Blast from the Past

Wow, drive-in movie theaters apparently are booming now, with quarantining in effect.  That brings back a memory of when I was 6 years old, in 1954, and hospitalized in southern California with polio.  My hospital room overlooked the Circle Drive-In Theater, and I was allowed to have a theater speaker box on my window sill, so I was able to lie in bed and watch the evening movie with sound (as long as my parents approved of whatever movie was playing at the time).  The drive-in later played a major role in my teenage years, especially with one memorable night of my arm falling completely asleep while around my date's shoulders and making me think I had permanent nerve damage.  But that's another story...

John, thanks for sharing.  You definitely are a glass is half full kind of guy if you are able to have fond, nostalgic recollections of being laid up with polio.    I don't think they'll be firing up any drive-ins in my neck of the woods as they tore them all down and redeveloped the land.  I recall the last movie I saw at a drive-in, Jaws in 1976 I think.  Good times.

Well, one thing I learned while working as a pediatrician was that kids that age cry when they are hurting or sad or scared, but they very rarely seem to feel sorry for themselves. I think that develops later. I also remember enjoying the hospital hydrotherapy tank, in which I was suspended in a canvas sling, where I would put my chewing gum on my knee that was just out of the water and would pretend that it was the keeper of a lighthouse tower in stormy seas. Unfortunately the keeper was swept away occasionally by the big waves.