We Have to Go Back: 'Free to Be You and Me'

Take my hand, come with me and revisit the formative album + special that the best of Gen X still know word for word.

Hiiiiiiii.

How’s everybody doing out there?

So, I started working on this post early yesterday morning before putting it down to go about the other work I needed to do for the day. Now, I feel like we need a splash of nostalgic goodness even more today after the news of the shooting at the Super Bowl parade yesterday in Kansas City.

Once again, it’s devastating and completely unsurprising.

Because there’s nothing more American than a mass shooting. That’s the sad truth. And to have it happen at a celebration of one of the most fun of American events? I don’t even know what to say anymore.

Fuck the guns and every single person who stands in the way of legislation that will help stop this from happening so often.

I’m just going to leave it there for now and get back to something that makes me feel the opposite of all of those rage and tear-filled emotions…maybe it can whisk you away from your own for a few minutes, too.

As I’m sure I’ve said here before, I pretty much go on Facebook these days to look at my Memories. I love to laugh at the old internet-speak of yore and dumbass things I said that I definitely thought were HILARIOUS at the time. Depending on the season, there are also rampant sports fan posts like “COLTS!” or “Go to hell, Carolina”, and some with more specific references to games that take me back to moment.

Or proof of past obsessions, loves, and loathes.

I absolutely get a rush when I find proof of my Scorpio intuition being spot-on about some famous or another because I loooooove an, “I TOLD YOU” as much as anybody. When I say someone sucks, I’m proven right way more often than not.

Tuesday alone brought some great moments proving that the brand has always been strong and people should really listen to me when I say things. LOL.

Ahem…by the way, this was less than a month after my mom died. Being irritated at a celeb is a great dissociation technique. I had to look up what might have inspired the FB post and this was around the time he was supposed to do a play on Broadway (with Alec Baldwin!) and there were lots of issues before he left the production like a week later. Shia then posted a bunch of the emails to his Twitter after that happened…but another director all those years later still SENT A VIDEO begging him to stay in her movie. And then did press around “firing” him for being an asshole not thinking that he might release it. Hmmmmm. So many things can be true at once!

On a more positive note, I’ve been out here dual promoting Taylor and Beyoncé since ‘Nam. Oy, but it’s rough to look at the phrasing even when you know how the prompts used to work and how we “spoke” in 2009 posts.

And then there was this one, which gave me the idea to write this. I think it’s probably pretty clear to all of you that I don’t keep a SUPER set editorial calendar, outside of major moments like album releases from my faves. We play it fast and loose over here at WHNHQ. I find that usually works best for my creativity—and weirdness.

I posted to my IG Stories that it is indeed absolutely still true, realizing in that moment that I needed to write more.

I love Free to Be You and Me in the most profound way. I fully believe it is a foundational pillar that helped form much of how I think about myself and the world. Many others in Gen X¹ feel the exact same way. If you know it well, I feel like I know you a bit better—even if we just met. As someone said in my DMs, “Isn’t Free to Be You and Me the invisible string amongst the sanest, coolest Gen X people?”

YES. YES. YES. It has always felt that way to me. I added, “And Sassy magazine!'“