I was listening to my Beat Happening station on Pandora today, which is generally filled with lo-fi goodness peppered with a few Raincoats songs here and there, when suddenly this song appeared in the shuffle:
I was instantly in ninth grade again, a place I prefer not to visit. I thought about hitting the thumbs-down to make it go away forever, but instead I let it play. The song isn't even all that good. It's your basic generic adult contemporary song, and half a dozen near-identical singles were released that year. Nonetheless, it captures a very particular period of my life: September or October of 1997. I heard it begin and was stuck in a flashback to the days of rollerblading (yes, I was a rollerblader before I had a car) down the bike path on Sunrise Way, on my way to hang out in the wash with the skateboarders for the afternoon. It would have been hot outside still, probably hovering around 90 degrees, and I surely wasn't wearing kneepads or any other protective gear as I barreled down the street to shirk my homework for a few hours. Strange that my brain can pull something so vivid out of a pop song I haven't heard in half a lifetime. It probably doesn't help that I've been re-watching Veronica Mars, and that my 10-year reunion is looming closer. Will I ever stop being a teenager?
How do I know all of the words to this song?! I remember driving my first car, le petite Honda Civic, through the muggy streets of LafLa with my windows rolled down listening to this melancholy pop.
ReplyDeleteYou're no teenager, but you'll never stop remembering.
What's wrong with being a teenager!!??
ReplyDeleteThose years are history. Your history. They're part of your fiber and were instrumental in creating the fabulous young woman you are today. Keep listening. Your past is speaking.
ReplyDelete