On the good ship Lollipop...

I heard on "The View" this morning that Shirley Temple passed away, and it made me sad.  She had a remarkable life, without a doubt, and she could have written a book about how to be a successful child-star who grows up to be a sane and successful adult.  Good parenting (by sane and loving parents) surely must have had something to do with that.

One of the hosts of "The View" said that she heard a statement on the news stating that "Shirley Temple was like Honey Boo Boo with talent."   That made me cringe, to think that someone would even put both of those names in the same sentence.  

Before I started first grade, my mother signed me up for dance lessons.... ballet and tap.  I didn't much like ballet, but I loved tap... I loved the bright patent-leather black shoes, and I truly loved the sound of the silver metal taps.  I can remember putting on my tap shoes in my grandmother's house and walking across the wood floor of the dining room just to hear the tapping noise.  Within half a second,  Aunt Dolly came flying down the stairs telling me "Get those shoes off right now, young lady!!! This isn't the stage of Radio City Music Hall!!!" (Needless to say, I never did that again.)

Along with the dance lessons came the curls... my mother rolling up my hair in pink rubber curlers, hoping to duplicate Shirley Temple's blond curls.  My curls weren't exactly like Shirley's (and my hair was brunette, not blond) but my mother did a reasonably good job with those curlers.  I hated sleeping on them, but I liked the result in the morning. Even in the 1950s, every mother who had a little girl was trying to duplicate the magic and talent of Shirley Temple.

I watched all of Shirley Temple's movies when I was a kid...... mostly with my dad, and a lot of them with Aunt Dolly.  Daddy knew a lot of the words to her songs, and he'd sit on the sofa and sing along. I never did become an accomplished tap-dancer... my mother had also signed me up for piano lessons, and between the two, my practice schedule left me very little time for all of the books that I liked to read. (Yes, even back then, I was into books.)

On "The View" this morning, they mentioned the movies that Shirley Temple made with Bill Robinson (Mr. Bojangles).  That famous dance scene, with Shirley and Bill Robinson going up and down that flight of steps.... that tall black man holding the hand of the little white child.  Whoopi Goldberg said that no one back then objected to that hand-holding, no one made comments, no one had issues, and even in theaters across the South, everyone just smiled and loved both the child and the man.  Everyone just accepted the fact that two very talented people were dancing together and making everyone happy in the process.  How nice. Truly, honestly nice.

We'll never have another Shirley Temple on this planet.... and Bill Robinson's talent was beyond measure.  Today's world, however, could surely use a good strong healthy dose of that kind of nice-ness... where people can look at one another and see the person instead of just the color.

Maybe we all just need to tap-dance our way up and down the steps of life with a smile on our face and being truly happy in our hearts.