In the Season 5 premiere of 7 Minute Stories, Aaron takes us back to his childhood in Ohio, where a VHS tape of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie led him to an unexpected discovery...
Original Song 'Right Field" by Peter, Paul & Mary
Performed by Willy Welch
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
Transcript
Aaron Calafato: I walk into the restaurant with my wonderful guest, and the hostess says, "Table for two." And just as we're about to walk in, she sees the card I'm carrying and says, "Whoa, are you in the club?" I look right back at her and say, "Oh yeah, I'm in the club." I'm going to tell you about this club and what it took to get there right after the music on the season five premiere.
Yes, let's get to work—the season five premiere of 7 Minute Stories.
Alright, so to get to this moment of how I was able to join this exclusive club, we’ve got to go way back to 1990 or 1991, when VHS tapes were the norm. I was begging my mother to get this VHS tape of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the original movie.
I saw it in the theater. I was there. I couldn't get enough of this movie. And I remember how cool the VHS tape looked with all the turtles on the front. I finally convinced her to get it. My brother and I watched this movie like a gazillion times; you could tell the VHS tape was barely hanging together.
And before the turtle movie starts on this particular VHS, there is a commercial. And at first, you don't know it's a commercial because it starts off cinematically, with a song accompanied by the sweetest acoustic guitar you've ever heard and the soothing, wise tone of an unknown troubadour singer.
"Off in the distance, the game's dragging on, there's strikes on the batter, some runners are on..." When suddenly—and by the way, now the commercial starts taking off—we zoom into what appears to be a hapless redhead kid out in right field, kicking dandelions around. It's like every one of us, right? He didn’t really have any business playing baseball, and you could tell that this guy was the worst player on the team.
And in the song lyrics and the story, the batter hits this ball, and everybody sees it go flying in the air, and they all know it's going to the dude in right field, this kid. This could be a disaster for him. And as the ball makes its way towards this kid, he knows he's in trouble. He just sticks his hand up in the air, and he catches the ball.
And when he does, pandemonium breaks out. Grandpa's crying and cheering in the stands. The coach can't believe it. Fellow players rush out onto the field. Goldberg from The Mighty Ducks even makes an appearance, and they run out to hug him. He's the hero—the hero of the day. And that's not even the best part of the story.
The lyrics still in my mind: "I play right field. It's important, you know. You gotta know how to catch; you gotta know how to throw. That's why I play in right field, way out where the dandelions grow." Damn, serious goosebumps! And in the commercial, it then moves from the baseball field. You’d think it’s an Oscar-winning film. But it’s a Pizza Hut commercial. The kids go to this beautiful place and are sitting around, eating personal pan pizzas. And that commercial would be the first step to joining the most important club of 1990.
Now, we didn't go out to eat that often. That's just how it was. I mean, the commercial worked perfectly on me. Right now, I'm tugging on Mom, saying, "Mom, can we go to Pizza Hut, please?" Finally, she was like, "Okay." So one night, she takes my brother and me, and we go to the local Pizza Hut. We go inside, and it's better than advertised—low lighting, big red cups filled with ice and Pepsi. This pizza tasted like nostalgia before it even became nostalgic, you know what I'm saying? Their buffet, by the way, was vastly underrated at the time.
So, I finish this first trip to Pizza Hut, and as I'm leaving, I notice on the hostess stand, there is this card that says "Book It." I ask about it, and the lady goes, "Oh yeah, you didn't hear about this program?" She says, "Listen, the more books you read, the more you get to come back here and get free personal pan pizzas."
"Wait a second," I say. "Are you telling me all I have to do is read a ton of books and I get to come back here all the time and eat personal pan pizzas?" She says, "Yeah, but you have to be part of the club." Well, I signed up, and that summer was the most literate summer of my life. Every book I could find—at home, at the library, at a garage sale—I was reading, from comic books to the classics. I couldn't be stopped.
Now, here's the thing: I don't know when all of this stopped—the magic of being part of this club. I mean, I got older, clearly. You can't be a 30- or 40-year-old dude in the Book It club, right? That just gets weird. I don't know if it was because it was the '90s. I don't know if it's better in my memory just because it's a memory, but I do know that summer was an amazing time. I do know that commercial said something about that time—the optimism, the importance of education and reading, and the importance of simplicity.
Now, I always thought the Book It club ended—that they canceled it. But maybe it was just me aging out after sixth grade, or maybe they stopped it in my city. I don't know. But right before I started recording this story, I looked it up and saw that the Book It club is still going strong 40 years later, presented by Pizza Hut.
Now, listen, I don't know if you have a Pizza Hut around you that you feel comfortable going into, but if you have a kid and you want them to read, or they're a ferocious reader and you want to keep them reading, or they love pizza—or maybe they play in right field—I can tell you this: I've never belonged to any country club in my life, but there was one club, one that I will never forget. And if they need a reference or recommendation, just give me a shout.
