that '70s book

I was chatting with my 20-something nephew a couple of weeks ago about books we liked. Inevitably, The Lord of the Rings came up.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I tried to read that three times, but I didn't get very far. I reckon the only reason people ever read that book is that there was nothing else to do in the '70s."

Nothing else? Nothing else?

What about ABBA? What about Grease? What about Atari? What about Pong? What about rollerskating? What about rollerskating to ABBA?

In those moments of spinning on four wheels to the sound of Dancing Queen echoing around the carport from our portable cassette player, we knew what it was to live.

Yes, yes, I know it's really that '50s book, but I guess my nephew sees me as a '70s child. Which I was. Kind of. Nearly. At least after I turned 1. And the '70s is when everyone was reading it. Wasn't it? Including me. Or that might have been the '80s. Whatever.

image is from Rongem Boyo at flickr