I truly enjoyed everyone's reminiscences of their exposures to music and record players yesterday.
As a toddler, I had a plastic record player that played 45s. The last time I played it, I was about 11 or 12. I was going through the infantile recordings I had and fixated on "Teddy Bears Picnic". I played it over and over for about an hour. The day was hot. We had no air conditioning.
I had, during the years of puberty, occasional "sick headaches". That is what my mom called them, but they were a form of migraine.
That day, I developed one of those sick headaches and was bedridden by early evening and tended to throughout the night by my parents who would put a cold cloth on my brow, adjust the sweat-soaked sheets (or replace them), etc.
The worst thing about that particular headache was the ear worm that played over and over in my head;
If you go down to the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today
You better go in disguise
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today is the day the teddy bears have their picnic
I was allowed to stay home the next day and rest My headache and fever broke early in the morning and I was exhausted.
I had the strength, however, to take that damned 45 and smash it to pieces.
