My Mom's Favorite My Kid's a Genius Story is About John Oates

And a mannequin...

Every June, on the day after school got out, my family would pile into the car for the very long drive to South Jersey from various parts of Ohio.  Nine to eleven hours is a very long time to spend in a car when you are a child.  Especially when you are stuck in the backseat with a sister who always hogged the armrest (fancy!).  When we got to the Ben Franklin Bridge, we would switch out our Pointer Sisters tape for Hall & Oates (b/c they are from Philly).  It was awesome because it meant one, we only had two more hours; and two, their lyrics were in both a mental and vocal range that my dad could somewhat handle.  Next we had to listen to Billy Joel's "Allentown" because of the "spend the weekends on the Jersey Shore" lyric, and Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" for obvious reasons.

My sister always preferred Aryans such as John on "CHiPs" and Daryl Hall, while I preferred Ponch and John Oates.  My parents were so concerned about my "exotic" taste in men, that they didn't want to buy the Ponch action figure that I wanted for Christmas when I was four.  They finally relented, but got cheap plastic fake ATVs for them to ride around on.  You know, because it's not like they're motrocycle cops and should have the accessory that makes them different from regular cops.  Maybe instead of buying us a pretend stove, it would have made more sense to spend an extra $4 to get the motorcycles that went along WITH THE MOTORCYCLE COPS.  I could never get that into playing CHiPs because they had to rid around on lame three wheeler bikes that the bad guys always rode.  It just wasn't right.  I should probably go find those pics and put them up so you can understand what I'm whining about.

Okay, but back to John Oates.  As you can see, his music was very important to me from an early age.  So when I was four, my mom and I were walking through Sears and I spotted a mannequin with a curly black wig and, oddly enough, a mustache.  I said, "Mom, that mannequin looks just like John Oates."  My mom was like, "uh huh," because she had no clue what I was talking about.  I guess it dawned on her later, because she started telling her friends all about her genius child's observation and keen pop cultural sensibilities.  Maybe they should have told her that I shouldn't be watching that much MTV, because I could end up a spinster who blogs about mannequins from the '80s.