Come Dancing

I was sitting at a stop light, listening to an old Wham! song, and I smiled as I remembered the lines from the Kinks song Come Dancing:

The day they tore down the palais
I cried and I cried
The day they tore down the palais
Part of my childhood died.

That's when it hit me: with the celebrity deaths of this year, part of my childhood died. It could probably be said for many of us too. I grew up never knowing a world without Star Wars- the first of which was released three years before I was born. I can't even see a Star Wars movie these days without Reese's pieces because of childhood memories.

I was 11 when Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out and I've been watching Alan Rickman ever since. I can't even watch or read the end of Harry Potter without feeling a little sad.

I always know Vanilla Ice stole that riff from Under Pressure and Major Tom is part of the reason I don't want to be an astronaut.

The list could go on. Even with some deaths almost expected- Gene Wilder was in his 80's- it's still a little hard in a way. Yes, deaths of friends and family and other people are harder to take, it comes back to part of our childhood that's gone. When you're going through tough times you can, as Meatloaf said, put on the phones and let the drummer tell your heart what to do. You put on a song and dance. You enter a world of pure imagination.

In the end, we are all nothing more than stories. Let 2016 end and 2017 begin. And let's make the next set of stories good. Share the movies and music with friends and family and children, because oh were there so many children born this year. Let your childhood be part of theirs. Let the stories and good times go on.