Quite a while ago I noticed that one of the modems' tones sound like "Who Are You?" Not "who are you? who who, who who?" but the bit at the end where Pete Townshend or Roger Daltrey wavers in and out, "Who-ah-oo-ah-oo..."

Just a couple of nights ago I realized our new dishwasher sounds like the percussion line from "Another One Bites the Dust."

Does anyone else remember how the rollerskating rink would be overwhelmed when that song came on? There was some other song about "Godzilla" too, not by Queen. (Blue Oyster Cult, RDC contributed.)

Why did I ever go rollerskating? The mind reels. It was one of the few public places pubescents could gather and carry on their painful mating rituals, but what brought me there in my retarded development?

In fifth grade there was a new girl, SAS. Everyone knew that REB, HPV, EA, and I owned the jungle gym at recess and no one bothered us, until SAS showed up and wanted to climb too. So I, at least, got to know her. It was some time before I realized that I was the only one (of my gang) who knew her outside school. Anyway, she had just moved in from Oklahoma, I think, and was new and exotic. In sixth grade, as my group disintegrated and I was bereft, we were lab partners in science and I spent the night often enough at her house. She might have spent the night at mine once or twice, but no more after one night my mother made SAS call her mother at 9:30 to come get her. I don't remember what I did wrong; I suspect SAS did nothing wrong and even at the time I thought it cruel and unjust for BJW to force SAS to make the call. On Sunday afternoons, her mother would drive us to the rollerskating rink.

SAS was beginning to have an interest in boys as boys, which I did not. I wonder now if I was some kind of decoy, just two young girls at a rollerskating rink when one of them was more interested in flirting than in skating. We had once drawn together, sharing plans for our dream houses and trying to draw anatomically correct unicorns, but I couldn't do a thing with make-up and I was bored at the rink and obviously a goody-goody prep. So the friendship began to drop off. I remember passing her in the hallway in a heated debate with the home-ec teacher and being glad our relationship had waned. I had never yelled at a teacher (however much I wanted to at my third-grade teacher) and that was really too much eyeshadow. (I mean "too much eyeshadow" not as a relative term spoken by someone who only extremely rarely wears mascara but as an objective measurement of two eye sockets slathered in a rainbow of hues.) Then she started smoking, and in eighth grade got in real trouble on school grounds, so by high school we would maybe smile at each other in the hall. Maybe.

In 1996 SAS was the first person I spotted at our high school reunion. Almost as soon as I arrived, KAGA recognized me, but after that, as I began my circuit, I was so happy to recognize SAS amongst a crowd of her latter-day friends. I lay my hand on her shoulder and said "Hi, SAS," and she turned and her eyes widened as she recognized me and she stood up and threw her arms around me, an embrace I happily returned as she exclaimed, "Lisa! Oh my god! You were, like, my best friend in sixth grade!"

I had just meant to observe my musical house, that's all.

The other thing that occurs to me with "Another One Bite the Dust" is a little quiz in Newsweek for the parents of this year's college freshling class to point out the generation gap. HAO couldn't remember all six questions, but of the five she asked me last night in Target, I got two. She got all six right and therefore can be an effective teacher of these chilluns, a mere nine years younger than she. Apparently 13 years marks too big a gap, so it's a good thing I'm not a GTA.

What is a whammy?
I have no idea. It was a feature of a game show (whose name she told me but which I forget) which made a contestant lose everything.

What was a (D-something)?
A character from aJim Henson show, Fraggle Rock, with critters who lived under a bridge and the human didn't know they were there but the dog did.

What is a Trapper-Keeper?
The multi-compartmented three-ring binder with the brightly colored or -themed covers, of course!

Who was Tina Yothers?
Jennifer on "Diff'rent Strokes." No, no, "Family Ties." Was that it? Whatever had Michael J. Fox in it.

Hum the theme song from Inspector Gadget.
No.

Also that night in Target, a few days ago we heard an eight-year-old boy saying, "You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together and blow" and HAO was shocked. She doesn't know "To Have and Have Not." Excuse me. HAO would like to point out she knows the most famous movies of one of her favorite actresses very well, thank you. Any surprise on her part was due to what seemed like simple lewd on the child's part--she didn't hear the direct quote. Maybe I made it up. Anyway, If Lauren Bacall appeals to current third-graders, then in only ten years I can teach them.

