Twinkle and Binkle, The Starr News: Happy Birthday Elica, April 18, 2012

Elica Chelsea Starr

Today is Elica Starr's 16th birthday. Wow, how incredible. She has grown into a beautiful young lady, personable, smart, and with numerous abilities and talents. It was always fun watching her create mini dramas using the other granddaughters as actors. There was no coaxing, especially with the girls; they were eager to be part of her entertainment. We have three videos she made using herself and the grandchildren, one I will post; the other two are good but because they are performing to someone else's music I'm not able to post them. I've enjoyed watching her draw. From the beginning she had her own expressive style.

We've enjoyed watching her grow up and use these abilities that she has been blessed with. Her dad has contributed a written profile about Elica on behalf of himself and Hiromi so we will end with a HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR ELICA, and now dive into Gary's expo-sea. Grandma and Grandpa Starr

Remember when!

Elica is our first child and she came into the world on April 18th of 1996. We had no idea what we were doing raising a kid, but we watered her, fed her, and made sure she got a fair amount of sunshine and everything’s worked out pretty well so far. We lost her once on our trip to the Grand Canyon in 2003. It was at a rest stop surrounded by woods. It was one of those cases where her dad thought she had made it back to her mom (and stayed), and her mom thought she had gone back to her dad. The searching went on for well over an hour recruiting the assistance of several helpful people. Elica’s Dad’s imagination began to get the best of him and before long he was checking out everybody’s car before he’d let them drive away. We eventually had to give up the search, but thanks to modern-day cloning technology, we soon had an adequate replacement.

Elica is a talented, good-looking, popular kid – reminds me a lot of myself at that age. I think she is sort of the hub of her little co-ed posse, and even has outsiders vying for a share of her time. If her cruel, old-fashioned parents would allow it, she could probably spend the night at a different friend’s house (girls only, mind you) just about every weekend of the year. Elica and her dad used to fight regularly back when she took karate, now she fights with her mother. Elica is a lot like her mother – she’s the Boss at home (at least as far as Shogo’s involved), but all of her teachers are constantly telling us how quiet she is at school.

Elica is self-taught on the guitar and as an illustrator – but more than good enough to impress in both areas. You can always hear singing coming from her room, and she can’t sit and watch a TV show or play a board game with the family without pencil and notepad in her hands. For a teenager, Elica has pretty good taste in music. Apparently it’s cool now to know the good stuff from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s (probably because this generation’s music pretty much sucks), so for Elica it has paid off that her Dad is something of a classic music junkie and forced his family to go with him to sing karaoke every Friday night for the two years that they lived in Japan. For the most part, those trips turned into daddy-daughter evenings because Hiromi would fall asleep and Shogo was always wrapped up in his GameBoy.

Her dad’s kind of proud that she still seems to care about his opinion on a lot of things. She seems to want to get his stamp of approval on new songs and bands, on TV shows and movies and the actors that star in them, and on various ideas and ways of thinking in general. The two of them have had several long discussions about religion, about politics, and about which of the two guys on Supernatural is the hunkiest. But Elica doesn’t trust her dad’s opinion when it comes to her illustrations, her singing, or her guitar playing. “Dad always says everything I do is good because he’s my dad,” she says. “But I can trust Mom to be critical and find fault with things.” (an actual quote) Elica will freak out if told she has a spider or bug on her. She seems a little sensitive when it comes to creepy crawlies. Hiromi claims it stems from an incident that occurred to Elica at a much younger age. Sometime back when Shogo was still in diapers, the family sat down to watch Dennis the Menace (the movie). There is a scene where a varied assortment of frogs, snakes, spiders, and other creatures come stampeding down the stairs. Her kind and loving father got such a kick out of little Elica’s reaction to this scene that he put it on a loop and played it over and over again.
It took Elica until Christmas of her 15th year to finally get Dad to consent to allowing her to have a cell phone (complete with texting capability because apparently youth these days can speak faster with their thumbs than they can with their mouths). She had grown up exposed to a never-ending diatribe about how stupid, rude and dangerous “cell phone people” are and was in complete agreement until she got to the age where she noticed that everybody but her father owned one (’round about the time she started kindergarten). The compromise was that Dad would buy the phone, but wouldn’t pay any of the bills. It appears there was a loophole in their verbal contract, however. Her father should have made it clear that her mother wasn’t supposed to help out either.

Elica is a bit stubborn and a fighter, but she’s also very thoughtful and protective of her younger brother. She’s always enjoyed being able to make her friends laugh – whether intentionally or not. A look into her room would assure you that she is pretty much a typical teenager, but – so far – she has been an easy child to raise. She is a blessing to her family. Happy Birthday, Daughter.