"It was 30 years ago today......"

Dear 4 1/2, sorry I haven't checked in for a few weeks buy my mind doesn't work quickly enough to blog every week, plus most of the time I don't have anything interesting to say! Well today we are going to discuss someone who helped write the soundtrack to my life.  I'm not old enough to remember Buddy Holly as he died the year I was born, but I have to say for myself that "the day the music died" for me was the day 30 years ago today that John Lennon was so brutally taken from us.  First off, I so can't get my head around the fact that John would have been 70 years old!!! I always thought about my parents being so old when I was little, but my Mom was only 3 years older than John Lennon and she was a year younger than Elvis.  I guess Mom wasn't that old after all!  On the other hand, Daddy was old...he was almost 10 years older than Mom, but I digress!  We could discuss for hours how horrible it was how and the fact that he died and how the person who did this should rot in jail and in hell (which I believe he will!).  I want to talk about the joy listening to John Lennon and The Beatles gave me.  When I was a little girl all of about 4 I remember listening to The Beatles on the radio and having trouble with the "concept" of radio.  I knew The Beatles were from England and I knew England was very far away because my family is from Scotland.  What I couldn't figure out was how they got The Beatles to be there on the radio in Pittsburgh to sing "I want to hold your hand" a few times a day??? So, I wasn't the brightest blub in the box.  I also had trouble with movie listings in the newspaper...I was appaled that after the movie synopsis it said "black and white"...I didn't know what racisim was but I didn't understand why they had to put a "color" to the movie.  It took me a while to figure out they mean't the movie was black and white and they were not talking about the people in it!  Like I said, not the brightest bulb! I still remember sitting on my living room floor with my sister Donna with her arm around me watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.  Cousin Philip was supposed to be watching us, but he slept!  I was only young but I understood the excitement.  I also remember being clearly taken by John Lennon, even though at that point I didn't know his name.  He looked like a "bad boy".  Even at 4 I had a thing for bad boys!!  I adored him flat out.  Mum got us Beatle Dolls, to this day I still have the Paul McCartney one (bet he's worth something!), I think I cut the hair on John Lennon's!  What can I say, I liked him and decided his hair needed to be done better!  I followed John and the rest of The Beatles career's all through the 60's 70's 80's on up to present day.  I watched the ups and downs.  I tried to put it all in perspective in my young mind.  It all didn't always make sense to me as youngsters in those days were not as savy as ones today.  All I really knew was when I heard a Beatles song nothing made me happier.  As I got older I really understood what a crush I had had on John Lennon most of my life.  I also remember clearly having the thought that wether or not you agreeded with what John had to say you had to acknowledge how intelligent he was.  Again, I feel this was before I even clearly understood what intelligence truly meant.  I was sad when John married Yoko, but I learned to respect her as I grew older.  All I could see was how much she loved him and that was so evident the days after he was killed.  I did want to join one of their "happenings".  My favorite one that I read about was a room all in white with a ladder that had a magnifying glass attached to it.  You had to climb up the ladder and use the magnifying glass to read the word "peace"!  To this day I want to climb that ladder. I also loved it when they hosted "The Mike Douglas Show" and created a happening there, they got the phone book and randomly called people to say "I love you"!  Poor Mike didn't quite know what to make outa that, but god bless him he went with it!  I was worried when they kicked John out of the country and relieved when he got back.  I don't know why, as this person was no one to me other than a voice on the radio and face on the TV.  But I cared.  The pictures of John with his son Sean as a little boy still always make me cry because they were so beautiful.  In the 80's I watched Julian start his career and it overwhelmed me how much he looked and sounded like his father.  Now when I see Sean I get the same feeling but in many ways he's so different musically (perhaps a bit of Yoko influence there as well!).  My first copy of a Beatles album came from my cousin Sammy who copied their first album to cassette for me.  To this day I still have that cassette, thank you Sammy! I love all the imagery of the music...you can see the music if you close your eyes, and no, I'm not taking drugs!!!  I just see their music and it's always beautiful!  I will say I remember waking up on December 8th 1980 and my Dad telling me John had died.  I cried, I cried, I cried......as we all did.  Imagine (as John would have said...) what he still had ahead of him.  People may not have agreed with his lifestyle, his politics but they had to acknowledge the music was amazing.  OK...here's my fun fact and surprise....it's a Beatles fun fact...In a contest held by Mersyside Newspaper to see who was the biggest band in Liverpool, 1962, one of the main reasons that The Beatles won was because they called in posing as different people voting for themselves!  I love it!!!! I can just hear John Lennon calling in as some little old lady!  So today friends when we remember John, try not to think about his death but the life he lead and the wonderful legacy of music and family he left us.  We will all be listening to Beatles music to the day we die because it's everywhere, and our children's children for long after that!  What a wonderful thought!  So...today I steal my random thought from John and Yoko....give peace a chance!  Take a quiet moment today to remember someone who brought great joy to many people......Seacrest out!!!! xoxxo Pammy