(no subject)
My God, we've come so far.
I stumbled onto one of the greatest albums of all-time today, after years and years of distancing myself from it. It wasn't intentional, the album was always phenomenal and I never truly forgot that. But in moving around from state to state and town to town, it just fell off my radar.
Listening to it again today put me back into the shoes I wore when I first heard it, a cheap pair of beat-up no name shoes from K-Mart. 1996 and I'd already moved 4 times over 2074+ miles. 7 years old and full of questions, those days were golden.
Remember being a kid and hearing a song on the radio? Not just any song, but one that you really loved? Remember how excited you got, remember begging your parents to turn it up? It's hard to imagine a time before iTunes and pandora. At 7, I was in no financial position to buy albums, nor did I know anything about the concept of an "album." I heard songs on the radio that I liked and that was enough for me.
My dog ran away and Pearl Jam's cover of "Last Kiss" began playing on the radio.
"Oh where oh where can my baby be
The Lord took her away from me
She's gone to Heaven so I've got to be good
So I can see my baby when I leave this world"
I didn't lose the love of my life, just a dog. But when you're 7 years old, a dog is a best friend, a confidant, a fellow explorer. But I digress. This song isn't from the album I mentioned earlier, just something that came to mind while typing. Oh the power of the radio.
Those days I was living in Lordstown, Ohio. If you've never been to Ohio, the town is probably close to what you'd imagine it to be just from hearing the name. We had a small school, a Dairy Queen, parks and cornfields and a GM manufacturing plant. I lived in an apartment complex and, looking back, my experience there was incredibly surreal; but surreal in the way that Pete and Pete is surreal now that I'm older and wiser, but back when it first aired it wasn't at all. After school I would wander from apartment to apartment ; an old woman would talk to me about the days of coal stoves, another would reminisce about presidents past. I was fascinated by science and driven by a desire to understand how the world worked, so I took a magnifying glass everywhere. I would talk to caterpillars and tell them about my discoveries, but they never responded. I always assumed that I just couldn't hear them, what with they being so small and having such tiny mouths. If I put them too close to my ear, I feared they'd be lost inside. What a terrible fate for a caterpillar, to be lost inside the ear canal of a child. But maybe then I'd be able to listen to its story. *whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper* Looking back, I should have given it a shot.
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came out around this time, the fall of 1996. I listened to the radio for hours just to hear "1979" play once. It was the soundtrack to my days. The downside to this method was having no choice but to listen to hours of pop music. The plus side to this method was my resultant expertise in pop music.
I had a crush on a girl in the first grade. Her name escapes me, but back then she was a real gem. She sat in front of me and whenever I had the chance, I would sing those romantic pop songs out loud. Not to her, no, for that would be too obvious. Just loud enough for her to hear, just loud enough to know that I could sing to her if only she wanted me to.
One day we were playing inside because of the rain. The teacher had left and the boys had made a line of chairs to jump over because that's what boys do when they are 7, unsupervised, and bored. When my turn came, I prepared myself and felt no regard for my safety. Honor was at stake, and respect. But I never made the jump. Before I could, the girl of my dreams grabbed my arms and with a voice of concern that to this day melts my heart, cried "No, I don't want you to get hurt!"
Two weeks later, or maybe two days (it's hard to keep track of time when you're a child), she moved away. I never saw her again. Certainly by now she's forgotten of me, but I'll never forget that one moment when my life was on the line and her worried voice spared me from making a terrible decision.
I can still see sunsets over the vast cornfield across the one street that passed my complex. I can still remember being beaned in the head with a baseball, sucking it up, and making the miracle catch to save the game. I can remember being the hero, the explorer, the scientist, the misfit.
I wish life was still caterpillars and baseball and cornfields. Those days were golden. I do not regret that so much has come between those days and the present. 5 states and thousands of miles of moving trucks and open highway were a blessing; most of my life was spent in Ohio and I was lucky to have the opportunity to leave and explore other corners of the country. But more than that, I was lucky to leave so that I could fully appreciate it. Every day that I spend back in Ohio is a godsend. This city is mad, impure. Ohio is the heart of it all.
