was seeing big purple and black blobs in my field of vision, but it didn't kill me.
I lifted the radio out and laid there in the water a few minutes to let my head clear. I got out and ran some more water in the tub until I was certain I had the right water level for the job at hand. I plugged the radio back in and what was playing? "Get Off My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones. I stood there naked, dripping and chilly, eighth-grade skinny, and listened to the entire song. Right at that moment I quite literally loved that song more than I loved life itself. And then a thought came very clearly into my head: "What if the next Rolling Stones single is even BETTER than this one, and I never get to hear it?"
I set the radio down on the sink, got back in the tub, took a bath and went to bed. If "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton or "Roses Are Red" by Bobby Vinton had been playing at the moment I plugged that radio back in I'd be dead now. Long live the Rolling Stones. So began a life of rock & roll.
© 2012 Ricki C.
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