The Po Show

Valley Girl

I have *so* much shit to do right now, but it's the last day of the month and I wanted to post one "background piece" about me. The woman who started the NaBloPoMo (I get all thrown off by that, since it's got Po in it and is too much like my AIM screen name) said that personal blogging is largely composed of navel-gazing (or something ever so vaguely to that effect), and I've been thinking about my origins.

I was born in the valley. And by that I mean *THE valley*, the San Fernando Valley. I clearly remember my kindergarten teacher asking me where I was born, and I kept saying "the valley" and she kept asking "which valley?" and I kept insisting "the VAL-ley!," because there were no other valleys as far as I was concerned.

We always just called it the valley, and it was where my family had first settled when they came off the boat from Japan, and it was where I spent my first year. I always jokingly say I was the original Valley Girl, since I was born there, but I really never spent much time living there. I did, however, spend a lot of time visiting, because my grandparents and my aunt lived there, and we drove down from Oxnard at least once a month, the whole time I was growing up.

But even though I only lived there a year, you can take the girl out of the valley, but I guess you can't take the valley out of the girl. At the advanced age of forty, I still pepper my language with valley talk. I say "like" wayyyyy too much, and "totally" and "you know" and "whatEVer." I still love a good mall (I remember the Galleria back in its heyday, when it was a primo mall, before it got all sad and empty, and now newly reincarnated into a pseudo-mall).

I was in high school when Moon Unit One Zappa came out with the song "Valley Girl," and I used to wow people with my perfect rendition. The frivolous nature of valley girls amused me, and I wanted to be like them (as opposed to the poindexter professor geek girl I was).

What happens to valley girls in middle age? So many of their mannerisms seem inappropriate; valley girls are supposed to be all about youth. But time marches on, and it's like, you know. It will be interesting to see what happens when valley girls become the geriatric crowd.

Gag me with a ventilator!