How the World Has Changed: I Can Get Nichols and May as a Single!

My students have given me too much homework.  Instead of writing one sentence to tell me who(m) they had in mind to do a StoryCorps interview with, they wrote up their fake interview, and one of them--a charming guy from Nepal--wrote (or perhaps downloaded) a phone conversation with his mother.  That reminded me of the Nichols and May mother-and-son telephone conversation that I've always loved--so much that I've recited it to Jonathan and translated it into Spanish and French.  I decided to use it in ESL 140 as part of our StoryCorps unit (and on overcoming obstacles).  At the same time I was moving from the recliner in the living room to my computer in the study to order The Last Innocent Year:  america in 1964 by Jon Margolis because I'd just noticed that that book was used for the DVD I ws watching on 1964, our year of graduation at CHS.  I've already written lyrics about the changes since then--to the tune of "The Days of Wine and Roses."

The days we are remembering

Nineteen sixty-four

We walked out the door

Of a school that didn’t have the Internet.

The faces that we met

Were really there before.

Facebook was not a buzz word.

We liked people then

With a ballpoint pen

In a yearbook that they couldn’t soon delete

In sentences complete

We didn’t even tweet.

(Now the part that came to me this morning)

Nostalgia is a danger

If we hold too fast

On things that cannot last,

So let’s celebrate the changes we have seen

And figure out together

What they mean.

And that reminds me that I'd better get something off to the CHS 50th Anniversary committee before it's too late to share the past 50 years!

In the meantime, I'll report on the fascinating news items--but separately.  I've just printed out the Mother and Son dialogue from Nichols and May.  I had it on a document from 1999.