For men of a certain age who watched the Mickey Mouse Club and Spin and Marty, Annette Funicello was the first female who made you feel "different." I was one of those guys and I would sit and watch her with a pre-teens infatuation.
Annette was pretty, had a great smile, great personality, considerate and was just the kind of girl a young man could take an idle walk or buy a soda or ice cream on the boardwalk for her. She could sing and dance and just seemed to be the California girl with the East Coast look. She looked like some girls I knew but was unlike any girl I had met.
If we are honest, she was also our first introduction to sensual attraction. Granted, I had no idea what these feelings stirring in me were or what I was supposed to about them. I think these feelings were stirred by what she had that the girls I knew didn't have yet, breasts. Unknown to me, Annette was six years older than my classmates and I, so she had them, and how.
Nonetheless, as I grew older and laughed at the Frankie Avalon beach movies for being so lame and seemingly unaware that the beach movies were behind the 60s youth, if they ever knew at all. Annette, however, remained the "nice girl" that we could still start a family with.
It was with sorrow I read of her passing. Another touch stone in my life no longer there to touch. Each passing year, another mooring line is cut from my youth. Yet, I can remember the opening door to my adulthood every time I stumble across something like this:
By the way, this video also helps to fortify the idea that Mike Love was the least needed Beach Boy, not forgetting his own thought on the matter.
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