Grease

For Ryan’s 12th birthday we got her a pink mini ipod. (It was what she wanted.) She is really into music and listens to it all the time. I don’t mind saying that I am still completely biased in the music department. I think a lot of new stuff is stupid and just plain deafening. As a teenager I was definitely a music snob and liked only what we call alternative music and classic rock. I have come around a large corner and now listen mostly to country. Country is way more family oriented and more upbeat than anything pop culture has put out. (Yes, I am old.) However, I still want Ryan to gain an appreciation for all of the REALLY good stuff that is out there. The Police, The Cars, The Hooters, Billy Bragg, David Bowie, Devo, Prince, The Boomtown Rats…….Sigh!....so many perfectly perfect songs.
Anyways, I was downloading some songs onto her ipod for her and I put the Grease soundtrack on it which led to us renting the movie to watch. Grease. When I was in 4th grade my mother would not let us listen to the soundtrack because of the word “shit” in the song “Greased Lightning.” I don’t remember exactly when I got to actually see the movie but it must have been sometime during Jr High. I remember watching it over at my friend Jill’s house. Her mother drove me home that night. We were talking about the movie. I was saying how I didn’t think the movie was so bad. Alice said she thought it was a sad movie because eventually Sandy was turned into a “bad” girl and that was portrayed as the “cool” way. Kids all over were watching the movie and seeing that to be “cool” you had to be dumb and barely graduate high school with no further plans, you had to sleep around, you had to smoke and be disrespectful to teachers. I was the only one in the car with my friend’s mother and so I was really listening to her and I remember this like a ton of bricks. I didn’t want her to be right but I knew she was.
So now in this day and age Grease is PG. And yet it was with great consternation that I rented this video for my 12 year old daughter to watch. I have morphed from a young woman that firmly and staunchly believed in “Live and let live” to an older woman that believes in “Live and let live…….but don’t do it around my children.” I knew that the transformation was eminent. I did. I never wanted the throne of motherhood because I knew that it changed a person. I knew you became a figurehead for the family, no longer yourself. I have no problem with watching Grease myself but to rent it for some little innocent soul…… Damn. I am a prude. But I did let her watch it. And she will never have a hang up about this movie like I did. She will probably not even remember it as a good movie. But she will know who Frankie Avalon is and that he sang “Beauty School Dropout.”