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Britt Lind
a book bubble about
Learning How to Fly
Biographies & Memoirs
Author Insight
Doing Our Best
In my memoir Learning How to Fly I talk about how everything I loved and dreamed of doing was considered a sin by my parents. Acting, singing popular songs, having a TV or watching TV at the neighbors’ house, going to movies and dancing all were considered sin. After finally arriving in Hollywood and striving to accomplish my goals my mother’s constant discouraging words were like a weight on my back. My father completely ignored me. To him I didn’t exist. For two years I had to cut my mother out of my life or her negativity would have killed me. Years later, while taking care of my mother in the years before she died she came to understand that acting was not a sin and I came to understand that everything she said and did was out of love, out of her own fears and worries that she had lived with her whole life. We came to appreciate each other for the people we were. Recently, when I complained to a friend about another friend who I didn’t feel was holding up her end of the deal while working on a project, she said to me, “Remember, we all do the best we can do considering who we are.” I understood and have heeded that advice ever since.
Book Excerpt
Learning How to Fly
Witchy Woman
For some reason, even though we were broken up, I was in the car with Dave the first time I heard the Sonics’ “The Witch” on the car radio. I thought it sounded like hideous, deafening, discordant noise and asked Dave who the heck was singing, or rather screaming, that song. He was dumb-founded that I would even ask, “You never heard of ‘The Witch?!’ That’s the Sonics, a Northwest band who made it big with their first record.” He turned up the noise to further make his point. I promptly turned it back down to keep my ear drums from exploding. How could I have been so crazy about a guy who thinks this mad howling is music? Smokey Robinson, the Beatles, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Dion and the Belmonts and my most favorite group of all, the Beach Boys, that was music. I banished all thoughts of the Sonics, and their caterwauling from my mind.
A couple of months later, I was sitting in the University of Washington cafeteria eating lunch and reading when another student appeared beside me and said he had a friend who wanted to meet me. I suggested that he tell his friend to come over and introduce himself if that was true. But this apparently wasn’t possible, as his friend was very shy. I kept eating and said that was too bad. But the boy wouldn’t take no for an answer and continued to beg and plead. I suspect he had been given this assignment on a dare or a bet and didn’t want to fail. So I took the most fateful move of my young life, said yes, gathered up all my belongings and went to meet this “shy” person who had to meet me.
That’s when I was introduced to the man who would pretty much decide my future in the next several years, Rob Lind – good looking with big brown eyes, black hair and very tall (6’4”). When he stood up, he seemed gawky and shy like many boys who grow up too fast, find themselves towering over everyone else, and don’t quite know how to deal with it. He was seated at a table, surrounded by his buddies (turned out to be his fraternity brothers) and had Coca Cola dripping from his eyelashes.
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