Olivia Newton John

It wasn't unexpected that Olivia Newton John passed away recently, but super sad. She was beloved by so many. I had the opportunity to see her when I was a kid, at a casino in Reno. I was there with my parents, at an insurance convention. Pop was the president of the CIA, which I think was the California Insurance Agency. Or was it CAMIA (California Association of Mutual Insurance Agents?) Anyhoo, my parents were broke and we only went on "vacation" when there was an insurance convention and my dad had some reason to go.

Last week, during the move, I inherited his Insurance scrapbooks. Some of his speeches were included in the pages. Took me right back to me coaching him at Tahoe, when he was about to give one of his famous really really monotonous speeches. He literally had a monotone that he'd developed while speaking into a Dictaphone for the benefit of his secretary. I have so many opinions about this, but whatever. What worked for his secretary did not work while speaking to live humans in a ballroom, and he was boring as hell. Super confusing, given that he was a rollicking good laugh when telling stories after dinner, or writing to the local three dot journalist, hoping his quips would be posted, or even writing delicious hate mail to minor local officials. I did my best to remind him not to bore his audience if he wanted to get his ideas across.

Anyway, one of his insurance colleagues had an extra ticket to a show at Reno, and I got to see Olivia Newton John, with Norm Crosby (another of my dark haired celebrity crushes, along with Fred Gwynne, Desi Arnaz and Speed Racer). It was in her Let Me Be There and I Honestly Love You years, and I loved it.

Fast forward many years later to the early 1980s and I was in college and living in a college town and seeing older guys. I brought one of those boyfriends to a dance party / sleepover at a friend's house in my home town and we were up all night raging. The next morning (a Saturday) I had an appointment with a local doctor because I'd previously had an abnormal test. And for some reason I said yes that night to both a then-popular drug starting with a Q, and also a bit of LSD. Pretty sure that that was the last time for both.

The next morning I went to the doctor with said boyfriend and I was apparently still under the effects of this stuff. I remember that my wait at the doctor's was insanely long, and that the wallpaper in the exam room had an orange weeping willow design, and that I was suddenly afraid that my boyfriend would not wait around for me. I asked to change back into clothes and went to the garage where my car was to look for my boyfriend. He was laying on his back, on the hood of my car in the garage, leaning back on the windshield, perfectly happy. I went back up to the exam room, donned the special outfit again, and I distinctly remember hearing Olivia Newton John on the overhead music system singing Have You Never Been Mellow and thinking NO! I am super high and feel like I have never been mellow in my life!! 

The doctor finally came to see me, and it turns out that he was a friend of my family, and part of the same Scandinavian fraternal group that my dad sold insurance for. I managed to have a credible conversation with him about Norway and my concentration on the saga of the 11th Century king Sverri Sigurdsson, and I got out of there without any of us needing to discuss that I was flying high on illegal substances. While having a medical exam. 

Things were different in the 1980s. *I* was different in the 1980s. Take that, Mom!

And RIP Olivia Newton John. Interesting to learn that you also flew high (and more recently) on ayahuasca. Who knew?