Today is the day I have dreaded for the past week or so – Cincinnati is going to see the temperature hit 100 degrees today. According to the local news, this is the first time the city has seen 100 degree temperatures in June since June 25, 1988.
Since I am home with Sydney all week, I dreaded telling the kid that it is not the best day to play outside. But somehow I think she knows, because she has not asked to go out once!
One of the things I am blessed with (or cursed in some instances) is a freakishly good memory. Seven-year-old me remembers that hot, dreadful June day in 1988. My mom would not let me play outside because of the heat. She just kept saying, “Zach, it’s going to be 100 degrees!” I can remember begging her to let me go out in my little pool, but to no avail.
I always thought it was cruel and unusual punishment that she would not let me play outside. Twenty-four years later, as a parent, it makes total sense! It’s funny how history repeats itself…
Okay, I am going to give you another example of my weird memory. After keeping me in the house all day from the 100 degree heat, my mom finally took me out that night to the movies to see Big with Tom Hanks. I remember being so excited to go to the movies that night. I am pretty sure we also contemplated seeing either Beetlejuice or 3 Men and a Baby too, but “Big” won. It just came out a few weeks earlier and it was the movie everybody was talking about. The other two had been out for a while, so we decided to check the newer flick out. (Some trivia: back in the day, successful movies would sometimes stay in the theater for the better part of a year!)
This story also highlights another important point of my life – how young I was when I got into popular media that was generally designed for a more adult audience. Rock music was not the only thing I got into at a very young age, but movies too. I am not talking about adult films or even Rated R films or anything like that; but while many of my friends were still obsessed with G rated films, I already moved on to PG and in some cases, PG-13 (gasp!).
I remember loving “Big” so much that I begged my mom to buy the VHS when it came out (which was a year or so later. This was 1988, after all!). In relation to Hanks’ role, I still feel like a kid in an adult body myself. I do not think I am immature necesarilly, but I simply have not forgotten what it is like to be a kid. I am mature, responsible, and with a house and bills and a job and all of that stuff; but I am a kid at heart. I think this helps me be a better father to my daughter.
So 24 years later, on this hot day I did the same thing as my mom and told my daughter that it was too hot for us to play outside today. Unlike seven year old me, she did not throw a fit about it. She just pointed to the stereo in the middle of playing with her toys this morning. She wanted to hear music.
The closest CD I found was “Long Live The New Flesh” by Flesh for Lulu. When Postcards from Paradise came on, she danced around the room like a crazy person. It was awesome. When the CD finally ended, one of her “Silly Song” CDs was next in the disc changer. She had very little interest in this and decided she would rather hear an English rock disc from 1987 again.
Like me, she has also matured quickly when it comes to music. History has repeated itself many ways today. I love it.