The Cooling of Me

Poor Madeleine. She's upstairs with her friend Cora and her mom is sitting downstairs in the kitchen belting out Bee Gees songs in falsetto. But it's not my fault - the responsibility for this mess lies with Diane.

I was pathetic when Diane got hold of me. I couldn't tell "A Boy Named Sue" from "Dreamboat Annie." She was especially appalled when she got me into her bedroom one afternoon and I stared blankly at her Bee Gees posters. Who were these guys, exactly?

Diane was the original teenybopper. Well, not actually the original one, but she may as well have started the trend. When we first met in 7th grade I was amazed to see that her bedroom walls were not even visible for the pinups and posters torn from the likes of Tiger Beat. My own mother cringed at the mere suggestion of tape touching the paint job in my room. I saw such visions as I had never beheld - Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, a group called The Babys. Who was this girl? And what did she see in me?!

Diane took me under her wing. She slapped vinyl after vinyl disk on her record player and all but crammed the words into my head. She was as determined as a digging mole - "gotta get down there, gotta get down there..."

I already had one sister, but Diane was like the one my momma didn't have. You could always find Diane and I tooling around in her rusting royal blue Duster, radio blasting out its speakers, and eventually I learned the words to the songs essential to my survival in this cold world.

I had finally talked my mother into letting me hang posters on my walls - I had a giant Shaun Cassidy head - but Diane had actually kissed him. I had an Andy Gibb 45, but Diane had actually kissed him. While her lips were busy making the hip hugger/bell bottom set feel at home, I scraped by in my bedroom in mono. Still, eventually it happened. I became cool. Really, I did!

I went to my first concert with Diane - Journey. It was worth the following three days of ear-ringing near-deafness to see Steve Perry in action. That summer, when the band came to Oak Park to play a publicity-garnering baseball game against WRIF, Diane pushed her way past 19 million screaming girls and bodyguards to get Steve's autograph. When he handed her pen back and I tried to touch it I thought I might lose my hand when she growled at me like a mother bear. I backed off and whimpered. But she had a point. And she had Steve Perry's DNA!

Thanks Diane, for all you did. I can now hold my own in conversations where I would previously wilt if someone even mentioned KC and the Sunshine Band. I even made it on to the cover of an album! (That's an altogether different post.)