Friday Flashback: 1986

When I was in grade 1 or 2, my parents were going to go to Australia for a whole month and leave us with a nanny who would let us eat Kraft Dinner every day if we wanted to. Or at least that's how I perceived the whole nanny situation at the time.

But, then my parents thought we were going to have to move, so they cancelled their trip to Australia and bought a satellite dish and a big brown Ford van instead. It was one of those super-deluxe vans, with plush velour seats and curtains and puffy quilted side panels inside. It was the van that all the kids wanted to ride in when my Mom volunteered to drive for school field trips.

At the time, Ford gave you a mix tape of assorted hits in assorted musical styles when you bought a new vehicle from them to play in the tape deck. June 1986 my parents loaded up the van with the four of us kids, and we made the trek from Saskatchewan to British Columbia, which was a fairly lengthy drive, I think it took us 3 days to get to our destination. I can still remember driving through Saskatoon listening to this tape.

There are so many gooders on this tape... any time anyone says "A penny for your thoughts" I always sing "A nickel for a kiss, a dime, if you tell me that you love me, yeaeaaaaahhhhhhh."

And to this day, whenever any one pops this tape in, my sisters and I can still sing a long to all the songs word for word. I don't think that we'll ever lose that.

And, by the way, my parents never did go to Australia, they still haven't been outside Canada or the US. And we didn't end up moving for another three years.

But we still have the tape in our family. I'm kind of worried now though that one day it's going to wear out because I play in in my car so much.