The Songs o' my Life

We all have songs that remind us of different times in our lives. I've decided to compile a list of songs that take me back in time.

Silly Love Songs by Wings. My sisters used to put this 45 on and listen to it over and over. I remember the pattern of the sticker on the 45. I remember playing with the record player and switching the speed from 33 to 45 to 78. I must have been about 4 or so and we lived in Florida. My sisters also were big fans of Shawn Cassidy.

Everybody Wants You by Billy Squier. My sisters used to listen to this song a lot too. My sister Melissa had an ugly parakeet she named Larry Bird. I know, how original. Still, they used to put this song on and Larry used to go crazy for this song. I'm still not sure to this day if Larry truly liked the song or was just in pain due to some note Billy Squier was hitting.

Wanna Be Starting Something by Michael Jackson. Jason Leverone had a birthday party in July ,1984. His parents got him a Walkman with the cassette Thriller. I was invited to the slumber party even though I was the nerdy kid in the neighborhood. Most of the boys were busy trying to smuggle in a copy of Playboy and stay up all night. I was busy trying to get some sleep. This was the beginning of a long phase of me not fitting in with the boys. I always felt different, but those differences grew as we all got older. I do remember this was my first introduction to Michael Jackson though. (My parents were not exactly the modern music types.) After this, Thriller seemed to blow up on the music charts. I remember one of my friends told me in elementary school that if I called 1-800-MICHAEL, I'd get to speak with Michael Jackson. I immediately began calling the number for hours at a time. I do not know what one ever heard if they got through because I always got the "all circuits are busy now" recording. I do know that my father got call waiting after I started calling the number because I would tie up our home phone line for hours at a time.

Lean on Me by Club Nouveau. The mean girls of my junior high did this song for the eighth grade lip synch contest. It was a combining of forces amongst several mean girl cliques. I remember Terri Kinney and her crowd hooked up with Nancy Norton and her gang of girls. They all had different color baseball caps on during the number and this earned them the nickname of the Crayola Crayons.

Girlfriend by Pebbles. I was a freshman in high school, fat, unpopular, and inspired by French class. My parents, bless them, agreed to let me go on a trip to England and France. I love my parents dearly because I was incredibly spoiled compared to my brothers and sisters who were raised with very little. Even though they were tired from raising six kids and my dad commuted an hour plus everyday to work, they understood that I was different and that I needed to go on this trip. So we flew Virgin Atlantic Airways which had 2 planes total at the time. The song Girlfriend had become popular and I remember we listened to the song all across England and France. I have few memories from that trip beyond me losing everything from a plane ticket to my passport to my backpack all across the continent. I was a huge mess and look back on that trip with fond memories. I should have been a foreign exchange student, but my parents would never let me go.

Straight Up by Paula Abdul. I think my gay genes started to spike when I heard this song. I was a junior in high school and very unaware of any kind of pop culture around me. (I lived in rural New Hampshire and was a fish out of water to say the least. My parents refused to get cable, so the majority of my free time was spent watching Hogan's Heroes reruns.) One of the senior girls did this song and I was like, "Who sings that song????" A big queen bloomed from my ugly shell.

Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson. I was a senior in high school and I was working at a Catholic Retreat Center doing overnight retreats. I spent a lot of time there watching cable tv because my parents refused to get it still. In the area where we lived, you couldn't get Fox without cable, so I had not seen Arsenio Hall yet. As a double whammy, Arsenio had Janet Jackson the first night I watched. I don't know what rock I lived under, but I had never heard of either of them. Janet and Rhythm Nation became a huge inspiration for me. I knew that with music by my side, I too could break the color lines of 99.8% white New Hampshire and solve the racist issues that plagued our small state.

Let's Talk About Sex by Salt 'N Pepa and OPP by Naughty by Nature. I had graduated from high school and was delivering pizza around town. I was a horrible pizza delivery driver and was all about songs that talked about sex even thought I wasn't having any sex. (That wouldn't be happening for about 5 more years.) Bad years, bad, bad.

Jump Around by House of Pain. One of my five roommates in college (Cory) LOVED this song and used to play it over and over and over. It was cool, but the screaming does get old after a while.

Erotica by Madonna. I remember buying Erotica the day it came out and listening to it immediately. Even though my conservative Catholic friends were disapproving, I was all about the cd. I didn't really get the Sex book, but the music definitely called to me. A young gay boy putting the pieces together.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Deep Blue Something. I was in flight attendant training in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it was colder than fuck (it hit 80 degrees below zero when I was there), I had a London Fog raincoat for warmth, and I was coming out of the closet. The radio station in Minneapolis either had a low budget or really liked this song because they played it several times per hour.

Ray of Light by Madonna. I was in training in Chicago at my second airline and I met my first serious boyfriend all at the same time. The album made me a Madonna fan for life and that cd helped me make it through training. I used to listen to it after all of my exams and it took me to another place.

My Immortal by Evanescence. I was working at a mafia run pizzeria under the table in a small town in New Jersey. The cooks (who used to toss pasta in one hand while smoking a cigarette in the other) listened to this song on a horrible old flour covered cd player night after night after night. Ah Jersey, how I miss thee... The big hair, the car alarms, the small roads and neverending traffic, the Parkway, the price of car insurance being 3 times the norm. The Garden State at it's best.

Inevitable by Shakira and Promiscuous featuring Nelly Furtado. The soundtrack of my life right now. My boyfriend has Promiscuous as his ring tone and every time the song comes on, he's like, "Turn it up!" even if we've heard it twenty times that day already. Shakira did Inevitable at her show the other night and it was amazing. The song of my life. It makes me cry and want to cuddle with the man.

Alright kids. That's a brief overview of the soundtrack of my life. Cuidate.