Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: RECORD (04/22/21)
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TITLE: When I Was Only 33 and 1/3 | Previous Challenge Entry
By LINDA GERMAIN
04/29/21 -
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Even now, one line of Disney’s Bippity-Boppity-Boo tune sends me to those five-year-old days filled with questions about glass slippers and pumpkin coaches. What if she broke her shoe and cut her foot? Did her unusual ride to the ball smell like Thanksgiving dessert? Every cartoon melody gave me food for pondering this or that.
Each year of growth brought another musical connection to an event. At twelve, the best part of Saturday at the skating rink was the final hokey song instructing us to poke in an arm and twist it all about and then turn in a circle. Sometimes that worked. Sometimes it didn’t. I soon found out that wasn’t really what it’s all about!
When Elvis and Pat hit the scene, I was still too young to understand why teenage girls were screaming and swooning. In a few years, the answer began to dawn on me as I waltzed, twisted, and disco-danced my way through the new smorgasbord of music coming from every direction.
At sixteen, I won a local radio contest to be a co-disc jockey on a Saturday morning show for a couple of hours. The regular platter-spinner guy let me choose songs from any albums they had available. Having just moved to town and to a new school, I didn’t know anyone to tap for a record dedication. Nonetheless, it was a fun experience. He even let me give the weather report.
Lads from England, boys from the beach, girls with long straight hair singing folk songs with plaintive cries to be understood gave us an expression for every possible mood. My loyalty did not stay with any one genre. It was fun to listen to Willy, Johnny, Randy, or Dolly from the country as they extolled the pain of love and betrayal. Some days it was to dream along to smooth sounds with Etta, Ella, Della, and Barbra from the city.
Then, something amazing happened. All that iffy music appreciation came to a halt. Not the screeching kind, but a simple, quiet, fading away into obscurity.
I sailed into one end of the decade in a British sports car listening to everything from Billy J. to Elton blaring from its small stereo system and out the other side in a sensible sedan listening only to Christian music!
It’s as if a giant hand stopped me with a sign that read, “Enough of that!”
By then, the relative innocence of a good beat and achy-breaky tunes seemed to be morphing into foul language, evil meaning lyrics, and violent, strident noise. It did not connect to this aging fossil whose life seemed to be documented through a musical journey from movie cartoons to jukeboxes, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs.
Somehow, while I was in college and then getting a handle on a new career, I completely missed that 8-track thing. (My dad didn’t. He loved to hear Tennessee Ernie Ford singing Gospel songs!)
As soon as a new faith in Jesus entered my life, secular music held no interest. It’s as if it never existed. I discovered blessings from the incredible voices of Sandy and Larnelle, who gave us a stunning duet rendition of just having seen the Savior! Wow! That will always bring chills and tears.
Why do a couple of unexpected notes in an advertisement from the vintage songs of my youth try to send me back to a land of nostalgia where I don’t belong? Who was that energetic, boot-stomping, empty girl who had no clue all those sappy tunes meant nothing on the scale of real love and commitment or protest?
Give me beautiful music equating our God with a mighty fortress, or Hallelujah choruses from Bach, or any offering from those dear Gaither folks to soothe our hearts and give us hope.
Besides, who wants to flash backward? It seems like forward is the place that holds more promise and happiness. The only love songs that touch me are in praise and surrender to the One Who has saved me.
Being whole in the Lord gives more comfort than constantly soaking in the misguided directions and emotional blackmail of the unforgiving pounding beat of worldliness.
In my mind, the Trinity is three times that 33 and1/3 and equals the only ONE!
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Psalm 40:3 (NLT)
He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what He has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD.
(*Note to younger readers: A record is a round, flat object one plays on a turntable, and music happens. Your grandparents may have a whole collection.)
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