I was in an email group with friends more or less my age, and they were chattering one night in the '90s, and they said, "What are you listening to now?" I said the Goo-Goo- Dolls. They were incredulous. Hey, there was some great music in there.
Anyway, I now alter the following lyrics a bit to fit my own youth with the winsome girl now known as Grandma:
She was a blonde-haired beauty with big gray eyes
And points of her own, sitting way up high
Way up firm and high
(Our deal wasn't as shallow as the song, so let's skip a bit, brother.)
I woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off, I sat and wondered
(How this brings me back to a hot Illinois night, watching the clouds in the sky, tossing lightning back and forth, like Lightning Tennis of the Gods, or something.)
Started humming a song from 1972
Ain't it funny how the night moves when you just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves, with autumn closing in
Ah, the summers as a teenager in high school, as a college student, that seemed to stretch out, the crusing, the love, the sweat, the physicality and elasticity of the young, the energized dialogue, the sounds of the night. If I could snap a moment in time and live it forever, that would be it, when so many things were happening, and everything was possible. "And I'd trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday."
We can't go back, but memories are powerful. Sometimes they're the best things we have.