I was eight years old when I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real.
My mom had asked me to come over and sit with her for a bit while she watched television and my younger siblings were settling into bed. We were always a very openly emotional family, so regular cuddling with Mom wasn’t anything unusual. Still, typically, it was Mom telling us to quit climbing all over her and let her breathe. I knew then that this had to be pretty important.
I nuzzled in on the couch next to my mom and she started to tell me all about St. Nick and how it was really her the whole time, and related some stories about when I was younger and my parents were still together and how they struggled to hide presents from us. At that moment I recalled when I was five and I had found a typewriter under my parents’ bed and asked my mom about it; she told me that Santa had a lot of houses to visit so sometimes he drops things off early and asks parents to set them out for him. Fucking brilliant, my mother was. I ate that up with a fork and spoon. Suddenly I felt pretty stupid though. But nevertheless, I was too busy being excited at having had the door opened from little-kid-land to the universe of adults who don’t believe in Santa and all the other things that kids aren’t supposed to know about.
However, there was a bigger reason for my mom to tell me that there was no Santa Claus. It was the first year that my parents were separated, on their way through divorce. My mom was raising us on her own, supporting us through welfare and babysitting some other kids during the day. Even at the tender age of eight, I was acutely aware of the fact that we didn’t have much money. So things started to make more sense as my mom sadly told me that she just couldn’t afford the jambox that I had on my Christmas list that year. She knew that it was all that I really, really wanted out of any list I made while flipping through the Sears catalog. Sorry, but it just couldn’t happen.
Like the big girl that I was, I nodded and sucked up my disappointment. If I was old enough to know there was no Santa, then I was surely old enough to handle this.
Still, things never became sad as the holiday approached. I knew I wouldn’t be getting my radio, but we were poor, so I would make do with the best of whatever else came my way. So when the morning arrived and in front of me was a shiny black GPX one-speakered portable cassette player/recorder, I thought I was going to shatter into a thousand pieces.
I also got Barbie and Derek from the Barbie and the Rockers set. Barbie came with a CASSETTE.
I about died. This was the greatest holiday I ever had. First of all, there was the jambox, and that made me one of the coolest kids in the neighborhood. This was 1985; there was absolutely nothing cooler in 1985 than strolling down the street with a radio on your shoulder. Second of all, Barbie and the Rockers? Holy shit! Could my holiday be any more rock ‘n’ roll? Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t pass out from the excitement. I just remember opening boxes like a bobcat on speed.
I was also gifted three 60-minute blank tapes. Given that I had nothing to listen to other than the Barbie and the Rockers tape, this was the smartest move ever. Otherwise, all my mother would have heard for hours on end was:
We’re Barbie and the Rockers!
Rockin’ out, we’re totally in the groove (in the groove)
Dana, DeeDee, Derek, and Diva too!
We’re Barbie and the Rockers!
Rockin’ out, we’re totally on the scene (on the scene)
We’re rock stars, on your vibrant screens!
When we’re not on stage, we can’t wait to play!
When we’re not on stage, we can’t wait to say!
We’re Barbie and the Rockers!…
(Yes, that’s from memory.)
With the blank tapes, I could then record songs from the radio. Not that “We Built This City” didn’t play every hour, but if I wanted to hear it right now, I was free to do so. However, I only had three tapes, so I had to be anal retentive about space. I would not repeat songs and I would make sure I got the whole song, cutting off any possible DJ babbling over the tail end. I became master of flipping rapidly between rewind and play as to properly cue the tape for whatever song might make my fingers rush for the record button.
My neighbors across the street offered to dub me License to Ill and that would have been awesome except I told my mom that I was going to get Beastie Boys, and she actually put her foot down. Had I kept my mouth shut, I would have been “Brass Monkey”ing my way through Catholic school.
