A coworker friend of mine had asked me to join her to visit a local record store near our office called Heights Vinyl. She had just purchased a record player as a gift for her daughter’s 18th birthday and wanted to peruse their selection of 45s and 33s. As we walked in, the musty fragrance of collections of old album covers from households of days gone by hit me right in the face. And to my surprise, along with it came flashing memories of my 10th birthday and my life as a 10 year old girl.
As I looked around the store, I remembered how excited I was to receive a record player on my 10th birthday. I never had many albums, but do recall the heart throb Leif Garrett album and a single 45 of Rockin’ Robin (which I would play over and over singing every word including the ”tweet” and “tweedle-lee-dee” parts). My mom’s brother, my Uncle Carlton, also gave me a surprise album that year. I didn’t know the artist or the songs -- and most of all, I had no idea at the time how the words to Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” would stay in my mind forever drawing me back to that birthday and being a 10 year old girl.
I was in fifth grade and I was bullied by a girl on the bus ride home every day. We had been friends for several years, but when the new boy moved in two doors down from her, things changed - and fast! I came in crying every day to my maternal grandmother, who was staying with us that year. One day when grandma had enough of my tears, she called the girl’s mom. The conversation went something like “Hi, this is Alma. I’m tired of this bullying and we are going to solve this once and for all. You send your daughter down to our house tomorrow after school and she and Pam will ‘duke it out’ in the circle in front of our house. Okay…yes, see you then.” WHAT?! Did she not know ME? It was not long ago that I had tea parties on a daily basis with my dolls. I was a Donny and Marie Osmond show sing-a-long fan. I was a cheerleader. I was a girl! And I was a girl that did NOT know how to fight! I didn’t know who to be more upset with at this point – the bully or grandma!
In grandma’s mind, this was nothing. During her school years, she and her three sisters were known as “The Babb Girls.” They were ridiculed and bullied for many years because their father was in prison. It was a life circumstance that she nor her sisters could control or change. Fighting was a means of survival for her and her siblings. I didn’t know how and didn’t want to learn!
Luckily, the next day, as the bully and I stood there in the cul-de-sac where we had played kickball on many summer days in front of the house and where we listened to records on my record player that year in my room, I found out that this girl didn’t know how to fight either. We lost many a long blonde hair that day because all we knew how to do was pull hair. I’m thankful for lost hair and from never hearing from the bully ever again.
That next year, grandma gave me a Hallmark Keepsake Girl for my 11th birthday. It has its special place in my china cabinet so that it doesn’t get broken. This Keepsake Girl is in a long pink dress with an embroidery needle and hoop in her hands. She’s feminine. She’s dainty. And she doesn’t look like she would be the kind of girl to ever fight a day in her life - - that was me.
Grandma soon taught me how to embroidery a little and she taught me how to cook. It was through my Hallmark Keepsake Girl that I knew she really did know me.
When I think back to the year I was 10 years old, I laugh and I cry. While her approach was not what I would have chosen then or now, I learned a lot about my grandmother, myself and how song lyrics can leave a lasting memory.
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me.
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