Music and memories
As I was getting out of the shower this morning, the radio station played "We Built This City" by Starship. You know how certain songs remind you of specific places, times, or people? This song has huge memories attached to it, all of which came flooding back today.
When this song came out in 1985, I was in seventh grade, and thus eligible to join the synagogue youth group. One Sunday, the youth group was doing a clean-up project in the wooded area around the synagogue building, which was unfortunately being used as a trash dump by all of the neighbors. The 10th grade boy in charge of the project [let's call him "Joe"] was using this as his community service requirement for his Eagle Scout badge.
To say that I developed a "crush" on Joe would be like saying Mount Everest is "sorta tall." This was the beginning of my affinity for smart (and smart-ass) boys. [Here come the rose-colored glasses...] Joe was funny, smart, cute, and arrogant, in a "big man on campus" kind of way. I was smitten. It wasn't really cool for him to be friends with me, but we hit it off. (It didn't hurt that our mothers had gone to the same college, although they didn't know each other until they ended up on the board of trustees of the synagogue together. ) I wrote his initials next to mine in every notebook I had in school. We talked on the phone allll the time. We hung out in his bedroom (scandalous!) and he took me out in his car when he was first learning to drive a manual transmission (which turned out to be the first thing he'd ever done that he wasn't instantly good at, as my whiplash would attest).
He came to my bat mitzvah, and was seated at the table with me and my friends -- which, in hindsight, must have been mortifying for him, as we were 13 and he was 16. But Joe stuck it out, and had a good time. I got myself on the 'board' of the youth group in ninth grade, partly as an excuse to see him more often before he went off to college. [He also stopped me from jumping off a high building that year, but that's another story for another day.]
He graduated at the top of his high school class and went off to a big ivy league university. I wrote him letters [my g-d, remember when we did that?!] all summer and into the fall. (He had the coolest handwriting, and always wrote with fountain pens.) When he came home for winter break in January of '88, he took me to the movies one night. To this day, I have no clue what movie we saw.... all I know is that we made out on the escalator on the way back to the car. I think I was on a cloud for a solid week after that.
After various jobs and moves to different cities, he finally came back to the DC area around 1999. Strangely enough, we talked on the phone and saw each other less once he was nearby. (Of course, it didn't help that he'd brought his soon-to-be-wife back with him...) We lost touch a few years after that, but every once in a while I do a web search to see what he's up to. Maybe I'll be bold and email him one of these days.
Oh, what does all of this reminiscing about Joe have to do with Starship? That was the song he was singing during the synagogue clean-up project, the day we met. :)
When this song came out in 1985, I was in seventh grade, and thus eligible to join the synagogue youth group. One Sunday, the youth group was doing a clean-up project in the wooded area around the synagogue building, which was unfortunately being used as a trash dump by all of the neighbors. The 10th grade boy in charge of the project [let's call him "Joe"] was using this as his community service requirement for his Eagle Scout badge.
To say that I developed a "crush" on Joe would be like saying Mount Everest is "sorta tall." This was the beginning of my affinity for smart (and smart-ass) boys. [Here come the rose-colored glasses...] Joe was funny, smart, cute, and arrogant, in a "big man on campus" kind of way. I was smitten. It wasn't really cool for him to be friends with me, but we hit it off. (It didn't hurt that our mothers had gone to the same college, although they didn't know each other until they ended up on the board of trustees of the synagogue together. ) I wrote his initials next to mine in every notebook I had in school. We talked on the phone allll the time. We hung out in his bedroom (scandalous!) and he took me out in his car when he was first learning to drive a manual transmission (which turned out to be the first thing he'd ever done that he wasn't instantly good at, as my whiplash would attest).
He came to my bat mitzvah, and was seated at the table with me and my friends -- which, in hindsight, must have been mortifying for him, as we were 13 and he was 16. But Joe stuck it out, and had a good time. I got myself on the 'board' of the youth group in ninth grade, partly as an excuse to see him more often before he went off to college. [He also stopped me from jumping off a high building that year, but that's another story for another day.]
He graduated at the top of his high school class and went off to a big ivy league university. I wrote him letters [my g-d, remember when we did that?!] all summer and into the fall. (He had the coolest handwriting, and always wrote with fountain pens.) When he came home for winter break in January of '88, he took me to the movies one night. To this day, I have no clue what movie we saw.... all I know is that we made out on the escalator on the way back to the car. I think I was on a cloud for a solid week after that.
After various jobs and moves to different cities, he finally came back to the DC area around 1999. Strangely enough, we talked on the phone and saw each other less once he was nearby. (Of course, it didn't help that he'd brought his soon-to-be-wife back with him...) We lost touch a few years after that, but every once in a while I do a web search to see what he's up to. Maybe I'll be bold and email him one of these days.
Oh, what does all of this reminiscing about Joe have to do with Starship? That was the song he was singing during the synagogue clean-up project, the day we met. :)
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