The winter and the beginnings of spring were a wonderful time for me and my radio. However, as the weather brightened, my downstairs (spoiled rotten) neighbor unveiled her Christmas gift: a jambox. And hers had two speakers. While this momentarily saddened me, it gave me great joy when I discovered my ratty box was indeed much louder than hers at full volume. GPX POWER!
For my birthday that spring, my father gave me a recorded cassette with Wang Chung’s Mosaic on side A and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet on side B. Yes, my dad gave me a dubbed cassette for my ninth birthday. While I am sure that my mom was ready to punch the cheap bastard for being, well, cheap, I was in seventh heaven. I now had a full album! Not just one, two! And to hell if it wasn’t store bought. It was still the album! TWO! And a hell of a lot better than my downstairs neighbor’s Menudo tapes.
Still, even with my absolute adoration of anything related to Jon Bon Jovi, one can only listen to an album so many times before tiring of it. Wang Chung didn’t do much for me, and neither did the Bananarama tape I purchased with my remaining birthday dollars. And taping off of the radio? It was lovely, but aside from listening to “Don’t Dream It’s Over” about eight hundred times in a row, I needed something new to fuel my jambox habit. With this was born: the Summer and Jamie Show.
My sister is three and a half years my junior; still, we were the girls, so we did lots of girly together things. Well, as much as my sister could tolerate of me bossing her around. What started out as something silly to waste time became something we would do for the next eight years. That is, the two of us crowded around the cassette recorder, creating our own show for other people to hear. We followed a standard format.
First on the show would be an interview portion or two. This would consist of my sister interviewing me or vice versa while we played a character part. These ranged from fictional characters like Mickey Mouse to stars like Madonna. Over the years, we evolved this into utter chaos; Mickey was a regular character and with each interview he became increasingly more insane (quote: “And I hate all of those kids coming up to me at Disneyland, they’re all, ‘look at the rat, Dad! Look at the rat!'”), and Yoshi from Super Mario Land would keep trying to lick the interviewer. Typically, we would then have “callers” who would ask the guests questions (typically things like, “how do you get blood out of carpet?”) or some other horrible interaction.
Secondly, the show would have a “guess this song” or a “love it or hate it” section where we would play song clips and, well, “callers” would do either one or the other. Usually the first couple of calls were somewhat serious. Every other call was nuts. And yes, we had recurring characters here, like the old woman who continued to call the wrong number (“Are eggs on today’s sale list?” or “I opened a new account, I want my free toaster!”) and often times rock stars who couldn’t even guess their own songs (notably Lars Ulrich, Dave Mustaine, and Nuno Bettencourt). After about fifteen minutes, someone would win a “prize” so that we could wrap up the damned thing.
But most importantly, the shows had commercials. Many times, we would just echo popular commercials of the day (Jamie did a brilliant rendition of the McDonalds Chef Salad Oriental commercial) or make up idiotic products (Have you ever been walking down the street and, oops, your butt fell off? Try new Butt-Stick!). We also did the ever-popular compilation album commercials (The Smurfs sing your favorite hits! ‘Aaah-aaah, smurf it… smurf it good’) and our PSAs (Do you know someone who likes teddy bears? Send them to the Teddy Bear Clinic and we’ll guarantee they’ll never want another teddy bear again!). Nothing ever topped the Sex Aroused Book People Club; the deadpan “I like to be fondled in the buttocks area” reigns supreme as one of the greatest lines ever caught on tape.
Music? Naaaah. We saved that for real radio shows.
Tragically, the power and might that is GPX only lasted a couple of years before it began eating tapes left and right. It was retired while I exercised my new holiday gift, my Sanyo walkman (no rewind, only fast forward!). And it was a couple of years later after that when Santa brought me a bigger, badder double-cassette Sony jambox. More copied albums, more recording from the radio, and yes, more radio shows. Everything revolved around those chunks of circuitry.
So, yeah… thanks, Santa. All of those boxes of King Vitaman cereal were gratefully consumed if it meant a few more pennies went towards providing my aural bliss.
You turn it up ’till your speakers blow,
–gloomchen
