As was often the case during my stay at Neuro ICU, I’d be kept awake by anguished thoughts of the recent past or anxious thoughts of the present and future. As an escape, I’d delve into memories from the distant past; the earliest experiences I could recall from my childhood in a small suburban home in mid-70s Concord, California. More often than not, these memories would have some connection with mass media, from singing along with my brother to early rock music from our parent’s record collection to listening to soft rock on AM radio with my mom in the kitchen as she cooked or cleaned. Sometimes she’d play heartfelt renditions of her favorite songs on the piano with the help of sheet music or songbook collections. 

Even before I could read I was fascinated by comics, Mad Magazine, and images in storybooks, but my favorite media, despite relatively limited offerings at the time, was television. Like many kids of our generation, my brother and I were encouraged to watch public television programs like Sesame Street, 321 Contact, and The Electric Company. We also gravitated towards re-runs such as The Twilight Zone, Time Tunnel, Star Trek, Batman, Lost in Space, and Spider-Man as well as more ‘contemporary’ shows like Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, In Search Of…, Quark, The Muppet Show, Star Blazers, and various Saturday morning cartoons. On special occasions we’d catch Rankin/Bass and Peanuts holiday specials and rare (for that time) airings of feature films such as Planet of the Apes, Godzilla, and their numerous sequels.

The first feature film I can recall seeing in a theater was Star Wars (1977), which reinforced my interest in all things sci-fi and also spawned a craving for Star Wars tie-ins from toys, lunch boxes and trading cards to comics, children’s books and soundtrack album. Earlier that year my parents let my brother and I stay up late with them to watch the network premier of 2001: a Space Odyssey, which was an equally formative experience. Both films inspired an appreciation for the medium which would expand through the 80s and beyond. The success of Star Wars led to a wave of genre films, many of which I was fortunate enough to have seen in theaters including Lord of the Rings (1978), Superman (1978), The Black Hole (1979), Flash Gordon (1980), and Clash of the Titans (1981).

My childhood experiences were fortunately not entirely mediated, but media was definitely a large influence on my developing interests and worldview. It may also have been a causal factor or symptom of ADHD, which I had no idea I had until college.