What has that got to do with Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Well, they play the song on the trolley – over and over again.
International Drive, or I-Drive, is the city’s main tourist strip, is part of Florida we got to know very well, and we would often catch the I-Ride Trolley (a bus that travelled up and down I-Drive all day stopping at various points along the way). It was a song I was to share with my teenage daughter – whether she liked it or not – when she, my husband and I went to Florida recently. Over the years, as I grew up and then went on to start a family of my own, I didn’t think about Cyndi too much, even though I heard Girls Just Want to Have Fun on the radio now and then. I seem to remember it causing the odd row, with Mum often shouting up the stairs, “Will you turn that racket off!” I thought otherwise – and chose to have it blasting out on my record player at every opportunity. “Sounds like a cat being strangled,” was her take on it. My mother wasn’t very impressed – with her – or with the song. And here was this strong, independent woman who didn’t seem to have a care as to what others thought of her. After all, she had pink and orange hair! As a child, I had always been taught to be respectful, to have manners and to toe the line. What teenager who grew up in the 1980s doesn’t remember this song? As an 11-year-old, I thought Cyndi Lauper was amazing. “That’s all they really want / Some fun / When the working day is done / Oh girls, they wanna have fun / Oh girls just want to have fun” Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper Watch the video for Girls Just Want to Have Fun Susan England Playlist: The agony of Cyndi Lauper for my family I’m filled with pride and sadness when I look at the photo of this young man with his whole life ahead of him. To anyone else, this is a photo of an ordinary US Marine, but to me, Daddy is one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met. If he’d known he would die at such a young age, would he have taken a bit more time off? Most of his life, he worked six days a week, often for 12 hours a day. I’m 54, so have already lived two years longer than my dad. I’d begun to recognise my father’s keen intelligence, and that he could have gone on to achieve an advanced degree and high-paying job if he’d had the same opportunities as me. As I was just getting to know my father on an adult level, I feel a bit cheated that we lost him so soon. I was 20 at the time and just a few months earlier had helped Daddy prepare for his chemistry exam at the plant. Unfortunately, this 6ft 2 southern gentleman with a drawl as slow and thick as molasses on a winter morning, would die in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 52. After his military escapade, my dad went on to be an insurance salesman, cross-country truck driver, owner and operator of a service station and technician in a sewage filter plant. I’m sure he was devastated to be discharged from the Marines, but I’m sure he was busting a gut to tell the distraught doctor that he’d been part blind since he was poked in the eye with a window screen at the age of five. When I recall this, I can’t help but beam with the same cheeky grin my daddy displays in the photo. The military doctor sadly informed him that he was now permanently blind in his left eye, and would be issued an honorary medical discharge. One day during target practice, another soldier’s rifle accidentally butted my dad on the left side of his head. Despite the imperfections, I rarely questioned his love or doubted he would move heaven and Earth to provide for his family. Riddled with flaws like anyone else, my father made mistakes and even broke my heart a few times. He went on to achieve an excellent score for marksmanship, so must have thought for a time that his visual deficit would remain a secret. Blind in his left eye because of a childhood accident, Daddy memorised the eye chart to pass the physical.