Ah, you've found the 'secret' page. Very clever indeed...
It shouldn't be that secret, though, so tell all your friends!
My George Tribute
Oh, the 29th November. A very sad day indeed for those of us with any taste whatsoever. It happened at 1:30 standard Pacific time at Gavin deBecker's house.
I have yet to celebrate George Harrison's birthday. I first learned that he existed on Christmas Eve, 2000, when my dad and grandfather amazed me with their vast Beatles knowledge (Ringo's name was actually Richard Starkey!). For Christmas that year, my dad received 1 and The Beatles Anthology. I became bored and one day began to read the gigantic tome that was on our coffee table. Hey, I thought to myself, this is actually pretty interesting. I wonder what the song Please Please Me sounds like. They keep mentioning it. And so it went from there.
I discovered that my parents in fact had a few Beatles records, which I could not yet listen to because our record player didn't work. Instead, I took them out of the storage box in the basement and looked at the record covers, proud that I could point out that on their first American record released on Vee Jay (of course, I didn't know it was their first), they spelt Ringo's last name with only one 'r' and it was supposed to have two.
I found two Beatles CD's (Help! and Rubber Soul) in my parents' CD collection, and promptly 'borrowed' them (only to have them stolen a few months later). I began to remember The Beatles from my childhood. I remembered turning up Rubber Soul (my favourite CD as a seven-year-old) as loud as it could go and jumping off the stairs with my brother. Faint memories of singing along to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da while playing with my dollhouse began to surface, and it was revealed to me by my mother that I had seen The Beatles Anthology on television when it had first come out. Mom had also rented Help! when we were little, and as she told me this, I remembered the scene where the bad guys were shooting darts at the picture of Ringo.
Gradually, I began to enlarge my collection of Beatles stuff. My mom found a scrapbook she and a friend of hers had made when they were young, all about The Beatles, including cutouts from various magazines. She also found an old Beatles fan magazine and I discovered that there was one picture of George which had been cut out of it and glued onto a piece of notebook paper for my mom's scrapbook. Oh well, this meant that the resale value was decreased considerably so I could flip through the pages without worrying that I would mess up a potential fortune.
Then, in April, I took at trip to England, France, and Spain for two weeks. My trip to London cemented my interest in the biggest band in the world. I went on a Beatles walking tour in London, which included a visit to Abbey Road and the London Beatles Store. It was there where I got a 3' by 4'6" poster from the cover of The Beatles for Sale. A couple of weeks after we returned from the trip, all of my CDs were stolen. This was devastating to me, but allowed me to rebuild my collection with only the CDs that were important to me: Beatles CDs. So far, the only non-Beatles CD I have is Moby's Play, which I had been listening to in the car when the rest of my CDs were stolen.
For a while I was just listening to Beatles music because I felt that nothing could compare to their songs, but now I have begun to branch out after my brother downloaded KaZaA. Now I enjoy the music of No Doubt, Green Day, and Sublime as well. The only common trend is that all of those bands play their own instruments and write their own music, unlike almost all of the 'musicians' I had listened to before hearing The Beatles.
Now my room is plastered with pictures of The Beatles (I bought four of the Life publication about The Beatles, dismantled it, and hung the pictures on my wall. I have run out of space, and now have resorted to nailing posters to the beams on my ceiling, but I still have a poster waiting to have space found), I play the bass guitar, I am a total anglophile, know more about the 60s and music in general, and have MUCH better taste in music (though I never did like 'NSYNC or the backstreet boys - that goodness for that). All because of four lads from Liddypool. Pretty amazing.
Yesterday marked the 12 week anniversary of the day my heart was shattered.
Even though I never even got close to meeting George (I had sent him a letter c/o Staten Island U. Hospital, but I don't think it got to him), I felt like I had always known him, and he was my best friend. I knew so much about him, and watched his every televised move. I had traced his short life of 58 years so diligently for the past months.
And I though I had broken down when I learned he was terminally ill... Somehow, I managed to choke down my breakfast, filling my bowl with tears in the meantime, and make my way to school, where I was greeted by dozens of sympathetic faces and a few teasing ones. I shuddered my way through the day, until English class came, when I wrote an essay about the joys of having a pet. My bunny Dandilion was my subject, and I had to write about how he comforted me when I learned George was terminally ill. If that wasn't enough, a classmate was laughing and saying, "ha ha, George is dead. He looks like an acorn in that picture you have of him on the front of your binder."
I couldn't stand it. When I got home, I watched George tributes on the television for hours, though I couldn't see many of them because of the tears that resulted. When my brother got home, he gave me a hug and told me he was glad that I stuck with what I loved. My mom was very understanding, as well as my dad. Mom said that we would plant a tree in George's honour because he had been a gardener.
We haven't planted that tree yet, but in my heart, it's growing steadily. I realize that George left the earth early because he was all done with his life. The earlier people leave, the more they have accomplished and added to world. They leave because they are wise and do not need to learn more. George was especially wise, so he left at age 58. I sometimes wish I had been wise with him.