On our first day at our new school my friends and I wore crisply pressed overalls and carried Charlie’s Angels or Star Wars lunch boxes, each one containing a meal which a mother had lovingly and thoughtfully prepared. We knew nothing of pessimism, and the kids waiting for us there looked at us like we were a different species, as if emissaries from a past they had never known.
Exponentially cooler than we were, these kids all seemed so much more grown up. I was in awe of how independent and worldly they acted, as if totally free from childhood. They hadn’t just hit puberty they’d shot past it. They knew all about sex and drugs and rock n’ roll, and when they fought, blood was drawn. In short, they radiated everything that I, still prepubescent and utterly innocent, was not, but very much wanted to be.
At this time, as teenaged life was accelerating mysteriously toward me, I watched my first episode of Saturday Night Live. I was probably eleven years old, maybe twelve, and all I knew about the show– mostly gleaned from my sister who was four years older than me– was that it was on late, and was racy and dangerous in the kind of way that adults, or at least parents, didn’t quite approve of.
The first sketch I watched was called Night on Freak Mountain, which was awful in all the ways that are typical of Saturday Night Live. It didn’t matter, though. It was about drugs, and it was late at night, both of which to me seemed inexhaustibly cool. (Later, it was Mr. Bill who ignited my grade seven imagination, probably because I still related to toys.)
No matter, it didn’t spark a love affair. I never became a dedicated fan or made a point of watching the show, and for the most part, like a lot of people, thought it lame. In fact, as far as I was concerned, it was the opposite of cool, but if you’re of Generation X, SNL served as a kind of water cooler around which you invariably orbited, and whether we liked it or not, it was imbued with a gravitational force that ended up bending our lives.
Although I had no intention of watching the SNL 40th anniversary special on Sunday, I ended up doing so, and quite simply, it made me happy. It played like a history of the pop culture of my life, and seeing all the people who composed its landscape was touching. Sweet, celebratory and maybe even a little bit sad, the show was like returning to my old high school or university campus, a precinct that really only exists in memory. And so I toured the grounds, marvelling at all the familiar places and feeling refreshed by the faces of all those I had once known, and those that had receded from memory, too, everything once again feeling vivid and limitless.
After family had left and the remaining adults retreated to their bedrooms, the girls began a dance party in our living room. The bass-heavy music thumped away, with the girls singing along together in a harmony that they might never find again. For that moment, they were a perfectly constituted choir—a constellation of sound, movement, energy and potential.
Studying YouTube, they taught themselves new dance steps.
Gas.
Pedal.
Gas.
Pedal.
And as they gained confidence and expertise, their steps grew louder and more choreographed. They were becoming more like the versions of themselves they wanted to be, and their voices, now high-pitched and excited, rose above the music. Lying back in bed watching TV, Rachelle and I could make out flashes of their tossed hair reflected back from the mirror in the hallway, and it was like catching glimpses of agents of nature, unguarded and fierce in their natural habitat.
As it was getting late, we told them that they’d have to keep it down and mind our neighbours, and so they began to dance softly. Having switched to stealth mode, it was as if they were now in moccasins– their feet falling as soft as whispers. And after 30 minutes they had danced themselves dry and all ran to the kitchen, chugging glass after glass of water from the cutest cups that they could find.
And in 10, 20, 30 years, that song they were listening to will come to them over the radio or in a bar, and it will all return in surprising torrents. The moves, like muscle memory, will return, the pretty, downtown dresses bought on Queen Street, the junk food shared and last names suddenly recalled….Yes, that feeling of the endless summer of youth, of being thirsty and drinking cold, cold water, of a life once so simple, pure and beautiful– everything still imperishable and perfect stretching before them.
