Friday, October 21, 2011

THE BILLBOARD BOOK OF NUMBER ONE HITS

This Is How We Do It: This is the perfect song.

I remember this being used on a commercial for some compilation CD YTV put out.

When I was a kid, we were always allowed to eat dinner in our rooms Friday night. I can remember eating my dinner in my room one Friday night in February 1997. It was about 8:00 and I was listening to Mix 97. They played this song and I shoved my little tape recorder up against the speaker of my record player/radio and recorded it.

The next day I was recording Indian music from "Eye On Asia" on CITY-tv using my tape recorder. My friend Sarah called me up and asked me if I wanted to come over. I said sure and my mom took me over to their house by the lake. I figured I would just stay until after lunch, but I was having such a good time I called home and asked if I could stay till dinner. Dad came and got me at dinnertime.

As I mentioned before, I was not very sociable as a kid. I had Amanda, of course, but that was a different kind of friendship than a lot of friendships because we were both blind. When I was talking to Mom on Sarah's parents phone, asking to stay longer, I had such a weird feeling because it was the first time I had wanted to stay longer at a friend's house, just like any normal child. It was a pleasant feeling overall.

Waterfalls: My sister used to sing this song a lot.

In the summer of 1995, my sister and I had this really great babysitter named Sandra. She wanted to be a teacher so she had designed this sort of daily program for us. It wasn't a rigid authoritarian program, but it kept us busy and was fun. She allowed a minimal amount of TV, which even then, though I was a TV addict, I recognised as a good thing.

One day, we were having one of our rare moments of TV watching and we were watching the local cable station, which broadcast community announcements and the audio from Mix 97 in Belleville. Mix 97 played a TLC song, and I asked Sandra what TLC stood for. She said "Tender Loving Care."

I can remember writing a story in Grade 6 about three boys named Terry, Luke and Carl, having the band TLC in mind.

Kiss From A Rose: I can remember them playing this on OJ a lot.

When this song came out, I was just getting to the age where I was starting to understand sexual stuff. I knew there was a sexual meaning behind the line, "when your rose is in bloom." I knew it had to do with the girl Seal was singing about being ready for sex.

I can remember an episode of "Family Matters" where Laura wanted to go see Seal, but Harriet was reluctant to let Laura go because of bad things that could happen to her. Harriet kept referring to Seal as "Walrus."

Gangster's Paradise: The classic parody of this song is, of course, Weird Al's "Amish Paradise."

I can remember seeing commercials for the film "Dangerous Minds" and thinking it was a violent and harmful movie.

Remember "Dangerous Minds: The Series?"

From 1995-1997, I attended the spring camping session at Lake Joseph Centre, a resort/camp run by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. I can remember sitting in the lounge, or maybe we were playing a game, and the counsellours played part of this song. I remember the line, "As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and thinking of the verse in Psalm 23.

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