Wishing Well

Today is Veteran's Day. If you've come to this blog looking for some introspective thoughts about veterans, war, the Ft. Hood shootings, or the D.C. sniper execution--all of which I've had introspective thoughts about--you've come to the wrong place today. Sorry. If frivolity annoys you, you should maybe look elsewhere.

Here were our plans for today: get our flu shots, get haircuts, and visit Emily's kittens (as sort of a reward for getting flu shots and haircuts). I checked the county health website last night to get a flu shot location since of course Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and every other pharmacy-type place is out of the shots. We were good to go for this morning, until I double-checked the site to get directions. There was this odd phenomenon--all the dates and days of the week were one off. It took me much longer than it should have to work out that I was looking at a 2008 schedule. Long story somewhat abbreviated, there are no seasonal flu shots available anywhere. Apparently the flu is a big thing this year. Who knew.

As you can imagine, the girls were deeply disappointed to hear they won't be getting shots this morning, so they drowned their sorrows in a Strawberry Shortcake DVD until it's time to get the haircuts. I checked facebook and was confronted YET AGAIN with some absolutely ridiculous pictures a college friend had tagged me in. They are all circa 1987, from our dorm, and they are unspeakable. There are so many of them too. I've taken no end of ribbing about them too, including comments such as "Did you not own a mirror?" or "You look like 'Kate' from Jon & Kate, before she had a stylist." etc. etc.

I take back all the times I would look through old pictures of my mom and snicker at her outfits, since now when I look at them, she looks all sophisticated and Jackie O., while I look like, in the words of one of my friends, "the youngest kid from New Kids on the Block."

Then I was reading my friend Kirsten's blog, and she posted this hilarious 80s video from youtube called The Rain. She said she bet none of her readers would remember it, but you know, that cultural moment would never have slipped my memory. I asked her did she remember Terence Trent D'Arby and "Wishing Well" because that was the cut, in my book.

Mentioning "Wishing Well" then forced me to find that video on youtube, and I laughed until I cried. I'll include it below because you have to watch at least the first few minutes. The hair. The clothes. The moves. The fact that he slides into the first frame.

I try to comfort myself that everyone in those dorm pictures looks stupid--at least I am not wearing white-framed sunglasses indoors like most of them were (not that I didn't own a pair, mind you, but at least there's no photographic evidence) but still. If you were me, would you rather look back on pictures like this?



Or this?


Yeah, thought so. At least I have Terence to comfort me (and I still like this song, as you can probably imagine). And maybe someday my girls will look back and think oversized shirts, lacquered hair, and Swatch watches are so cute too. Don't answer that.