"Junebug skipping like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end
To it all"
I stumbled onto one of the greatest albums of all-time today, after years and years of distancing myself from it. It wasn't intentional, the album was always phenomenal and I never truly forgot that. But in moving around from state to state and town to town, it just fell off my radar.
Listening to it again today put me back into the shoes I wore when I first heard it, a cheap pair of beat-up no name shoes from K-Mart. 1996 and I'd already moved 4 times over 2074+ miles. 7 years old and full of questions, those days were golden.
Remember being a kid and hearing a song on the radio? Not just any song, but one that you really loved? Remember how excited you got, remember begging your parents to turn it up? It's hard to imagine a time before iTunes and pandora. At 7, I was in no financial position to buy albums, nor did I know anything about the concept of an "album." I heard songs on the radio that I liked and that was enough for me.
My dog ran away and Pearl Jam's cover of "Last Kiss" began playing on the radio.
"Oh where oh where can my baby be
The Lord took her away from me
She's gone to Heaven so I've got to be good
So I can see my baby when I leave this world"
I didn't lose the love of my life, just a dog. But when you're 7 years old, a dog is a best friend, a confidant, a fellow explorer. But I digress. This song isn't from the album I mentioned earlier, just something that came to mind while typing. Oh the power of the radio.
Those days I was living in Lordstown, Ohio. If you've never been to Ohio, the town is probably close to what you'd imagine it to be just from hearing the name. We had a small school, a Dairy Queen, parks and cornfields and a GM manufacturing plant. I lived in an apartment complex and, looking back, my experience there was incredibly surreal; but surreal in the way that Pete and Pete is surreal now that I'm older and wiser, but back when it first aired it wasn't at all. After school I would wander from apartment to apartment ; an old woman would talk to me about the days of coal stoves, another would reminisce about presidents past. I was fascinated by science and driven by a desire to understand how the world worked, so I took a magnifying glass everywhere. I would talk to caterpillars and tell them about my discoveries, but they never responded. I always assumed that I just couldn't hear them, what with they being so small and having such tiny mouths. If I put them too close to my ear, I feared they'd be lost inside. What a terrible fate for a caterpillar, to be lost inside the ear canal of a child. But maybe then I'd be able to listen to its story. *whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper* Looking back, I should have given it a shot.
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came out around this time, the fall of 1996. I listened to the radio for hours just to hear "1979" play once. It was the soundtrack to my days. The downside to this method was having no choice but to listen to hours of pop music. The plus side to this method was my resultant expertise in pop music.
I had a crush on a girl in the first grade. Her name escapes me, but back then she was a real gem. She sat in front of me and whenever I had the chance, I would sing those romantic pop songs out loud. Not to her, no, for that would be too obvious. Just loud enough for her to hear, just loud enough to know that I could sing to her if only she wanted me to.
One day we were playing inside because of the rain. The teacher had left and the boys had made a line of chairs to jump over because that's what boys do when they are 7, unsupervised, and bored. When my turn came, I prepared myself and felt no regard for my safety. Honor was at stake, and respect. But I never made the jump. Before I could, the girl of my dreams grabbed my arms and with a voice of concern that to this day melts my heart, cried "No, I don't want you to get hurt!"
Two weeks later, or maybe two days (it's hard to keep track of time when you're a child), she moved away. I never saw her again. Certainly by now she's forgotten of me, but I'll never forget that one moment when my life was on the line and her worried voice spared me from making a terrible decision.
I can still see sunsets over the vast cornfield across the one street that passed my complex. I can still remember being beaned in the head with a baseball, sucking it up, and making the miracle catch to save the game. I can remember being the hero, the explorer, the scientist, the misfit.
I wish life was still caterpillars and baseball and cornfields. Those days were golden. I do not regret that so much has come between those days and the present. 5 states and thousands of miles of moving trucks and open highway were a blessing; most of my life was spent in Ohio and I was lucky to have the opportunity to leave and explore other corners of the country. But more than that, I was lucky to leave so that I could fully appreciate it. Every day that I spend back in Ohio is a godsend. This city is mad, impure. Ohio is the heart of it all.
"Junebug skipping like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end
To it all"