09/30/2005 Entry: "I Don't Care If We Spend The Night At Your Rest Home."

The conversation had turned a touch personal, and was becoming a little heated. The restaurant's jukebox switched, somewhat abruptly, from some hard-driving rock to Prince's "Take Me With U."

We have a VHS tape somewhere of a Freshman-in-High-School version of me, onstage with my big dumb bangs wearing a skinny white tie with a keyboard on it and performing this song on two synthesizers and a drum machine. It's slightly less mortifying in real life than I imagine it. But only slightly. I take some small solace in the fact that the VCR isn't hooked up right now.

Some particularly arch comment was made, and I was half-ignoring it and half-reveling in the memory anyway. "I don't know what you're all talking about," I said. "I'm back in 1984 right now." I bopped my head and mouthed along with the lyrics. Come on and touch the place in me/that's calling out your name...

One of the guys at the table stopped and listened for a second, and then said, "In 1984, I was one year old."

It's official. I've become that old guy, blind with nostalgia. Carry on without me; I'll catch up in a minute.

Replies: 5 comments

But you have the skin of a cherub, honey.

Posted by Jhames @ 09/30/2005 04:50 PM PST

I get to be the old guy in my training classes all the time. These 19 year olds that don't beleive you could smoke in McDonalds.

Posted by Greg @ 10/03/2005 12:04 AM PST

We are all old now. But you know something. I still think the music was better back then.

Posted by Nala @ 10/07/2005 08:44 AM PST

Oh, you poor, superannuated infants - this really IS what it sounds like when doves cry. Wait 'til all y'all get closer to forty than thirty before complaining.

Posted by Huntington @ 10/07/2005 10:44 AM PST

You want to talk about feeling old? That guy who was one year old in 1984, is now older than you were when I met you. Howzat?

P.S. Happy birthday, old man!

Posted by Lincoln Madison @ 10/23/2005 04:46 PM PST