The Songs That Take Me Back

Has there ever been a song in your life that whenever you hear it, it takes you back to a certain time or event in your life? No? Well tough bananas, because that's what I'm talking about in this entry. Here are some of those songs, and where my mind goes every time I hear them. They are greatly varied in the genres (as well as the quality of the songs), but here they are.

Let's start with an oldie from my youth: "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. The movie "Saturday Night Fever" was released five days before my sixth birthday, and during the following summer, "Stayin' Alive" was on the radio constantly. During that summer, my mother (and we are talking Kathleen here, not Bette) was babysitting her friend Carol's two daughters, Traci and Vanessa. Traci was a year older than my brother, and Vanessa was a year older that I was, so the four of us were lumped together in various activities. When all of us were piled into my parents' butt-ugly yellow AMC Hornet Sportabout hatchback going places, the radio (which was AM only) was on. "Stayin' Alive" seemed to be playing every single time we were going somewhere, and Traci, Vanessa, Kyle, and I would drive my mother nuts by singing along, matching the Gibbs' falsetto note-for-note. Even though we had this car after my mother died, this sort of thing certainly didn't happen the following summer after my mother died.

Speaking of my mother, any Christmas song by the Ray Conniff Singers brings me to the only Christmas season I really remember with my mother. I don't know what year it was, but I remember my mother putting a pile of Ray Conniff Christmas records on the stereo, which had an automatic record changer. While these were playing, my mother was busy decorating the house and baking cookies, occasionally slipping me a sand tart. Even though I can't stand sand tarts (the most accurately-named cookie in existence), it is a great memory. I don't know where Kyle and my father were while this was going on, but I do have that memory.

Let's get back to the list, or I will be up all night tying this entry. Let's talk about my next song, "Because I Love You (The Postman Song) by Stevie B. When I hear this song (which is rare), I am transported to my first semester in college, which was in the fall of 1990. Other than going to class, going to the dining hall to eat, and going to the school bookstore (which was right next to my dorm), I never went out of my room, and barely talked to a living soul. I am not griping, though; I was in a state of bliss that I had never felt before or since. As you know, my high school experience was a nightmare. To paraphrase the motto of the Navy SEALS, the only decent day I had was yesterday. So when I started college, I took it as an opportunity to get a clean start. When I discovered that there was no place in the caste system of a freshman dormitory for a morbidly obese, closeted gay eighteen year old, I basically decided to shut the door on everyone and turn into a hermit. While people were out carousing on Friday night, I would order pizza (from a different place every week), and I would spend Saturday watching television and doing laundry. 

While I realize now that I was extremely lonely and unhappy, at that time I was the happiest I had ever been. I had spent my life being hounded and berated by various members of my family, mostly by Bette, Kyle, my aunt, and my grandmother. The beratements may have been in different voices, but they were all variations on the same theme: you will never have any life or friends unless you change everything about yourself. So I took the fall of 1990 to sequester myself without listening to anyone tell me how horrible a person I was. And had certain things not happened the following semester, I might have maintained this state of ignorant bliss through my college career. 

The next song is "I Can See Clearly Now" by Jimmy Cliff. When I hear this song (which happens occasionally since it is bookmarked on my XM system), I am taken back to President's Day weekend, in February of 2003. We were having a major blizzard, and Julie, Cleo, and I are stuck in the house. Cleo had turned on the radio, and apparently the DJ thought it would be cute to play a song about a "bright sunshiny day" during a snowstorm. We survived the snowstorm, though, but that's what I think about when I hear this song.

The last item on this list (mostly because my hands are tired of all the typing) is "Sensual Seduction" by Snoop Dogg. I don't really like this song all that much; doing nothing but having sex is hardly a basis for a good relationship. But when I was first dating Justin, it was very popular on the XM Top 20 channel. So I think about those early dates and that weird "gooshy" feeling I felt. Now I am wondering where this relationship is going, since we never seem to see each other anymore. 

But that is for a less topic-focused blog entry. Good night, and...

Eric Out.