Blue Light Special

Yesterday after work I had to go pick up my son at a friend’s house who lives a good distance north of us off a busy highway.  In order to avoid the worst of the traffic I went straight there, but had about an hour to wait until I was to pick him up.  To kill some time I stopped by a HalfPrice Books.

I roamed the store a bit, read a bit, and checked out some Facebook stuff online while sitting at a table near the entrance.  Next to that table was a cart filled with old games for sale and curiosity drew me in (or was it the musty smell?).  Amongst the forty or so games I found Stratego and a game called “Break One Nine” which involved using a plastic CB radio and pushing your semi-truck piece around a game board.  It struck me that my kids would have no idea what this game was about or why one would use a number code to communicate information over a radio from a vehicle.  Isn’t that what texting is for?

Speaking of arcane knowledge from the 70’s... I then found a game called “Blue Light Special” and in my mind’s eye I was three feet tall again and running through the tiled aisles of a Kmart store looking to find that spinning blue light shining somewhere just above the height of the shelves, a booming voice overhead egging me on, “Attention shoppers!  There is a Blue Light Special in kitchenwares.”  I’m sure my Mom’s voice was the next to boom out without the help of a speaker, “Aaron!  Where are you?  Get back here!”  

“Blue Light Special” is now a cultural reference and as indecipherable to my kids as “Break one nine.”  Like many phrases and references passed down from my parents that I’ve never had any direct experience of due to the passage of time, my kids will likely hear these things from me that will strike them as peculiar.  The advantage that they have that I did not have is they can immediately “Google it” and discover the origins of what they have not personally experienced.  Maybe their kids will snicker when they hear “Google it” and have no idea what they are talking about in some future Google-free world.

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