When my mother-in-law turned 50 last year, I went searching for the perfect gift. In my search, I encountered a t-shirt that nearly made the cut. It said on it, "Am I getting older, or is the supermarket starting to play really good music?" I appreciate shirts that genuinely make me laugh, and that one did. While in the end I opted for a more meaningful gift, I haven't forgotten that shirt. Last week, I was doing some shopping of my own, and about the second time I had to stop audibly singing "Stormy" by The Classics IV because someone else walked into the aisle, I had to come to terms with the fact that the joke t-shirt aimed at the over-the-hill crowd applied to me perfectly. (What's that scripture about removing the speck from your neighbor's eye when you have a plank in your own?) In my newly-realized shame, I grabbed the rest of the items on my list and left, though not without first treating the store to an encore of "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" by Edison Lighthouse.
     When I was a kid, I always assumed that my parents had been wild, carefree youths at some point. I'm not saying I thought that they always acted like 50-year-olds - my dad was an Top 40 AM DJ after all - but I always figured that the stories of their adolescence were much crazier than they let on. I couldn't imagine it, but I figured that all adults, no matter how conservative they turned out, always started out that way. When I think that my children may think that about me some day, I almost have to laugh. My life has proved that while there are the people that spend their teenage years staying up late to party and engage in underage activities, there are some that just stay up late to call local talk radio stations and weigh in on the topic du jour (to be fair, I only did that ONCE.) When they imagine me in my 20's, I hope they picture me as a social butterfly, spending every weekend with our young married friends playing Cranium and enjoying frappuccinos. I can only pray that it never crosses their mind to picture me comparing labels on spaghetti sauce jars while singing the repertoire of Burt Bacharach.
     My friends tend to know me as an 80's girl, which I truly am. It's hard not be nostalgic for the era of your childhood, when you had your whole life ahead of you and had yet to encounter anything in life that would jade you or break your spirit. The ignorance of childhood truly is bliss. The irony is, in the late 80's and early 90's, I was kind of a 60's girl. It was around this time that oldies stations (as they are now) first started popping up (at least as far as I know, I don't have any hard evidence to back this up.) For the first time, people like my parents could listen to stations completely devoted to the pop music of their childhood and teenage years. There had been plenty of stations that played a mix of music (at the risk of aging myself to my Richmond-area readers, I remember when Q94 played the best of "the 50s, 60s, 70s and today". Can you imagine Q94 playing 50s music?), so I wasn't completely uninitiated to the "oldies", but I soon found myself immersed in it. The songs were short, catchy, and incredibly singable, so I became pretty hooked. I looked forward to Saturday nights when our favorite station played "American Gold" and I'd dance around the house. When I got a little older, I even got to the point where I'd call the oldies station and make requests. Things got a hundred times worse when "The Wonder Years" premiered and completely played into my fascination with all things 60's and 70's. I remember laying in bed, listening to the radio while I tried to sleep, and imaging myself in a Kevin/Winnie type montage with Fred Savage, letting whatever poignant song happened to be playing set the mood. I wasn't trying to be one of those "ironic" teenagers who listened to classic music in an effort to be nonconformist, I legitimately liked it. I liked riding around in the car with my parents, singing in three part harmony to songs on the radio (concrete proof that being ironically cool never entered my consciousness.)
     I can almost tell you the exact moment when I was snapped back into the 90's. I was in 6th grade and one of the girls in my class was talking to me about Mariah Carey. I had nothing to offer the conversation. I'd heard the name, but I didn't know anything about her singing or any of her songs. I realized that the reason my parents liked the music of the 60s and 70s was because it was the music of their youth. The oldies station played the songs they first kissed to, their first breakup songs, their class songs, their prom songs, songs from the first records they ever bought...these songs were meaningful to them beyond the fact that it was just good music. In the meantime, I was missing out on the music of my own era. I needed to expand my horizons. In actuality, it was a slow transition. I quit listening to the oldies station exclusively and moved to the "mix" station, weaning myself like a junkie, and by 8th grade I was back to Q94, which by that time was strictly Top 40. My dad hated it - he didn't understand why I couldn't at least listen to the adult contemprary station that they liked. There was no way to explain it without sounding like I was giving some cheesy sitcom monologue (which I was guilty of oh-so-often), so I just let it go. It's just as well. It's much better that awkward, uncomfortable memories of my teenage years ruined the mediocre music of the 90's for me than truly good music.
     As time went on, more and more oldies stations were either changed to completely different formats or transformed into classic rock stations, resulting in moments where I flip out in a store now because it's been 15 years since I last heard a song that came out 15 years before I was born.
     I used to think I was genetically uncool, and maybe I am. I've always had kind of an old soul and, while that makes it hard to fit in during the pubescent years, I have no regrets. I've come to peace with the fact that I'm destined to be that square parent who embarrasses her children by singing with the songs in the department store and dressing like a soccer mom. And kids, if you're reading this in the future, you can stop wondering - I was that way long before you were born.