When we were young.....it starts here!

I was twelve when Dirty Dancing first hit theaters. I was very precocious and thought it was beneath me. Took me years to acknowledge that it was in in fact Star Wars for girls. (Yes, I know 'girls' like Star Wars but they are few and far between and I have yet to meet one).

Anyway, my friend Lorna loved Dirty Dancing. She even bought the video cassette which was a big deal in 1987. Bear in mind in backwards Ireland the mere fact of having a machine to play the tape on was the height of coolness.

I never quite understood the Patrick Swayze thing myself. All I saw was a mullet. I didn't swoon over him but I secretly was impressed by the storyline. Like any twelve year old I wanted the strong but silent type to come and rescue me too. All young teens are like 'Baby' and I would have done anything for someone to tell me that I shouldn't be put in a corner.

By coincidence I came across the tail end of Patrick's Swayze's biography on the surprise surprise Biography Channel a couple of months ago. I started to reminisce about that whole era. The sheer innocence of it all. The fact that half the storyline went over our heads.

Swayze described Dirty Dancing as being the movie that 'wouldn't die.' Not that he wasn't grateful for the career boost but it really has, with the exception of Ghost, overshadowed all his subsequent work.

Swayze came across as being a very down to earth humble guy. It is to his credit in the transient world that is Hollywood that he has managed to stay married to the same woman for thirty years.

I was surprised by how saddened I was to hear of his battle with pancreatic cancer. I have never been a fan as such but he brings me back to an earlier perhaps gentler era when my biggest problems revolved around what to wear at a student disco.

I wish him the best and I hope he makes a full recovery from this relatively rare but deadly form of cancer.

So the nostalgia train boards here. The aging process is catching up with us all. I remember throwing my eyes up to heaven when I was a teenager as my mother waxed lyrical about some teen idol who had passed away.

Now I understand. In a few short years time I will be picking up the paper and expressing shock about the sudden passing of, I don't know, the front man of Simple Minds or A-ha.

I will mourn these people for what they represented in a particular moment in my life. I will mourn them not only for their merits but for that chapter in my history they inhabit.

Oh the Madonna's and the Prince's will all be a big media splash when they kick the bucket but I think I will weep more for forgotten idols. The ones who meant so much for fifteen minutes when I was young.

The high profile stars stay in our consciousness . But the artists who define an era are the ones who only had successful careers for a few years. Or a few months. The one hit wonders.

So on a lighter note I could be crying for Adam Ant yet!