The other day I was driving down the road and I was actually in the car alone. ALONE. Which means I was able to listen to whatever I wanted as opposed to Chris Tomlin’s “The Happy Song” or Audio Adrenaline’s “Big House”.
Caroline is certain there are no two finer songs ever written and she’s not interested in hearing anything else to test her theory.
Anyway, I was scanning through the stations (By the way, the scan feature is one of the greatest inventions of modern man. I spent seven years driving a Honda CRX that actually required me to TURN THE DIAL to find a radio station. Of course, I also had to roll down the windows to open the doors from the outside, so the radio issue was kind of small potatoes in comparison) and all of a sudden I stopped the scan when I heard the sweet sounds of Bon Jovi belting out “Never Say Goodbye”.
“Remember at the prom that night
You and me we had a fight
But the band they played our favorite song
And I held you in my arms so strong
We danced so close
We danced so slow
And I swore Id never let you go
Together – forever
Never say goodbye, never say goodbye
You and me and my old friends
Hoping it would never end
Never say goodbye, never say goodbye
Holdin on – we got to try
Holdin on to never say goodbye”
Oh, the 80’s. When lyrics really spoke to your soul.
I wore out my Bon Jovi cassette listening to that song. Of course it didn’t help matters that cassette tapes tended to get hung up in the cassette deck mechanism of my Honda CRX.
So, I started thinking about Bon Jovi songs that I loved (“Shot Through the Heart”! “Wanted Dead or Alive”! “You Give Love a Bad Name”! “Living on a Prayer”!) and naturally, this led me to think about songs that will always remind me of high school and high drama.
The number one song on my list?
“Love Bites” by Def Leppard
I am not even ashamed to admit it.
Well, maybe a little but that won’t stop me.
Halfway through my junior year in high school, I started dating a sophomore. I was a cougar before it was cool and before Demi ever even thought about Ashton. Of course, Ashton probably wasn’t born yet.
The point is I started dating this really cute sophomore boy and not just because he was so cute. I mean, I wasn’t that shallow. He also had a decent personality and drove a convertible Porsche.
I’ll let y’all decide which was the bigger selling point.
Of course, truth be told, after taking him to dinner with my dad one night, my dad’s comment was, “Are you kidding?”
So perhaps his personality was lacking something.
We dated throughout the spring semester of my junior year and I invited him to be my date to Junior/Senior prom.
About a week before prom, two things happened. His mama offered me a job teaching swimming lessons in their backyard for the daycare she owned, and I decided I felt bad for this new girl at school who didn’t really know anyone, so I asked her if she and her boyfriend would like to double with J. and me to Junior/Senior prom.
These two events may seem unrelated. However, they are inextricably linked forever in my mind.
We all went to Junior/Senior prom together and had a great time. I had borrowed a dress from my best friend Jodi that came complete with a bubble skirt. How could I not have a good time in a dress with a bubble skirt?
It’s impossible.
I’ve never been exactly sure what happened that night at prom, but two weeks later right after school was out for the summer, J. broke up with me and started dating the new girl that I felt sorry for and invited to double date with us to prom.
I didn’t really feel sorry for her after that.
In fact, I may have drawn some inappropriate sketches by her picture in the yearbook.
To say I was heartbroken doesn’t really sum it up. It’s not every day a girl gets to ride around in a convertible Porsche.
The real problem was that I had already committed to this job that required me to show up in his backyard EVERY DAY at 8 a.m. to teach incontinent children how to swim. And now that he was no longer my boyfriend and was instead the person I wanted to make regret that he ever dumped me for a girl who wore a peach lame’ dress with ridiculously puffy sleeves, I had to put some effort into how I looked.
I had to wear makeup and tease my spiral perm to impossible fullness before heading off to teach swim lessons.
Oh the humanity.
The little ankle-biters would come rolling out of the van at 8:30 in various stages of distress. One little boy never even took his socks off the entire summer. In his mind those tube socks were the only thing standing between him and a certain watery death.
So in spite of all my efforts to look stunning, by the time J. rolled out of bed and wandered into his backyard around 11 a.m., I looked less than stellar. Invariably, he would walk out just as I was holding a child that said, “I NEED TO GO PEE. NEVERMIND. I JUST DID.”
To sum it up, my misery knew no bounds.
There were two things that got me through that summer. One of them was a little three-year-old boy who was some kind of musical redneck prodigy and knew every word to every George Strait song. He would sing them all to me as I pulled him around the pool. To this day I cannot hear “Am I Blue?” or “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” without thinking about that summer.
The other thing that got me through was the song “Love Bites” by Def Leppard. There was a radio with a cassette player out by the pool and I played that song over and over again. DRAMA.
In my mind I hoped that J. could hear the song playing while he sat in his bedroom upstairs and would feel horrible for how he had betrayed me. Although I’m pretty sure he was just up there watching “Predator” for the 200th time.
How appropriate.
What about y’all? Any songs that will always make you think about high school or a bad breakup? Or both?
