How could Ringo be 83? | Opinion

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Ringo Starr just celebrated his 83rd birthday? Not possible. I was just a flighty 14-year-old when my bedroom walls were covered in The Beatles posters and my dresser had all kinds of Ringo dolls on top. So, by now you might have guessed that Ringo was my favorite Beatle. Well, I must confess that this is not really the case. Problem was that by the time I made up my mind who to choose, all my other friends had picked Paul, John and George — in that order — before me and I didn’t want to be the one that went along with the pack. So Ringo won by default, you might say.

My friends and I had been listing to Cousin Brucie on WABC as well as the WMCA Good Guys spin The Beatles songs for months before we ever saw them on TV. We listened to them on static-filled transistor radios and the larger ones that plugged in on our dressers. I even won a copy of “She Loves You” by being the ninth caller on the WABC name-it-and-claim-it game. Could I have been more excited?

Yes, I could have, and I was when Feb. 9, 1964, those adorable mop tops first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” My friends and I had been yapping about it for weeks at school, on the phone and whenever there was an empty space to fill with words, the words were about The Beatles. By the time they came to America, we knew everything there was to know about each of them. We all knew how old they were, which ones were, excuse the expression, married, and how they got started playing together.

I’d prepared my parents way beforehand to make sure that they would be watching along with me. Of course, we always watched Ed Sullivan together, but this time it was imperative that they would pay strict attention. On other Sundays, I would sometimes experience what I called Ed Sullivan stomach when I felt the anxiety of not having done my weekend homework yet. But on this night, I made certain that there would be nothing left for me to do to prepare for Monday morning at school so that I could fully enjoy the experience.

Mommy had already put my little sisters to bed. I have no idea where my 9-year-old brother Gary was, nor frankly did I care. Mom got comfortable on the sofa next to Daddy who was seated on his club chair with his cigarettes and ash tray ever at the ready on the snack table. I was too excited to sit still for too long before the show began, so I paced around a bit and ran up to my room to make one last phone call to Ilene Rashbaum so we could yammer about it for a minute.

Then I came downstairs and flopped on the floor right in front of Daddy. And then when Ed Sullivan finally introduced The Beatles to sing their first song, “All My Loving,” I think I was likely screaming along with all the other audience members. I can’t be sure because the experience was surreal. I didn’t quite get the concept that I was part of a 73-million person television audience watching all at the same time. For me, there was nobody but me sitting there watching, and the rest of the world including my parents and my friends could have been on another planet as far as I was concerned.

And after all three numbers, I finally checked in with my folks who didn’t quite share my exhilaration. They both said something like very good or that was fun or some other lame expression, at which point I mentioned that George had a little sore throat and that they were bound to enjoy The Beatles more the next time they were on TV. But really, I didn’t quite care what they thought. I knew how I felt, and believe me, by 9 p.m. I was spent. I can remember it all like it was yesterday. And wasn’t it? So how could Ringo be 83?

Columnist Ellyn Laub lives in Coconut Creek.