I know what a pog is (was) and a tamagotchi. I couldn't sing a Spice Girls song. I know only the one line from "La Vida Loca" and I didn't know that Ricky Martin was in Menudo before he was in "General Hospital." I can recognize the dog from "Blue's Clues" and a Pokemon character, but I don't know if Pokemon is the name of the show or the main character or both. I am going to be like a country-music fan when the predominant music is rap but I still want to hear rock and roll.

I am old, Father William.

And obsessed as well, apparently. I keep dreaming of Beth. This is, I am sure, prompted by a) Beth's forum question of whether we dream of on-line journalers, b) concern about Kim Rollins's response to another question in Beth's forum, and c) my delighted surprise at being on Beth's reading list.

Which makes writing about this really unsubtle, doesn't it? (Hi Beth) I don't post much about my F2F friends (or the friends that I made F2F and who now live in Berkeley, Toronto, somewhere way the fuck out there in Missouri (with an ISP called rural.net: truth in advertising), and Le Mans, France and are only rarely F2F), and I try to post nothing negative about anyone (except myself and my weak points like my mother), but here I figure everyone knows everyone and I can talk about them.

So that's why I'm not being subtle, aside from not being so at all anyway. Which reminds me of Gentlehands again--"subtle" was Skye's favorite word.

Looking up the ISBN for Gentlehands, I noticed Lois Duncan as one of the linked authors. Lois Duncan. I loved her. I think the first of her books I read was Daughters of Eve, which I was given as a birthday present. Hmm. Maybe it wasn't the sexism of French pronouns that drove me to feminism but this book, which I received a year or two previous? I was absolutely familiar with cliques and fathers who ruled the house and the only thing I didn't understand was why Jane didn't like venison. Then Down a Dark Hall, which intrigued me because I've always wanted to have any sort of extrasensory ability. Killing Mr. Griffin, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Summer of Fear, and Stranger with My Face rapidly followed, and oh, how I loved Stranger with My Face.

I began to draw Laurie's house, appreciating the architectural details Duncan provided like that every room had a view of the sea, and I related to the island clique and the outcast friend Helen. My library card number--J819--was on its card a zillion times before I got an adult card--6652. I didn't draw just my estate escape; after all I had to be an architect to afford my dream place.

Just a couple of years ago I found a few Lois Duncans in a thrift store, titles I hadn't read: They Never Came Home, The Twisted Window, and others. I left them on a library paperback exchange shelf when I was done with them, and Amazon irritatingly doesn't give you the date of first publication, so I don't know their order. I am pretty sure Never is significantly earlier than Window, just by the style, but I thought they were both weaker than the ones I grew up with. For one thing, they both use the same plot device: a troubled young man is immediately drawn to a young woman who of course wants to help him and lo! the young woman looks exactly like the girl he left behind in his old life/memory. Bigamy ensues. (I made up that last bit.) Duncan might use the same plot device in others I've forgotten.

I'm convinced that most authors for young people eventually lose their touch, with the most glaring and painful example being Madeleine L'Engle. Troubling a Star came out the year after Certain Women, and I thought Certain Women (with mostly adult characters) was great and Troubling a Star weak (it features Vicky Austin at 16 in the mid-90s, which really grates me because she was introduced at 12 in an obviously early-60s setting). Maybe Duncan wrote these books later than my faves (Down a Dark Hall, Daughters of Eve, Stranger with My Face) and she's lost her edge; maybe I'm adult and more discriminating and either she's always been weak and I didn't realize it in sixth grade and still don't recognize it with my favorites or I am just too grown up, not knowing about Pokemon and whatnot, to appreciate her. That latter option really disturbs me.

I was talking about Beth.

I guess I'm done though. I have to work on my booklist.

<Later>
Going through my booklist, seeing Girl, Interrupted, I remembered it's to be made into a movie with Winona Ryder. That could be good.

I found a couple of other Lois Duncans at the library: a newer one, Gallows Hill, in which she maybe could have stuck to one paranormal theme instead of three, and Season of the Two-Heart, very early indeed. So early that it's not a thriller but just a novel about teens, about a Pueblo Indian girl who goes to live with Bahanas (palefaces) in pursuit of a good high school education. That was pretty good. Amazon doesn't list it probably because it is even less in print than other OOPs.