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Saturday
Jun272009
You be Jill, I'll be Kelly...Sabrina's up for grabs
If you were a girl and grew up where I did, chances are you played Charlie's Angels at recess. We would gather in the outside stairwell in front of the Boys' Entrance (a relic from when the girls and boys entered through different doors, I suppose) and cast the roles.
Almost everyone wanted to be beautiful Jill, played by Farrah Fawcett on the t.v. show. There would be long queen-bee-ish negotiations resulting in one happy girl and several stomping away in a snit. For some reason (conflict avoidance?), I consistently opted for Kelly, who seemed pretty enough and smart enough but not extraordinarily so on either count. Somehow Sabrina was always the booby (ha!) prize role--was she too brainy or was it the page-boy haircut? Her sharper-edged voice? We would conscript a nearby boy into playing Bosley and we were set to fight crime and, more importantly, to run with our hair flowing behind us, catch boys, and wrap them up with our jump ropes.
But first! I almost forgot the most important part. Someone would recite the opening lines:
Once upon a time there were three little girls
who went to the police academy
and they were assigned very hazardous duties
but I took them away from all that
and now they work for me
my name
is Charlie
And make the all-important, gun-toting pose:
Please tell me I'm not the only one. I think in our young girl minds, we were all three women: the beautiful one, the smart one, the classy one. At least we believed it was in our future, when we reached the magical grown-up years. Probably whole feminist studies dissertations could be written on the messages we received and internalized.
I outgrew Farrah Fawcett as a role model before I left Wilson School (but in jr. high I totally had those sneakers she's wearing in the photo below). Since then I've rarely given her another thought. This isn't an "O Captain, My Captain" moment, really. But her death still makes me kind of sad, albeit in a selfish oh-no-not-my-childhood-icons/I-must-be-getting-old way. She was someone's mom, someone's sweetheart, and she seemed to handle her health ordeal with a great amount of courage.
And I kind of feel bad that she had to go on the same day as MJ. Talk about being upstaged.
That's all I wanted to say.
A kind of postmodern memento mori
and reminder to myself to carpe diem.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Reader Comments (7)
I was a fan.
But contrary to your assesment, I was always Sabrina! Hah! Funny, that. And I had that same pair of sneakers too, although the nike swoosh was baby blue. It is sad when people die too young. A good reminder that NONE of us is immortal (yet).
sabrina was secretly a man. that's why no one wanted to be her.
oddly enough, it's who i grew up to be.
except i'm not a man.
No, you were not the only one.
I, too, opted for Kelly, but I always admired Sabrina's spunk and attitude....
I never, never saw myself as Jill--and never wanted to be her.
There could probably be a whole subtext and psychoanalysis on which angel you identified with as a child.
And yes, I felt a little sorry for her that she got pre-empted by MJ. She got the "and in closing, we'd just like to mention" spot in the news.
Too bad.
RIP, Farrah, RIP.
There are three girls in my family and we have always done the Charlie's Angels pose. I wanted to be Sabrina because my hair could actually be styled like hers. The Farrah do was an impossible dream for my sad locks. We watched a couple of old episodes today. It was awesome.
My cousins and I always played. This was definitely a throwback week to the 80's. Crazy; growing up. And in a throwback to you, I'm writing this from your childhood house, walked past Wilson School just yesterday and I'm sure I heard your voice echo through the air, saying, "My name is Charlie!"
I TOTALLY played this as a kid. I always wanted to be Jill, but was frequently relegated to Kelly.
And LAME that MJ stole her thunder. She deserved better.