Admission one: I don't see colors very well.
Admission two: I'm not that smart.
There. I've admitted it. Don't ask me to repeat it because I'll deny I ever said it. But there you go: two truthful admissions.
My hometown is Inwood, Iowa. Inwood's population hovered around 550 during my elementary years, and it isn't much bigger today. I knew that town the only way a kid can: from the bottom up. That's the way a child grows, and if an adolescent or an adult moves to the town there is no way they will ever know that same town in the same way. You have to be born in a place and grow along with it to really feel its heartbeat.
First you meet the front steps to your house. Then you learn the backyard. Once you've become accustomed to that green grass play mat, you tackle the sidewalks that enclose your block and the alley that slices it down the middle. After navigating that square of homes, you progress to neighborhood exploration. Eventually you discover, and then memorize the whole town. This takes several years, but when you finally earn your hometown degree, you'll be a part of the town and the town will be a part of you.
By second grade I knew which driveways and sidewalks in Inwood would have the best jumps for my bicycle. I knew how to hide inside the conical merry-go-round so I could win hide and seek games in the park. I knew which washing machine in the laundry mat was most likely to have dimes underneath. I knew which church's back door would be open so you could slake your summer thirst in the bathroom sink. I knew which shower nozzle in the pool's dressing room stung the least. By second grade Inwood was mine, and I knew I was its king.
But I didn't know that the Mickey Mouse Club wasn't a current show.
A tiny town like Inwood didn't get the best TV reception, and the closest TV station was located across the Minnesota border. Although I didn't know it, that station ran afternoon programming that was decades old. Wedged between playing summer rec baseball and swimming in the public pool, many of my summer hours were filled with the black and white images of I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Flipper, The Many Loves of Dobbie Gillis (isn't that Gilligan?), Dragnet, and the previously mentioned Mickey Mouse Club. It's weird, but when I started teaching in '92 I could be sitting at lunch with teachers that were 20 years my senior, and we could all remember being seven and watching the same episode of the Honeymooners.
Let's go back to admission number one. I didn't pick up that these shows weren't new; black and white TV looked fine to me. When the station shifted to color programming like the news at 6:00, I didn't notice that the haircuts and fashion of the people on TV had dramatically changed. See admission number two.
I can vividly remember wearing nothing but my swimming trunks and laying across a vinyl beanbag in our living room while being glued to the TV as Art Linkletter helmed the opening day festivities for Disneyland. I really did think I was watching it in real time, not 21 years after the fact. When I watched a special about the opening of the Haunted Mansion I was enthralled. That was one ride I knew I wanted to try. Ghosts, spooks, and creepy music? It'd be just like Halloween! I couldn't wait to see it. I just didn't know it would take me almost 40 years to get there.
But I did get there.
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